| IN MORTAL HANDS A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age Stephanie Cooke New York: Bloomsbury, 2009 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-59691-17-3 | ||||
| ISBN-10 1-59691-617-6 | 487pp. | HC | $27.00 | |
| Page 7: | "...Jim said I should explain the quandary: it was not just that Iraq had abused the system to acquire nuclear weapons but that here was one more example of a breach of faith in the people and organizations most counted on to contain the spread of nuclear weapons." | |
| This overstates the problem: I am aware of no public evidence that Iraq has yet acquired nuclear weapons. Given Saddam Hussein's testimony in custody, even the sincerity of his efforts to acquire them seems doubtful. |
| Page 11: | "When unstable nuclei disintegrate, they give off alpha particles, beta particles, neutrons, gamma rays, and often a lot of heat, depending on their properties." | |
| You have to read this carefully to understand that it doesn't mean every unstable nucleus gives off all these particles. But the worse mistake is the claim that nuclear reactions give off heat. They produce heat, but do so because the energies they emit interact with surrounding matter, causing its particles to move faster. |
| Page 11: | "Although some scientists claim that a little radiation is not harmful—and may even be beneficial—it has long been regarded as detrimental to health, in any amount." | |
| Evidently Ms. Cooke has forgotten about the background radiation to which we are constantly exposed, which evolution has enabled us to tolerate. Of course, evolution too has long been regarded as merely a bogus claim by some people. Evidently Ms. Cooke is one of those people. (See page 32.) |
| Page 14: | "Imagine building an auto industry if gas could be used to make a weapon like the one dropped on Hiroshima, or if the oil running through an engine could be removed and chemically separated to produce plutonium." | |
| Imprecise terminology: S/B "gasoline". And despite what Ms. Cooke thinks of this analogy, it is a poor one because petroleum products do not possess the potency of uranium or plutonium. They would not be so widely available if they did. |
| Page 23: | "But for project managers pushing for big-ticket programs, secrecy and ambiguity had certain advantages. For one thing, it kept political leaders conveniently ignorant of the complexities and therefore more pliable when it came to approving budget requests." | |
| Number error: S/B "they kept". |
| Page 26: | "...a mutual acquaintance from Liverpool, a well-off half-American woman named Elspeth, had moved to Santa Fe..." | |
| How does one become "half-American"? Recite half the oath of allegiance? |
| Page 32: | "This is similar to what Thomas Henry Huxley told English audiences in the late nineteenth century when Darwinism had been foisted upon them..." | |
| Generally, "foist" implies some sort of trick. Should we infer from this that Ms. Cooke doubts evolution? "He's trying to foist a farmer's boy upon us! D'ye want a bastard as a king?"1 |
| Page 45: | "Guided by Oppenheimer, Lilienthal and the other consultants started that day to learn facts about the Manhattan Project. They became not only bearers of secrets but their keepers as well." | |
| How can one be the bearer of a secret but not its keeper? Surely these roles are closely linked — except in the case of espionage, which I doubt Ms. Cooke means to imply here. |
| Page 47: | "After finishing the final paragraphs, Lilienthal declared, 'This, gentlemen, is a recommendation of a plan for security in a world of atomic energy.' At the other end of the long table, Acheson removed his glasses. In a warm, low tone he said, 'This is a brilliant and a profound document.' " | |
| How does Ms. Cooke know what Acheson did with his glasses at this moment? She cites Lilienthal's journal, which evidently provides a very detailed transcript of the meeting. |
| Page 55: | "That promise was not kept, for two basic reasons: the panel put forth proposals that made the U.S. position at the UN look hypocritical, and its assessment of the horrors of nuclear war were so frightening that the government decided it was best to keep them from the public." | |
| Number error: S/B "assessments" (or "was so frightening"). |
| Page 58: | "This infuriated the scientists in Canada, who wondered why they had bothered to cross the ocean and suspected that more than wartime security arrangements were at stake." | |
| Number error: S/B "was at stake". |
| Page 113: | "The atmosphere would be described, aptly, as 'euphoric,' an adjective defined by Webster's Dictionary as meaning 'exagggerated . . . without an obvious cause' ." | |
| That's not what "euphoric" means. Merriam-Webster online defines it as "a feeling of well-being or elation.". |
| Page 139: | "But when it came time to requesting funds for a larger reactor, G3, he thought even Guillaumat would have to admit the truth." | |
| Verb tense: S/B "to request". |
| Page 143: | "Finally, years later, came the two commercial-scale breeders, Phoenix and Superphoenix, after the legendary bird that rose from the ashes." | |
| Spelling: S/B "Phenix and Superphenix". And the mythical Phoenix bird is noteworthy because it was said to arise from its own ashes, not just "from the ashes." |
| Page 149: | "The UKAEA would earn a tidy sum of one million pounds (about two million dollars) for the heavy water..." | |
| The author should specify what year for the exchange rate. If it was 1959, I think the British pound was worth more than two U.S. dollars. |
| Page 151: | "So he assigned two assistants to pour through American chemical publications." | |
| Vocabulary: S/B "pore through". (This may be a dictation error.) |
| Page 154: | "Now, too, within the Direction des applications militaires (DAM), the CEA's military division..." | |
| Capitalization: S/B "Direction des Applications Militaires. |
| Page 156: | "Of course, the Israelis had none of Finkelstein's je m'em foutisme (who cares? attitude)." | |
| Misplaced parenthesis: S/B "(who cares?) attitude". |
