As a non-nuclear-specialist, trying to recreate or even imagine the history of reactors always slams against the technical aspects of this ferociously technical technology. As a layperson, I would have imagined that by 1957, one and a half decades into the technology’s history, everything would have been known about the most essential ingredient in a reactor, the fissile fuel. Not so, it. . .

People imagine that the second half of the twentieth century is easily explored, that everything is on the Internet, maybe even in an LLM. Not so. In America’s National Archives, I came across an almost trivial letter from Walter Zinn, head of Argonne laboratory, to an Atomic Energy Commission official: The following paragraphs provide the information in your January 24 letter and the. . .

I’m being less than precise with the heading of this post for the post features the 1948 U.S. Reactor Safety Commission editing its own words, and I’m skating over the fact that the RSC had no power, was just an advisory commission (but, in my defense, it had enormous cachet at a time of little expertise). Anyway, my last post featured Argonne’s head, Walter Zinn, petitioning. . .

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. . .

Christopher Hinton, England’s nuclear engineering pioneer, made only a handful of visits to America. His most controversial was in October 1953, when he delivered what he called “a lecture” to a conference (organized by the influential National Industrial Conference Board) in New York titled “Atomic energy developments in Great Britain.” No doubt it struck the U.S. . .

History humbles. I’m constantly amazed by how little I know about the subject of my book, nuclear power. In taking notes about radioactive waste, I came across the following paragraph from a book on the topic by prolific historian Jacob Hamblin: One of the topics of discussion was the oceanographers’ idea to create a new laboratory under the auspices of the IAEA. This laboratory would study. . .

In the second year of nuclear development in the United Kingdom, in 1947, John Cockcroft ran a “Crazy Committee.” I make mention of this in my book, just a footnote to stress how far-ranging early reactor design thinking stretched. I’m sure someone can do a better job of combing the UK archives about those crazies but I only ended up with a few design minutes. For some reason. . .