Ancillary reading Number Gazillion … I came across Super Bomb: Organizational Conflict and the Development of the Hydrogen Bomb by accident but knew immediately I needed to read it. The decision by President Truman in January 1950 to develop an American thermonuclear H-bomb has only a glancing impact in my book, but I’d previously read plenty about that intriguing landmark policy step. . .
I’m not an engineer but I’m guessing that a perennially fascinating and relevant debate is how to test a risky new product. In working through the 616-page blur of technical matter in Fluid Fuel Reactors, I came across a pithy, cogent discussion of that issue in relation to a particularly exotic stream of reactor design. The words below get into too much detail for me to use in the. . .
In 2018, Addison-Wesley republished a massive Oak Ridge technical tome from 1958, Fluid Fuel Reactors, written by James Lane, a star engineer, and two others. I’d come across it many times but it is technically dense and, until 2018, its 616 pages were only available hardcopy. Where I live, that would have meant spending too long, for too little in all likelihood, in one of two public. . .