Book List: Uranium, by Tom Zoellner

Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World, by Tom Zoellner
Viking, the Penguin Group, 2009
293 pages, plus Acknowledgments, Notes on Sources, and Index. No photos
Library: 546.431 ZOE

Description
The stability of our world rests on a substance that is unstable at the core. This is the fundamental paradox of uranium, the strongest element the earth can yield and one whose story is a fascinating window into the valor, greed, genius, and folly of humanity.

Uranium is a riveting journey to the heart of this eerie mineral. It takes us from slave camps in Africa to desert mesas, war councils, smugglers' routes, doomsday cults, jungle mines, and secret enrichment plants on five continents, in a narrative that is equal parts history, investigative journalism, and nonfiction thriller.

Throughout its six-hundred-year arc across history, uranium has behaved like a character from a Greek tragedy, changing its face almost as quickly as it sheds neutrons. First a nuisance to miners in the Middle Ages, then an inspiration to novelists and a boon to medicine, later a devastating weapon at the end of World War II, and eventually a polluter, a killer, a money waster, an enabler of failed states, and an excuse for a war with Iraq, it is now both the potential deliverer of Armageddon and a possible last defense against global warming.

Tom Zoellner has written a gripping, up-to-date biography of this yellow dirt that will shape the future, for better or worse. This is an indispensable volume for lovers of history and science, as well as those who want to read a thoroughly engrossing profile of the most deadly material in the earth's crust.

Tom Zoellner is the author of The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire, named a 2006 Notable Book by the American Library Association.

Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Scalding Fruit
2. Beginnings
3. The Bargain
4. Apocalypse
5. Two Rushes
6. The Rainbow Serpent
7. Instability
8. Renaissance
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes on Sources
Index

A history of nuclear power plants, pt 1

After World War II, scientists desired to use nuclear power for "good" rather than for "evil" (or "military purposes" if you prefer).

The United States attempted to keep their knowledge of nuclear power to themselves, but were defeated by a variety of spies for Russia, who were soon able to acquir and send the technology to their masters in that country.

In the United States, reactor research was conducted by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, primarily at:

-- Oak Ridge, Tennessee
-- Hanford Site, Columbia River, Washington State
-- Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois.

We will begin with the US Atomic Energy Commissioni in our next entry in this series, and then follow that with the Argonne National Laboratory.

Henri Becquerel - discoverer of radioactivity

Antoine Henri Becquerel (15 December 1852 – 25 August 1908) was a physicist, Nobel laureate, and the discoverer of radioactivity along with Marie Curie and Pierre Curie. (The Curies had read of Becquerel's discoveries and expanded upon them.) All three won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Biography
Early life
Becquerel was born in Paris into a family which of scientists. He studied science at the École Polytechnique and engineering at the École des Ponts et Chaussées. In 1890 he married Louise Désirée Lorieux.

Career
In 1892, Becquerel became the third member of his family to occupy the physics chair at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle. In 1894, he became chief engineer in the Department of Bridges and Highways.

In 1896, while investigating phosphorescence in uranium salts, Becquerel accidentally discovered radioactivity. Investigating the work of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, Becquerel wrapped a fluorescent substance, potassium uranyl sulfate, in photographic plates and black material in preparation for an experiment requiring bright sunlight. However, prior to actually performing the experiment, Becquerel found that the photographic plates had become exposed, showing the image of the substance. This discovery led Becquerel to investigate the spontaneous emission of nuclear radiation.

Describing his method to the French Academy of Sciences on 24 January 1896, he said:

One wraps a Lumière photographic plate with a bromide emulsion in two sheets of very thick black paper, such that the plate does not become clouded upon being exposed to the sun for a day. One places on the sheet of paper, on the outside, a slab of the phosphorescent substance, and one exposes the whole to the sun for several hours. When one then develops the photographic plate, one recognizes that the silhouette of the phosphorescent substance appears in black on the negative. If one places between the phosphorescent substance and the paper a piece of money or a metal screen pierced with a cut-out design, one sees the image of these objects appear on the negative. … One must conclude from these experiments that the phosphorescent substance in question emits rays which pass through the opaque paper and reduces silver salts.

In 1903, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre and Marie Curie "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity".

Honours and awards
In 1908, the year of his death, Becquerel was elected Permanent Secretary of the Académie des Sciences. He died at the age of 55 in Le Croisic.

The SI unit for radioactivity, the becquerel (Bq), is named after him. There is a crater called Becquerel on the Moon and also one on Mars.

He also received the following awards besides the Nobel Prize for Physics (1903):
Rumford Medal (1900)
Helmholtz Medal (1901)
Barnard Medal (1905)

Definition of nuclear physics

Before there could be nuclear physics, there had to be physics, so lets start by giving a definition of physics from Wikipedia:

Physics (from Ancient Greek: physis "nature") is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through space-time, as well as all related concepts, including energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.

Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines, perhaps the oldest through its inclusion of astronomy. Over the last two millennia, physics had been considered synonymous with philosophy, chemistry, and certain branches of mathematics and biology, but during the Scientific Revolution in the 16th century, it emerged to become a unique modern science in its own right. However, in some subject areas such as in mathematical physics and quantum chemistry, the boundaries of physics remain difficult to distinguish.

Physics is both significant and influential, in part because advances in its understanding have often translated into new technologies, but also because new ideas in physics often resonate with other sciences, mathematics, and philosophy. For example, advances in the understanding of electromagnetism or nuclear physics led directly to the development of new products which have dramatically transformed modern-day society, such as television, computers, domestic appliances, and nuclear weapons; advances in thermodynamics led to the development of motorized transport; and advances in mechanics inspired the development of calculus

What then is nuclear physics?

Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies the building blocks and interactions of atomic nuclei.

The most commonly known applications of nuclear physics are
--nuclear power
--nuclear weapons

Other applications are in the area of medicine
--nuclear medicine
--magnetic resonance imaging

Engineering
--materials engineering (ion implantation)

Archaeology
--radiocarbon dating

Manifesto

Nuclear physics for the layperson.

We will not focus on the science behind nuclear physics, but rather on the history of the discipline and its applications.

1. Scientists
2. Nuclear-powered vehicles
3. Nuclear power plants
4. Future use