| ATOMIC ACCIDENTS A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima James Mahaffey New York: Pegasus Books, January 2014 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-60598-492-6 | ||||
| ISBN-10 1-60598-492-2 | 442pp. | HC/FCI | $29.95 | |
| Page 12: | "All the radium-266 that may have been in existence when the Earth was assembled from interstellar debris quickly disappeared, in astronomical terms, as its half-life is only 1,600 years." |
| Incorrect atomic weight: S/B "radium-226". My thanks to G. Poirier of Ontario, Canada for pointing out in his Amazon customer review of this book the two atomic-weight errors. I would have missed them. (And he's reviewed an amazing number of interesting books.) |
| Page 30: | "Relentless journalism had made the public painfully aware of the dangers of the radium and its radiation output..." |
| Extra word: S/B "radium". |
| Page 41: | Note 31: "The bomb debris consisted of fuel that failed to fission, fission products, and various metals in the structure of the device, a portion of which were neutron-activated..." |
| Number error: S/B "portions of which". |
| Page 44: | "Not only was the nuclear reactor invented, prototyped, powered up, and operated for three months, but a huge reservation was built in Washington State so that several reactors could be run 24 hours a day at high power, experimental reactors were built and operated in Tennessee and Illinois, massive plutonium and uranium purification plants were built and run, and risky physics experiments were conducted in New Mexico, all without a single fatal accident or even a radiation injury." |
| My information is that on 2 September 1944, a chemical explosion and the resulting formation of hydrofluoric acid killed Peter Bragg and Douglas Meigs and injured 3 others at ORNL. But if the author means only radiation fatalities or injuries, he's right. |
| Page 48: | "The metal reactor has more uranium in it, but it is extremely compact." |
| Word choice: Based on context, S/B "less". |
| Page 56: | "The model Y-1561 bomb, while successful, left much to be desired, and work was underway to increase its efficiency..." |
| Missing space: S/B "under way". |
| Page 58: | "...and a BF3 chamber indicating the neutron count visually..." |
| May be official designation; otherwise: S/B "BF3 chamber" to reflect the chemical formula. |
| Page 64: | "...and it would be performed using the same ball of delta-phase plutonium that had killed Daghlian." |
| Terminology: to this point, the fact that plutonium occurs in phases, which greatly affect its material properties, has not been explained. |
| Page 75: | "Nuclear rockets capable of sending a fully equipped colony to Mars in one shot were designed." |
| This is a bit of a stretch. Concepts may have existed (they certainly existed in Wernher von Braun's mind), but not a complete design for such a rocket, chemical or nuclear. |
| Page 94: | "The gamma radiation beaming through the top of ZEEP went through the physicists, through the roof, reflected off the cloud cover, and back through the ceiling at NRX." |
| Is this hyperbole? If the radiation was not stopped by the bodies of the physicists or the roof, why would it reflect off clouds? |
| Page 112: | "Experimental projects, trying new and previously unheard-of ways to build atomic piles, were underway in Illinois..." |
| Missing space: S/B "under way". |
| Page 117: | "At Argonne, the 52 kilograms of bomb-grade uranium was fabricated into 179 stainless-steel fuel rods..." |
| Number error: S/B "were fabricated". |
| Pages 122-3: | By some opinions, the most bizarre adventure in fission development in the 1950s was not the nuclear-powered tractor wheel hub, the plutonium-fueled coffee maker, or even the atomic land mine. No, the prize for the most money thrown at the least likely application probably belongs to the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program, or the ANP." |
| Some of these are even real. But not the nuclear-powered personal computer touted by Electronic Design in its April issue. |
| Page 124: | "On its way out, the expanding gases spin a turbine..." |
| Number error: S/B "On their way out". |
| Page 150: | "An operator, [...] turned on two valves to spray some air into the two pencil tanks to stir it up and make sure that the acid and the uranyl nitrate were thoroughly mixed." |
| Number error: S/B "to stir them up". |
| Page 158: | "At this point any remaining credibility is blown away, as the men are shown hauling the graphite reactor out of the engine room." |
