| ATOMIC AMERICA How a Deadly Explosion and a Feared Admiral Changed the Course of Nuclear History Todd Tucker New York: Free Press, 2009 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-4165-4433-3 | ||||
| ISBN 1-4165-4433-X | 277pp. | HC/BWI | $26.00 | |
| Pages 18-19: | "Known by the public as a polite and calm counterweight to the bellicose George S. Patton in Europe, the strength of Bradley's emotion in the congressional hearings shocked everyone." |
| Dangling participle: S/B "Bradley shocked everyone in the congressional hearings with the strength of his emotion." |
| Page 40: | "A submarine powered by the atom could stay underwater , invisible, for months at a time, freed from its snorkel mast and detached from the atmosphere above, her patrols limited only by the duration of the crew." |
| Either follow the maritime tradition of referring to ships with the feminine pronoun, or don't. Also, it would be a good idea to replace "duration" with "endurance." The limit of mission length is not when the crew ceases to exist. |
| Page 47: | From Truman's speech: "The heat in her boilers will be created by the same force that heats the sun—the energy released by atomic fission..." |
| Truman was eloquent but inaccurate in confusing fission and fusion. |
| Page 62: | "As the only redbrick building on the Idaho site, Zinn's facility seemed almost to pay architectural tribute to Argonne's birthplace beneath a college football stadium." |
| Missing space: S/B "red brick". |
| Page 83: | Captain Dennis Wilkinson's message from the Nautilus: "UNDERWAY ON NUCLEAR POWER." |
| Missing space: S/B "UNDER WAY". (Note: Tucker does not make this mistake in his own writing.) |
| Page 107: | "Most reactor designs adhered to the 'one stuck rod' criteria which held that no single out-of-control rod, even if fully withdrawn from the core, could push the reactor to criticality." |
| Number: S/B "criterion". |
| Page 108: | "Soon a steady trickle of soldiers and sailors were making the long trip from Virginia to Idaho." |
| Number: S/B "was". |
| Page 134: | "During the course of all the HTRE tests, GE and the Air Force shot shocking amounts of contamination into the Idaho sky: an estimated total of 4.6 million curies. By way of comparison, the 'disaster' at Three Mile Island in 1979 yielded roughly half that." |
| Did TMI unleash 2.3 million curies? I find no evidence of that on-line. The NRC fact sheet says in its timeline for the cleanup that "Approximately 43,000 curies of krypton were vented from the reactor building" in July 1980. It's pure speculation, but I wonder if Tucker might have picked up the "2.3 million" number from another entry in the same timeline: "Aug. 1993 The processing of 2.23 million gallons accident-generated water was completed." |
| Page 208: | "On its way back to Fort Belvoir, a severe storm battered the vessel." |
| One wonders whether the severe storm battered Fort Belvoir as well. Dangling participle: S/B "the vessel was battered by a severe storm". Could it be that this resulted from a second editing pass to eliminate passive voice? |
| Page 215: | "And Rickover's perfectionism had resulted in an extraordinary safety record: zero nuclear accidents in the three decades since the launch of the Nautilus." |
| Overstated: S/B "no major nuclear accidents at sea". There have been many incidents in which something — a fire, a collision, mechanical failure or carelessness — or threatened to cause a reactor accident. Prompt action by well-trained crews prevented this. Contamination occurred a number of times. But the only fatality in the nuclear Navy program happened onshore, at the training center in West Milton, NY. There, in October 1959, an explosion and fire took place at a prototype reactor intended for the USS Triton (SSRN/SSN-586), killing one and seriously burning three others. (This is my Incident 082.) |
| Page 225: | "Driving up the hill to the visitors center, the plant comes into view..." |
| Dangling participle: S/B "As you drive up the hill to the visitors center". |
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