| Page 166: | "The panic felt by soldiers was completely denied; they were portrayed as invincible warriors with skins as thick as lead." | |
| Confused simile: How thick is lead? Perhaps S/B "as dense as lead". |
| Pages 180-181: | "Mobile launchers would keep the enemy constantly off-balance, while bombers with vertical takeoff capability meant they could be airborne from nearly anywhere." | |
| This is a historical error: There were no operational VTOL bombers during the Kennedy administration, and no American operational VTOL aircraft of any type. |
| Page 187: | "Then director of the joint staff of the Joint Chiefs, Wheeler's daily responsibility was the rank and file..." | |
| Dangling participle: S/B "Wheeler had daily responsibility for". |
| Page 190: | "Before the speech, the President briefed Democratic and Republican congressional leaders, the secretary of state, and an intelligence officer..." | |
| The President briefed an intelligence officer? Shouldn't it have been the other way 'round? |
| Page 191: | "Just before delivering his speech, Kennedy authorized the United States armed forces around the world to go to Defense Condition Three (DEFCON-3), the nation's third highest military alert—DEFCON-1 means war." | |
| Not precisely: DEFCON-1 is the state of maximum readiness. It would be declared in the expectation of an imminent attack. |
| Page 198: | "People in Spain who witnessed a B-52 crash and explode, then drop its payload of thermonuclear weapons on their land..." | |
| Somewhat misleading: The B-52 collided in midair with its KC-135 refueling plane. S/B "collide and explode in midair" or similar. |
| Page 204: | "Finally, the air force began paying attention to the litany of complaints..." | |
| Capitalization: S/B "Air Force". (Also on pages 163, 202, 203 and 209) |
| Page 205: | "Johnson warned against preemptive strikes, saying they would result in 'very and long-lasting political costs'." | |
| Missing word: S/B "very steep and long-lasting". |
| Page 212: | "The world is paying a price for the fear that sat quietly and pervasively in most of us over the cold war years." | |
| Capitalization: S/B "Cold War" (also on page 199). This refers to a specific period in modern history. |
| Page 218: | "One of Seaborg's pet projects was known as Project Ploughshare." | |
| Spelling: S/B "Project Plowshare". |
| Page 241: | "Moreover, the Israelis were producing deuterium and lithium, evidence they had been at work on thermonuclear, or boosted fission weapons." | |
| Missing comma: S/B "thermonuclear, or boosted fission, weapons". |
| Page 247: | "Bhabha was a member of the Parsi group..." | |
| Chronological whiplash: On page 244, the author told us that Bhabha had died eight years previously". |
| Page 274: | "Then, the following year, a group of Pakistanis was arrested in Texas..." | |
| Redundant: S/B "The following year". |
| Page 281: | "The NRC began two separate probes and in November 1981 fined Cincinnati Gas and Electric two hundred thousand dollars—the largest fine in the agency's history—for a faulty quality assurance program." | |
| I think Ms. Cooke has forgotten about Davis-Besse (though she mentions it on page 389) and its $33.5 million penalty — which I remember as $545 million. Or it could be she means the largest fine to that date. |
| Page 286: | Ornstein quote: "What happened was the nonsafety equipment bailed them out—the control rod drive pump . . . it gave them the water they needed..." | |
| Terminology: what is a "control rod drive pump"? It has to be hydraulic, so how can it deliver cooling water if its function is to drive the control rods with hydraulic fluid? |
| Page 299: | "Evidence surfaced that a number of TMI shift supervisors had cheated on their senior reactor operator examinations as far back as August 1979." | |
| Since this concerns the Three Mile Island accident, which took place March 1979, this is a date error. But I have no idea what the date should be. |
| Page 325: | "Four hours after her birth, the baby died, one of the first victims of the next generation claimed by the fire-breathing dragon at Chernobyl." | |
| Seems to me that "dragon" is a better metaphor than Vesuvius (the title of this chapter). |
| Page 334: | "Pantex had always striven to be a model citizen. With an annual operating budget at the time of more than ninety million dollars, it contributed to about 25 percent of the local economy through its payroll, taxes, and purchases." | |
| Extra word: S/B "contributed about 25 percent". |
| Page 336: | "By the end of 1986, Gorbachev's first full year as leader..." | |
| S/B "first full calendar year". Gorbachev came to power in March 1985. |
| Page 383: | "In 2007, six nuclear missiles were accidentally flown across America, and it took thirty-six hours before anyone noticed." | |
| Misleading: these were missiles, but the problem was that half of them (six) carried live M80-1 warheads instead of the training warheads they were supposed to carry. (See here.) |
| Page 384: | "In response, Congress in December 2007 approved more than twenty billion dollars in long guarantees..." | |
| Probable dictation error: S/B "loan guarantees". |
| Page 388: | "But Kanoh could not be there to receive it because five days before the meeting started, on August 29, 2002, Japan's Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), stunned the nation by announcing that for at least a decade TEPCO had been falsifying records of safety inspections and cracks at its nuclear power plants. All seventeen of its boiling-water reactors were shut down for inspection and repair as a result. TEPCO's president, Nobuya Minami, was later forced to resign, and the utility eventually admitted to two hundred occasions over more than two decades between 1977 and 2002, involving the submission of false technical data to authorities." | |
| The commas after "(NISA)" and "2002" are not needed. |
| Page 397: | "There was one real change: the technology they were talking about was far more complicated than the old one, it had not been developed, and developing it would cost the earth." | |
| Capitalization: S/B "would cost the Earth". |
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