Since June 2017, I have published 344 intriguing (to me, at least) minor asides about my research into the history of nuclear power reactors. It’s now time for a change. I am close to publishing the first volume of a history trilogy, Reactor: A Global History of Nuclear Power. The
My interest is the “peaceful atom,” not nuclear weapons, but I’m eternally grateful for the deep nuke-related research of Alex Wellerstein. His recent newsletter, “The clouds of Hiroshima,” hammers home the obscene destruction wrought by the Americans to end World War II. In the newsletter, he dissects thirteen photos, from
I haven’t sent anything out about the history of nuclear power since mid-December. In the previous eight-and-a-half years, I consistently wrote a small piece every week or so, forty pieces a year, 342 in total. I had no grand aim. I just needed an outlet in which to jot down
In November 1957, staff at the Atomic Energy Commission, penned a report to the commissioners entitled “Status of Research and Development on Reactor Pressure Tubes.” If any decent-sized reactor was cooled by a gas, it needed to be held under pressure, either in a big ultra-strong pressure vessel or in
David Wargowski, a retired scientist who also makes visual art out of early nuclear weapons history, has just pointed me to a fascinating short TV segment of Edward Murrow’s See It Now show (check out Wargowski’s screening on X). It’s a quasi reenactment, on December 2, 1952, of the very
In 1994, German engineer Willy Marth penned a 191-page history of a small 20 MWe breeder reactor at the Karlsruhe laboratory south of Strasbourg near the French border. This is now one of history’s almost forgotten footnotes. In my research, I came upon a number of such “obituaries,” all tinged
My book covers in some depth the (military) reactor fire at Windscale in rural England in October 1957. I won’t go into details here (you can read about it in Wikipedia or, better still, buy my book next year) but the hero of the day was undoubtedly Tom Tuohy, second-in-charge
Another fascinating topic given scant attention in my book is the uranium mining industry and its history. I just couldn’t fit it in and there are plenty of books to peruse if you’re interested. As background, of course, I knew that the United States sought to corner every last morsel
Of the five nations blessed by the World War II and postwar push for nuclear weapons to have a head start toward nuclear power, Canada was the only one never interested in atomic and hydrogen bombs. I’ve concluded the Canadians always desired the peaceful atom. Over the years, some historians
President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched nuclear power globally with his 1953 Atoms for Peace speech and subsequent initiatives but he was firmly one side of the “public power versus private power” debates that roiled American politics. As one author put it forty years ago: When dedicating the McNary Dam on