Nuclear reactor licensing is now a mammoth exercise in fulfilling regulations, providing safety information, and negotiating regulator feedback. Back in 1948 there was next to nothing. Walter Zinn was just establishing his new Argonne laboratory at a DuPage site outside Chicago. He had messily wrested control of most nuclear power (as distinct from the predominant focus on bombs) experimentation. . .
You’re a scientist. You’re not an actor or singer. Can you imagine a time when tourists come to gawk at you? Well, British physicist Terence Price recounts his initial days, in the late 1940s, at Harwell in the English countryside: Construction continued apace. Harwell was becoming a showplace for VIPs, so gardeners from Kew were drafted in to clear up as each area was finished. There. . .
One of the rousing aspects of researching the nuclear power pioneers is discovering how many of them were fascinating, fascinating as professionals and fascinating as people. Christopher Hinton, one of the duo that launched England’s brief supremacy of the global nuclear power sector, intrigues especially. He was a workplace tyrant who was nonetheless passionate about his staff, passionate. . .
The death from acute radioactivity of Canadian physicist Louis Slotin after an accident at Los Alamos on May 21, 1946 is well known and I don’t include it in my book because it has nothing to do with nuclear power as such (other than being a cautionary tale known by everyone in the nuclear power field). Slotin was a plutonium bomb expert bar none and had helped assembly the first nuke at. . .