Nuclear Engineering

The American public's introduction to nuclear technology was manifested in destruction and death. With Hiroshima and the Cold War still ringing in our ears, our perception of all things nuclear is seen through the lens of weapons development. Nuclear power is full of mind-bending theories, deep secrets, and the misdirection of public consciousness - some deliberate, some accidental. The result of this fixation on bombs and fallout is that the development of a non-polluting, renewable energy source stands frozen in time.

In this 1972 treatise, Isaac Asimov takes the listener on an historic journey through the development of man's understanding of electricity, chemistry, and - ultimately - nuclear energy. Asimov's incomparable ability to simplify the complex is apparent as he guides you through the milestones of scientific thought that connected ideas about electricity and magnetism to the nature of matter, and led to the advances in discovery through the first half of the 20th century that resulted in the harnessing of previously unknown energy directly from the heart of the atom.

Whether you are a scientist or a poet, pro-nuclear energy or staunch opponent, conspiracy theorist or pragmatist, James Mahaffey's books have served to open up the world of nuclear science like never before. With clear explanations of some of the most complex scientific endeavors in history, Mahaffey's new book looks back at the atom's wild, secretive past and then toward its potentially bright future.

From the moment radiation was discovered in the late nineteenth century, nuclear science has had a rich history of innovative scientific exploration and discovery, coupled with mistakes, accidents, and downright disasters.

Ni los operadores nucleares son como Homer Simpson, ni en España se puede producir una catástrofe como la de Chernóbil, ni hoy en día podemos prescindir de la energía nuclear sin aumentar las emisiones de dióxido de carbono y la contaminación atmosférica. Así que si queremos seguir conectando los patinetes, los smartphones y los coches a la red eléctrica es importante que empecemos a ver esas denostadas centrales nucleares con otros ojos.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake large enough to knock the earth from its axis sent a massive tsunami speeding toward the Japanese coast and the aging and vulnerable Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power reactors. Over the following weeks, the world watched in horror as a natural disaster became a man-made catastrophe: fail-safes failed, cooling systems shut down, nuclear rods melted.

America's Nuclear Wastelands presents an expert, yet straightforward overview of this complex topic, including nuclear weapons history and contamination issues. The author, a government consultant with a long career in Pacific Northwest nuclear waste issues, also explores the current institutional and political environment, demonstrating the critical role of public participation for past and future generations.

Nuclear Russia probes the juncture of history of science and technology, political and cultural history, and environmental history. It considers the atom in Russian society as a reflection of Leninist technological utopianism, Cold War imperatives, scientific hubris, public acceptance, and a state desire to conquer nature. Furthermore the audiobook examines the vital – and perhaps unexpected – significance of ethnicity and gender in nuclear history by looking at how Kazakhs and Nenets lost their homelands and their health in Russia in the wake of nuclear testing.

Why did the US intelligence services fail so spectacularly to know about the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities following World War II? As Vince Houghton, historian and curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, shows us, that disastrous failure came just a few years after the Manhattan Project's intelligence team had penetrated the Third Reich and knew every detail of the Nazi's plan for an atomic bomb. What changed and what went wrong?

The Thermo Nuclear Creation is a luminous journey through the science, history, and philosophy of thermonuclear fusion—the process that powers the universe and sustains life itself. It begins at the smallest scales of matter, where particles dance to quantum rhythms, and expands to the grand stage of galaxies and time. Along the way, it explores the paradoxes that define existence: destruction as creation, slowness as stability, imperfection as the mother of beauty.

The Chernobyl power plant was the hope for energy in the Ukraine. Years after the 1986 meltdown, Ukraine is still feeling the effects of its radiation. The Nuclear Disaster at Chernobyl is part of the Disasters series. These moments in history recall the death and destruction caused by both natural and manmade disasters around the world.

As Andrew Brown shows in Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience, Joseph Rotblat's life--from an impoverished childhood in war-torn Warsaw to an active old age that brought honors and public recognition, including the Nobel Peace Prize--is a compelling human story in itself. What gives it added significance is Rotblat's single-minded dedication to peaceful causes, particularly his pursuit of nuclear disarmament.

What began as a scientific breakthrough ended as a blueprint for annihilation. In The Atom Unleashed, James Johnson unpacks the explosive history of nuclear discovery—from Einstein’s quiet equations to Chernobyl’s glowing ruins. This is not just the story of a bomb, but the story of how we turned theoretical physics into geopolitical theology, and how one equation rewrote the rules of power, fear, and what it means to be human. With precision and relentless clarity, JJ turns the nuclear story into a mirror—one that forces us to ask not just what we’ve done, but who we became while doing it.

Trashing the Planet is the one book you need to get a common-sense grasp on the contentious issues of environmentalism, where science and politics overlap and well-meaning idealism turns to counterproductive eco-terrorism. Dixy Lee Ray, a marine biologist and former chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, calls for environmentalists to regain a sense of perspective and not let their ardor carry them into the realm of “noble lies.”

El futuro de la energía nuclear.

Perhaps the first environmental engineer at Hanford, Melvin R. Adams spent 24 years on its 586 square miles of desert terrain. His thoughtful vignettes recall challenges and sites he worked on or found personally intriguing - like the 216-U-pond, contaminated with plutonium longer than any other place in the world.