Atomic Awakening: A New Look At The History And Future Of Nuclear Power Paperback – October 15, 2010

Couldn’t put it down. Reads like a series of stories. Makes complex ideas easy to understand. Easy to get into. Great book for a long plane ride or two.

I got to hear a few tales of nuclear engineering from Dr. Mahaffey while working in the same building with him in the late 1990s, but this book proves those tidbits to have been only the tip of a vast iceberg of knowledge. The big question raised for me, personally, by this readable and fun book is how we can get Dr. Mahaffey writing about some additional subjects for our enjoyment! If he could write exciting science journalism like this about areas outside of his own science, then we could look forward to a whole stream of books the equal of this one.This book shines most in its descriptions of the great experimenters of nuclear physics. Unraveling the behavior of such tiny and difficult-to-observe components of the world as atoms and nuclear particles was a VERY hard problem, and Dr. Mahaffey is at his best when he is guiding the reader through a problem so that when the crucial moment arrives, and he describes the experiment that was performed to take our knowledge one step further, we get to both taste the excitement about what the outcome will be, and also savor the raw cleverness that the pioneers in nuclear engineering had to exercise in order to get matter to yield up its secrets and its structure.Beware that this book is strongest in its physics, but rather light on details when it comes to the actual design of a nuclear power plant. You will not, for example, receive a detailed understanding here of the exact cascade of minute-by-minute failures and misapprehensions that lead to the Three Mile Island incident -- and, consequently, the lessons drawn from such incidents are perhaps not as detailed as they could be. Dr. Mahaffey seems confident that nuclear power can be deployed safely, as indeed it seems to be today in countries like France, but the engineering student wanting to know the details of how this is accomplished, and thus to know where Dr. Mahaffey's confidence is placed, will have to look elsewhere.But for the reader of popular science accounts who wants to understand how we learned about radiation, developed the bomb, and then through stages came to harness the nuclear pile for the purposes of power, I can think of no better book. It is lucid, engaging, entertaining, and every tale is told with a twinkle in the author's eye as he often shares rare details about the actions and fates of the great nuclear physicists.Buy and read this book!

I have read 3 books by James Mahaffey on the subject of nuclear power, and like the other two this book did not disappoint. The author's writing style and Southern wit makes reading the subject matter a pleasure. Mahaffey is a nuclear physicist, but he does not talk over the head of the reader in any way. As was my intention I learned a lot about nuclear development and the discoveries thereof. The great detail of these Manhattan Project was very enlightening and informative. I highly recommend this book, and his other ones to anyone even remotely interested in learning about nuclear power and it's development. If he has any other books on this topic I will definitely read them. Thomas Calamusa

This is an excellent review and survey of nuclear energy in the United States. I don’t agree 100% with the authors conclusions but I agree with most of them. Nuclear Energy is fabulous in the case against it is bogus. Undoubtedly generated by a competitor like the big fossil fuel industry. nuclear could replace that industry 100% to the benefit of the planet and people who need energy for electricity and things like nuclear subs and air nuclear aircraft carriers. The Navy loves Nuclear and has made a 100% success of it. Not one injury or fatality from radiation and they started using this energy in 1955. Is that safe enough for you? France has been using nuclear power for about 50 years with total success and no carbon emissions. They sell nuclear electricity to Germany who run short because they panicked and shut down all the reactors after Fukushima. Then they found out later not a single person was injured or killed by the reactor breakdowns. Oops. America and the world will be on Nuclear someday and throw fossil fuel where we long - in the trashcan of history. The question is will we get a nuclear in time to save the planet from the worst of global warming? It will make COVID-19 look like a picnic by comparison. No water, then no food, then nations invading each other in search of sustenance for life. This total calamity will probably hit in countries depending on the Himalayas and there glaciers for water. These glaciers are going away fast.

I found this book exciting to read. Mahaffey takes the complex subject of Nuclear Physics and tells a fascinating story beginning in the 1700's and ending today.I couldn't put it down. All the great scientific names we learned in school are brought to life along with their atomic accomplishments and failures. Maxwell, Planck, J.J. Thompson, Curie, Einstein, Rutherford, Bohr, Fermi, Oppenheimer, and many more, all weaved into a somewhat chronological account that takes us into WWII and the Little Boy and Fat Man Atomic Bombs. Then to Admiral Richover and the Nuclear Submarine and how we got to where we are today in Nuclear Power.The Three Mile Island and Chernobyl disasters are enlightening fast-paced reads, and by the time you reach them toward the end of the book you have been educated in the fundamental workings of a nuclear reactor (without realizing it), and are able to follow along with the erupting emergency situations within those two reactors.Mahaffey candidly explains the risks taken and the accidents made by the nuclear industry throughout the book. He doesn't seem to sugar-coat the failures and disasters as they are all valuable learning experiences. He finally dedicates about a page and a half almost at the end of the book to make his claim for Nuclear Power.I encourage anyone who is interested in history, global warming, science, nuclear energy, nuclear physics, atomic bombs, radiation medicine, radiation poisoning, uranium, plutonium, or space travel to read this book. It is a lively, interesting, and educational read.I give Mahaffey Five Stars.