Atomic Awakening - 2021 Book #6

I finished my sixth book toward my goal of 50 for 2021 – Atomic Awakening: A New Look at the History and Future of Nuclear Power by James Mahaffey.

According to Amazon, it was published in October 2010 and has a print length of 369 pages. I started reading it on Sunday, January 31, and finished it on Saturday, February 13.

Two weeks. For one book. Yikes. I can’t keep that up if I’m going to get to 50.

The past two weeks showed me the real challenges of keeping a book a week pace. Nothing bad happened. It just doesn’t take much for life to come together in a way that robs me of the several weekly hours I need to keep up my reading pace. Oh well.

What Atomic Awakening is about

It pretty much tracks exactly with the subtitle. It’s all about the history of nuclear power. It starts with a detailed look into the origins of nuclear physics, walks through atomic bomb development, and closes with the trials and tribulations of nuclear power development and deployment.

Why did I choose Atomic Awakening?

Each morning, I get an email with ebook deals from BookBub. Most deals are $1 to $4. If a book strikes anywhere near my interest, I buy it. So I have a digital library stocked with stuff that generally wasn’t otherwise on my reading list.

Atomic Awakening was one of those books. Amazon says I bought it on December 30, 2016. So it’s been sitting in my library for a shade over four years at this point.

I’m keenly interested in the energy transition. For the past 6 years, for my day job I’ve provided data-driven market intelligence in the oil & gas domain. And as an engineer, I love the innovation that’s helping us diversify, decentralize, and decarbonize our energy infrastructure. Now seemed like a great time to dive into Atomic Awakening.

Why you would like Atomic Awakening

If you like reading about famous scientists and experiments, you would like Atomic Awakening. If you want to learn more about one of the few technologies that can replace hydrocarbons for baseload electricity generation, you would like Atomic Awakening. If you like reading about the darker history of nuclear accidents, you would like Atomic Awakening.

Why you would not like Atomic Awakening

If you want to dive deeply into a specific piece of the nuclear story – nuclear accidents, atomic bombs, quantum science, etc – you probably would not like Atomic Awakening. You would probably prefer a narrower investigation of your topic of interest. If you want coverage of climate change, you probably would not like Atomic Awakening. It’s more about the technology and not about the environment. If you want to learn about the economics of nuclear power, you probably would not like Atomic Awakening. Again, it’s a technical story that basically doesn’t explore the economics angle.

Specific passages that captured my attention

Atomic Awakening has been the least quotable of the books I’ve read so far this year. It really is a standard historical walk through of nuclear technology. While it’s interesting and kept my attention, there aren’t many powerful excerpts that leave a lasting impression.

I said the book was light on economics, but I’ll actually start with an economics anecdote that struck me. In today’s world of crazy low interest rates combined with a flood of available capital, we may be better positioned for a nuclear power expansion than ever before.

Strauss had been at least partially correct when he said that nuclear power would be “too cheap to meter.” The cost of the fuel to burn, including its mining, processing, storage, and transportation, was practically zero. A great deal of power comes from a tiny amount of nuclear fuel. The problem is the up-front capital cost of the plant itself. A coal plant is cheap to build and expensive to run. A nuclear plant is cheap to run and expensive to build. From a total expense standpoint, it is a lot better to have the expense spread out over the life of the plant as fuel costs than to pay interest on the initial build for the life of the plant. Economics is what killed the expansion, not the [Three Mile Island] meltdown.

Mahaffey is a really good writer. Here’s an eye-catching description of a 1942 experiment by Enrico Fermi, demonstrating how a nuclear reactor could release enough neutrons to convert inert uranium-238 into powerful plutonium-239.

Fermi’s demonstration of controlled, sustained chain-reacting fission in uranium is, however, the most strangely flawless experiment on record. It was run with 42 witnesses in attendance, dressed in business suits, who watched the world’s first operating nuclear reactor do exactly as it was supposed to do. There was no ambiguous evidence, no competing team in another country, no contradictory data, no fudged numbers, and there was no reason to run it a second time to confirm anything. It was simply perfect.

Finally, here’s the closest Mahaffey comes to true activism. He rightfully points out the ongoing health hazards of non-nuclear power sources are far, far in excess of what we have suffered from nuclear technologies. Nuclear accidents bring a unique psychological toll which drives a disproportionate amount of fear, explaining many of its political hurdles.

There were 55 recorded deaths from radiation exposure, and many large, non-fatal radiation doses [from the Chernobyl catastrophe]. The radioactive cloud dropped fallout all over Europe, from Turkey to Norway, Ireland to Slovenia. Occasional forest fires near Chernobyl stir up radioactive dust and dose Europe again. The Soviet Union suffered the discrediting of its technical prowess, and it collapsed in 1989. To be fair, it must be noted that 171,000 people died in China in 1975 when the Banqiao Dam failed, 18,000 people died in Bhopal, India, in 1984 when a valve was left open in a Union Carbide pesticides plant, and in London, England, 12,000 people died in a frightfully thick fog from sulfurous coal burning in 1952. The psychology impact of the Chernobyl catastrophe was, however, profound, despite the relatively low casualty level.

My overall impression of Atomic Awakening

Atomic Awakening was very much right down the middle of the fairway. It says what it is – a history of nuclear power. And it delivers.

Like I mentioned, Mahaffey is a really good writer. I wasn’t expecting that part. It seems like a deal where you trade away good writing to get technical competence in return. Not so here. Mahaffey supplies both.

With that said, you need a pretty deep interest in nuclear power to enjoy Atomic Awakening. I see how it could be overkill for someone with a casual interest. But, if you feel under-informed around nuclear technologies for power generation, I certainly recommend the book.

On Sunday, I started reading The Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler. So far, it’s really good. I’ll post my review of that one shortly.

Thanks again for stopping by.