Customer Reviews

A Case for Nuclear-Generated Electricity

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a wonderful book. It is written to high standards of objectivity and rigor. Yet the book is accessible to any layman who is able to read and understand a newspaper editorial page.

Unfortunately, this book is not likely to be read by those most in need of what he has to say. He addresses those who fear out-or-control technology and who yearn to return to nature. The problem is technology is necessary to sustain anything like the world's current population. Returning to nature would require the death of the bulk of the persons now living. The fact that a large part of the world's population is at or below child-bearing age requires that we grow just to avoid falling behind. This growth will require lots of new energy production. Wind and solar can help at the margins, but cannot provide the sort of growth that is needed. We will have to expand fossil fuel production, or nuclear energy, or both.

Fossil fuels will not run out. But as they become more scarce the price will rise until our growth is strangled, and we will feel impelled to engage in war to secure our supplies.

Heaberlin sees nuclear power as a way out of these dilemmas. Light water nuclear power plants are a mature technology which is provably less hazardous to our health than the fossil fuel alternatives.

Heaberlin provides a complete and balanced account of the problem of nuclear waste. He concludes it is completely managable using existing technology. The problem is one of politics, not technology.

What really burns Heaberlin is the fact that the Koyoto Treaty did not allow nuclear energy to be counted as environmentally clean, which in fact it is.

I have just touched on the issues Heaberlin covers. He provides an overwhelming case for renewing the nuclear option. Nuclear energy provides the only chance we have to avoid multiple catastrophies. Read this book and tremble at the irrationality of our current energy policies.

Any book on nuclear energy can potentially be a snooze, even to another engineer. However Scott holds the jargon to a minimum, and the breadth of his discourse on energy, technology and modern society is impressive. If you stick with him, he takes you on a fascinating journey of energy, ranging from how stars go nova and seed the cosmos to the impact of technology (or the lack thereof) on our quality of life and expectations for the near future. And he does it in layman's terms sprinkled with excellent, often humorous analogies and factoids. My copy is now liberally highlighted. If you've never had a physics or engineering course and want to `Know Nukes', this is a good place to start. For anyone involved professionally in communicating to the lay public about energy and it's role in modern society, this book is a must.

For a long time, I wasn't in favor of nuclear power. I'd grown up during Three Mile Island and the Chornobyl accidents. I was pretty secure in my feelings on the topic until I read this book!

Scott Heaberlin gives readers the context they need to really understand the power situation in the U.S. He delves into the need for energy and why can't we just go back to the good ol' days. He also discusses technology and its place in our world. He takes the topic of nuclear safety head-on, giving one of the better accounts of what happened at Three Mile Island and Chornobyl. He also discusses "green technologies" such as solar and wind power.

Heaberlin's writing style is conversational, but he backs up his opinions and ideas with scientific and social references. He has obviously done his homework.

Who should buy this book? People that live near a nuclear power reactor, folks with family or friends that work at a plant, as well as reporters and other media pros that need additional reference material.

As is my usual habit, I feel compelled to review the book before I have completed it. However, I think I have absorbed the core of the material, having read 2/3 of it at this point.

There is much that is excellent with this book and only a little I can find fault with. Let me dispense with the latter first and then discuss the good things.

I believe the author is a bit too informal in his style. I don't think prefacing sentences with "Well, ...", or making heavy use of the word "cool" to express enthusiasm, etc., really contributes to the book.

If you look beyond that, however, I believe the author does indeed do an excellent job of writing the material in a form that is easy and engaging to read by a layman.

The material gets a bit more serious and less conversational in the chapters on nuclear physics and reactor engineering, but I think they are written with a superb balance between technical soundness but avoidance of technical abstration beyond the level appropriate for the target reader.

I am an engineer in another field; I have never had a course in nuclear physics, and the material in chapters 4-5 was virtually all new to me, and yet I feel that just from the few hours I spend reading that material I have gained a good fundamental background (for a non-specialist) in this field.

My original motivation for reading the book was the fact that I am nearing retirement and have decided to take up the study of alternative energy in retirement.

In the 1970's I was adamantly opposed to nuclear power. However, when one looks at the alternatives we have today, including such factors as global warming, clearly nuclear power deserves a higher place on the list of future energy sources than it has had in the United States in the recent past.

I think probably its main weak point is its complexity. If our society devolves to a more primitive state due to such factors as incompetent leadership, international conflict, the threat of terrorism, and failure to create a new liquid fuel source to replace fossil fuels (since electricity is not a suitable form for some of our energy needs- transportation, chemicals, etc)in time to avoid disruption to our economy and society, then being able to continue to produce nuclear power may become a "recipe that we will have lost".

Hopefully, society won't proceed in that direction, and, if so, it seems likely that nuclear fission will play a crucial role in our energy supply for at least the next several centuries.

I have a lot more study to do on energy sources before I feel I have a more complete picture, but this book has been an incredible source for me to increase my understanding of this particular piece of the puzzle.

Mr. Heaberlin has written a very impressive book on nuclear energy production. First of all Mr. Heaberlin is obviously an expert - nuclear engineer by training with a wealth of experience in a range of energy related jobs. Second, his book provides a vast wealth of information about nuclear physics, nuclear energy, and nuclear energy production. Heaberlin covers just about all aspects of these areas.

Mr. Heaberlin writes for a general nonmathematical audience. He writes well and clearly. Still reading this work entails some time from the reader due to the vast quantity of concepts and information covered. The author effectively refutes the arguments against the use of nuclear energy. This reviewer would have liked to see more chemical symbols and chemical and mathematical equations to summarize more easily the material in this book. But the reviewer also understands the desire to reach a wider public.

This book gives a solid, detailed explanation of nuclear power, and compares it to other forms of power generation, including alternative and renewable sources. If you are looking for detailed information, and you are familiar with the subject, this is a good book. If you are not familiar the subject, you may want to start with a simpler book. It is certainly written for the layman, and includes little or no mathematics. Nevertheless, it contains detailed science based discussions.

Provides an excellent discussion of the basics of nuclear fission. Then it covers the primary objections

to nuclear power - cost, accident potential, waste storage, and theft of bomb material. He makes a well

thought out case for nuclear, especially since coal is our only other major fuel with sufficient reserves to support

our growing long term need for electric power.

Although the topic is highly technical, it is written in a manner that is very understandable to a newbie reader. He explains some very complicated technical aspects in a clear and simple way using very helpful illustrations. This book is a great primer on nuclear energy. Covers the topic top to bottom. Kudos to the author.

Paraphrasing...Our non-nuclear options are to find enough fossil fuels to poison the planet or kill each other fighting for what limited fossil fuels are left.

This book is written for anyone who is interested in knowing about Nuclear Energy. The author is very easy to understand and he talks as if he is in the same room with you. He allows you to jump around in the book and read chapters that interest you if the science part is too complicated. I highly recommend this book.