| OK, this is arguable. But in a science-fiction film which assumes faster-than-light travel and instantaneous communication, it is not completely improbable that power sources better than fission or even fusion could be postulated. |
| Page 192: | "Never was a serious sodium leakage encountered." |
| Is this overconfident? |
| Page 212: | "This last-minute improvement was not noted on the prints approved of by the AEC." |
| Extra word: S/B "approved". |
| Page 226: | "To this date, Monja has managed to generate power and put it on the grid for one hour." |
| Spelling: S/B "Monju". |
| Page 279: | "The New Scientist, aware of the stale claim by The Aetherious Society, proclaimed..." |
| Spelling: S/B "Aetherius". |
| Page 283: | "The tanks contained all the undesirable fission products, including cobalt-60, strontium-90, and cesium-167, along with..." |
| Incorrect atomic weight: S/B "cesium-137". |
| Page 358: | "...so the world is protected from fission products in the reactor by a single barrier, a round, concrete lid, eight feet thick, held by gravity in the reactor room floor." |
| Terminology: S/B "by gravity to the reactor room floor". (But even that seems doubtful, per the diagram, unless the areas of darker shading are meant to be part of this lid.) |
| Page 361: | "Rector No. 1 was completed and came online in 1977, followed by No. 2 in 1978, No. 3 in 1981, and No. 4 in 1983. No. 5 and 6 were still under construction in 1986." |
| Number error: S/B "Nos. 5 and 6". |
| Page 374: | "Most of the exposed uranium has been washed into the ocean long ago." |
| Verb tense: S/B "had been". (Arguable) |
| Page 375: | "In the deepest recesses of the destroyed reactor in a field of heavy mixed radiation, a new form of black fungus has found it a nice place to live." |
| Extra word: S/B "has found a nice place". |
| Page 398: | "The hydrogen and radioactive steam proceeded [...] out the exhaust air ducts on the fourth floor of the Unit 4 reactor building, where it collected at the ceiling and awaited an ignition spark." |
| Number error: S/B "where they collected". |
| Page 400: | "With four nuclear power plants in a direct line of the tsunami waves following the Tohoku earthquake, what was it specifically about Fukushima I that caused it to be destroyed that made it different from other reactors?" |
| Redundant phrases: S/B one or the other. |
| Page 402: | "Unit I at Fukushima I [...] had a lesser heat load to manage using the same Mark I containment structure that Units I and 3 had." |
| Numbering: S/B "Units 2 and 3". |
| Page 407: | "It had to be the only one difference between the development setup in our shop and the operational installation in the power plant." |
| Redundant wording: S/B "the only difference". |
| Page 407: | "The room was a good replica of the Plant Hatch electronics bay..." |
| Word order: S/B "Hatch Plant". |
| Page 409: | "Seeing this as a good sign, the United States and eventually the world eventually stopped experimenting with different reactor concepts and settled on Rickover's submarine unit as a standard for how nuclear power should be applied to the need for reliable, clean power." (Also, I would say "nuclear fission".) |
| Redundant word: S/B "eventually the world". |
| Page 410: | "The other radical idea for nuclear power, such as the liquid-metal-cooled fast breeder..." |
| Unneeded words: S/B "the". |
| Page 410: | "...and the entire, multi-billion-dollar machine is in irreversible jeopardy." |
| Oxymoron: S/B "jeopardy". A foregone conclusion ("irreversible") precludes jeopardy, which implies a chance of escape. |
| Page 412: | "The first plunge into the Liquid Metal Fuel Reactors (LMFR) was LAMPRE..." |
| Extra word: S/B "Liquid Metal Fuel Reactors". |
| Page 413: | "The next big step was the Direct Contact Reactor (DCR) at Oak Ridge, where the Aircraft Reactor Experiment (ARE) was underway." |
| Missing space: S/B "under way". |
| Page 424: | "Being sealed up in a submarine hull underwater, it could be abandoned in place without causing environmental harm." |
| Bad idea. Very bad idea. |
| Page 433: | Although The Aetherius Society is mentioned in connection with the Kyshtym Disaster (on pp. 278-9), it does not appear in the Index." |
| I think any person or organization important enough to mention in the text should be indexed. (I did not check for Index errors, and this is the only one I am aware of.) |
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