Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters; From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima

4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars | 1,765 ratings

Price: 16.58

Last update: 08-17-2024


About this item

From the moment radiation was discovered in the late nineteenth century, nuclear science has had a rich history of innovative scientific exploration and discovery, coupled with mistakes, accidents, and downright disasters.

Mahaffey, a long-time advocate of continued nuclear research and nuclear energy, looks at each incident in turn and analyzes what happened and why, often discovering where scientists went wrong when analyzing past meltdowns.

Every incident has lead to new facets in understanding about the mighty atom—and Mahaffey puts forth what the future should be for this final frontier of science that still holds so much promise.


Top reviews from the United States

lynnabeana
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and Accessible to the Lay Reader
Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2020
I originally picked this up because I wanted to learn about the disasters that occurred at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, but Jim Mahaffey's excellent Atomic Accidents is so much more than just a list of nuclear power plant meltdowns. It's a comprehensive history of the relationship between humans and the practical applications - both military and commercial - of nuclear physics. It wasn't exactly what I wanted at first, but it turned out to be an inspired setup for a non-scientist like me because the knowledge I gleaned from the stories of the Curies, the Radium Girls, and the early experiments conducted at Los Alamos was absolutely necessary to my understanding of the later events. The science is challenging, but Mahaffey breaks it up into bite-sized pieces interspersed with diagrams, anecdotes, and entertaining digressions, so I never felt as if I were reading a textbook. The rewards for my attention (and frequent re-reading to make sure I'd gotten it right) were the author's edge-of-your-seat, blow-by-blow accounts of the accidents cited in the title. Mahaffey's engaging style and compelling storytelling, combined with his ability to render complex scientific and engineering concepts into layman's terms, make this book a gem.

As a sidenote, it's ironic that a book about nuclear accidents would convince me that nuclear power is a safe alternative, but that's exactly what has happened. I grew up not far from Three Mile Island, and I was a foreign exchange student in Europe when Chernobyl-4 exploded, so I've absorbed a lot of background noise from the people around me (also non-scientists.) This book has gone a long way to correcting my preconceived, highly inaccurate ideas, and I highly recommend it!
John Purcell
5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping, well-written and extraordinarily well researched
Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2014
Really amazing book! The author seems to have a profound in-depth knowledge of the subject, and I've come away from this book with a very different view of nuclear technology to what I had to start with, even though I studied some of this stuff for my degree. I got lost in some of the details, but the sheer fascination of finding out what's going to go wrong in the next accident kept me glued to the page. It's also written with a really good sense of humour.

It seems like the danger with nuclear technology is not what happens in the case of most accidents, but what happens when you combine nuclear technology with low budgets, dodgy political systems and high pressure. I had this view of fissile material as being the sort of thing that kills you if you even look at it, but now I have a vision of it being comparatively inert and handled safely with surprisingly minimal precautions ... it's just that if you accidentally collect too much of it together in the wrong shape, for example by swilling it into a bucket, there's a blue flash and you're dead within three days .... and this seems to have happened surprisingly often!

I still wouldn't want to live next to a nuclear reactor ... call it irrational, but those things still scare the bejesus out of me. Sounds like we really could do with pursuing all those forms of nuclear reactor, e.g. molten thorium salts, which for commercial and historical reasons didn't get far off the drawing board.

Unfortunately for me, I was physically present at the site of an experimental reactor in Hungary that turned out to have been leaking radioactive iodine when I was there. Seems like I'm not in much danger, but if we could not have nuclear power plants leaking radioactive iodine, that would be even nicer ....
Old Geezer
4.0 out of 5 stars Worth reading, but has a few defects
Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2016
As one who pushes nuclear energy, Mahaffey shot himself in the foot. The recurring theme of the many accidents is that the backup system failed. The backup diesel generator didn't start, the backup pumps were offline, the control rods jammed, etc., etc. The reader is left with the feeling that nuclear energy is unreliable, which is certainly not Mahaffey's intention.

Mahaffey entirely left out the biggest nuclear disaster ever to happen in this country---the sinking of the nuclear submarine Thresher, with all 129 men on board. The problem started at 1,000 foot depth with a leaking seawater pump that was used to cool the reactor. The connections had been brazed rather than welded. As water was pouring into the submarine, the captain tried the backup procedure---an emergency ascent to the surface. But the backup failed. He couldn't blow the water out of the ballast tanks because the air valves had iced shut. The submarine imploded and sank in 8,000 feet of water.

It makes no sense why Mahaffey should ignore this major disaster. For anyone who wants further information, start with the Wikipedia coverage of the incident.

Although Mahaffey covers the Fukushima disaster, he left out what is probably the most important fact----the release of millions of Curies of cesium 137 into the surrounding seawater. Cesium 137 has a half life of 30 years, which is just right for causing serious problems in our oceans for years to come. (My own estimate, which I can't completely verify, is that the amount of cesium 137 released into the ocean in this disaster exceeds by orders of magnitude all of this isotope ever released in all of the the bomb testing ever performed.) Again, I have to ask why Mahaffey ignored this release.

Nonetheless, the book is worth reading. He has a style laced with some sarcastic humor that makes a complex subject understandable. He has enough background to speak authoritatively on most aspects of nuclear energy. As far as I can tell, the facts that he did state are correct, and he covers each accident in great detail.

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