Splitting the atom
Jan. 15th, 2024 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiBook Review: Uranium - War, Energy and the Rock That Shaped the World, by Tom Zoellner
One of the earliest books on my to-read list, from when I joined GoodReads in 2014. This is an interesting history of the metal, from centuries as an unwanted by-product of other mining in places such as Joachimsthal (now in Czechia), through the beginnings of the atomic era heralded by the Curies (when radioactivity was good for you!) and the Manhattan Project, to modern concerns about proliferation and distribution.
Zoellner's explanation of nuclear fission isn't particularly clear; it focuses on the ellipsoidal shape of the uranium nucleus and electromagnetism, without really explaining that the strong nuclear force is generally dominant. That's because this is not a hard science book. However I think a bit more effort could have gone into this area. The requirement for enrichment and isotope separation is gone into in enough detail, so this seems like a poor omission.
During World War 2, the Americans acquired much of the world's then known supply of uranium from Shinkolobwe, now in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, by sleight of hand of the Belgian company mining the site. At the time, the US believed that no other nation would be able to build similar weapons. But quickly after World War 2, uranium was found in several locations across the globe, including in the US itself, where a mining rush ensued and later, many people involved found their health deteriorating. A fair chunk of Zoellner's book looks at mining in various locations, including the US and Australia. He also looks at militarised nuclear ambitions beyond the UN permanent five, whether weapons programmes have been acknowledged or not, and the weird economy for civilian nuclear power, where many nations (with variably secure environments) have power plants but are dependent on a few countries for supply of the raw fuel.
Zoellner doesn't really look at all at the considerations of waste management, and although there aren't hard monetary values placed on it, I feel the relative economic merits of nuclear and renewable power have shifted significantly since the book was written, fifteen years ago now. But it's still an interesting book that goes wide but not particularly deep on an unusual subject.
One of the earliest books on my to-read list, from when I joined GoodReads in 2014. This is an interesting history of the metal, from centuries as an unwanted by-product of other mining in places such as Joachimsthal (now in Czechia), through the beginnings of the atomic era heralded by the Curies (when radioactivity was good for you!) and the Manhattan Project, to modern concerns about proliferation and distribution.
Zoellner's explanation of nuclear fission isn't particularly clear; it focuses on the ellipsoidal shape of the uranium nucleus and electromagnetism, without really explaining that the strong nuclear force is generally dominant. That's because this is not a hard science book. However I think a bit more effort could have gone into this area. The requirement for enrichment and isotope separation is gone into in enough detail, so this seems like a poor omission.
During World War 2, the Americans acquired much of the world's then known supply of uranium from Shinkolobwe, now in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, by sleight of hand of the Belgian company mining the site. At the time, the US believed that no other nation would be able to build similar weapons. But quickly after World War 2, uranium was found in several locations across the globe, including in the US itself, where a mining rush ensued and later, many people involved found their health deteriorating. A fair chunk of Zoellner's book looks at mining in various locations, including the US and Australia. He also looks at militarised nuclear ambitions beyond the UN permanent five, whether weapons programmes have been acknowledged or not, and the weird economy for civilian nuclear power, where many nations (with variably secure environments) have power plants but are dependent on a few countries for supply of the raw fuel.
Zoellner doesn't really look at all at the considerations of waste management, and although there aren't hard monetary values placed on it, I feel the relative economic merits of nuclear and renewable power have shifted significantly since the book was written, fifteen years ago now. But it's still an interesting book that goes wide but not particularly deep on an unusual subject.