Our modern energy picture shows a strong tilt to a dominant reactor design, the light water reactor. Its history tends to be portrayed as a logical progression centered around Admiral Hyman Rickover, who, so goes the narrative, so resoundingly demonstrated the design’s efficacy with nuclear submarines, that when he built the world’s first fully commercial power reactor at. . .

Perhaps anyone at the center of history exhibits interesting characteristics when subjected to full scrutiny. Many of the reactor pioneers are fascinating beyond their official histories. England’s John Cockcroft was an extraordinary person but decidedly “Delphic,” as in “deliberately obscure or ambiguous.” Brian Austin, biographer of Basil Schonland, captured one. . .

Another intriguing moment. John Cockcroft was a lynchpin of the British reactor efforts from wartime until the early 60s. Ben Lewis ditto for the Canadian reactor efforts (although his influence waned by the 60s). I spotted a handwritten letter from the latter to the former that suggests to me that Cockcroft was fishing for a successor (something his biographers make plain) and that Lewis. . .

When we look back at early American reactor development, we wonder why the Atomic Energy Commission set up a huge reactor testing station in remote Idaho. Surely that’s overkill? Well, here’s Walter Zinn’s trusty lieutenant reporting in early 1954 about unloading fuel rods (a 5-week job) from the triumphant EBR-I breeder in Idaho: The rod cutting business was continually plagued. . .

My book will cover the famous incident whereby a Japanese fishing vessel, the Lucky Dragon, became engulfed in fallout from the Castle Bravo thermonuclear tests at Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954. That incident reverberated for years, resulting in, among other things, the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty nearly a decade later. What struck me recently, when doing a kind-of-stocktake of references. . .

On March 23, 1954, Walter Zinn held a farewell lunch at his laboratory for Alfonso Tammaro, who had been Zinn’s local Atomic Energy Commission manager in Chicago. My impression is that there had many tussles been Zinn, the scientist, and Tammaro, an engineer, but that there was also plenty of respect and amity. I found this letter to Alfonso: Dear Al, I have made just a few of these paper. . .

In the Idaho desert in early March, 1954, Hyman Rickover’s STR Mark I, a land-based prototype for a submarine nuclear power reactor, is being tested by engineers from Argonne. Rickover hates Argonne (and Argonne’s Zinn hates Rickover; Zinn’s name isn’t even on the distribution list below, although his trusted lieutenant John West is) and will soon expel those engineers. . .

Lewis Strauss, American nuclear kingpin in the mid-1950s, was devious and smart, but also often notably clumsy. Here a couple of reporters describe how he extemporized, to terrible effect, after a March 1954 thermonuclear test went badly: President Eisenhower and AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss held a joint press conference in an attempt to put the March 1 blast into proper perspective. … A REPORTER:. . .

In the 1950s, a Harwell scientist, Brian Jay, wrote a few books describing English nuclear efforts. They were a mix of propaganda and technical elucidation, but remain useful. Here he is describing a feature of future breeder reactors that he, and the other pioneers, marveled at: We remarked earlier that the small size of a fast reactor core means that the heat flux (that is, the rate at which. . .

It’s been three months since I’ve posted. The gap has been simple: I’m drafting new words at the moment, putting chapters down, and during this phase, no discards or leftovers pop up. Everything I deal with, I need, so nothing for this blog… Well, now I’m sorting out data and items of interest do reveal themselves. Take this book, Nuclear Power from Underseas to. . .