Nuclear Power

by Walter C. Patterson

Where will the world gets its energy in the years to come? Many nations are looking to uranium... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140219307
• Release Date: June 1976
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 5.0" x 1.0" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

A FAUSTIAN BARGAIN

If you want to know more about nuclear power generation, this is the book to start with. It's not currently in print, but this is one area of hi-tech that has gone nowhere much in the last 20 years, and I doubt that the text requires a lot of updating, so perhaps we can look forward to a reprint before too long. Whatever your attitude to this particular energy source, Walt Patterson is concerned to inform not preach or proselytise. He makes no bones about his own position as a committed opponent, but this is still a book for people seeking information, although I suppose enthusiasts for this baleful technology will find less in it than the antis will to reinforce their outlook. Patterson has an admirable gift for lucid explanation of the formidable complexities, and as well as running through the various types of reactor (some of which e.g. Candu, or boiling water reactors, are probably not widely familiar to the lay readership), he intersperses his account with a succession of the more notable mishaps like the loss of the submarine Thresher or the unforgettable story of the heroic and self-sacrificing Louis Slotin, a true saint of modern times. What a reprint would presumably stress a bit more would be the RMBK model that made such an impression from Chernobyl. There is a funny side to most things and I can remember some hectic commentaries from the boffins at the time. The Chernobyl type was a hybrid -- graphite core but water-cooled. The votaries of the PWR (water core, water-cooled) blamed the graphite core, the aficionados of the AGR (graphite core, carbon dioxide gas coolant) found the problem to be the water cooling, as Patterson took the opportunity to point out. Experts are very necessary, but when their conclusions are blatantly determined by what they prefer to think they are only prostituting their expertise. Where the debate is at today is hard to judge because the issue has gone quiet. It can't stay quiet presumably, but when it starts up again there will at least be a clearer perception of the economics of the industry. It seems incredible now, but nuclear power was originally touted as 'too cheap to meter'. Those of us who suspected Enronesque ingenuity in presenting the figures used to have to flog through the worthy but unbelievably turgid writings of Colin Sweet and Amory Lovins to get to the bottom of the matter. However thanks to the privatisation of the electricity supply in Britain the whole dismal economy with the truth became plain for all to see if they were willing to see it. So it's not a bargain in that sense. The bargain it reminds me of is the bargain Faust struck with Mephistopheles, only this time many who were not and never would have been party to it are embroiled in the consequences.