Customer Reviews

The First Nuclear Era: The Life and Times of a Technological Fixer

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As a young nuclear engineer, I was enchanted by Alvin Weinberg's autobiography, The First Nuclear Era. He took me through a very personal history of concepts I have studied, and struck many chords by recounting such things as the day the term "breeder reactor" was thought up. Weinberg discusses pioneering neutron transport, working with the Manhattan Project, the origins of the national labs, how he influenced today's dominance of light-water reactors, and a history of the various goings on that brought nuclear power to where it is today.

He remains philosophical throughout the narrative, interjecting his personal views on what went right and what went wrong, who was hard to work with and who did it right. As he journeys through his days as a researcher, a national lab director, a think tanker, and a committee member of the national academies, he discusses encounters with the leaders of the anti-nuclear movement (Nader, Lovins) and provides insight into how he dealt with the issues society raised about nuclear power, going so far as to call it a Faustian bargain (a deal with the devil).

Weinberg makes clear the excitement and optimism he and his peers originally had about nuclear power -- they thought they had provided humanity with limitless, cheap, and emission-free energy! Well aware of the shortfalls (proliferation and waste in particular), he offers succinct discussions of each issue and his personal (and convincing!) perspectives.

The discussions of the atomic bomb, national defense, and the end of war as we know it are very stimulating. After so many years in the APS, AAAS, NAS, NAE, RNAS, etc., he offers exciting perspectives into these topics that are not so commonly discussed since the Cold War ended.

Weinberg's incredible life is well documented in this book, and his optimism that nuclear technology will rise again is inspiring on a very personal level for me (a reactor designer). It's like he's a guiding light, speaking to me about my passions from the grave. An eloquent writer, his book is not necessarily targeted towards engineers like myself, but would be very worthwhile to anyone interested in nuclear enterprise, or energy in general. I extremely highly recommend this to my peers and highly recommend it to everyone else.

The book is not at all in the class of Richard Rhodes' Pulitzer-winning "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", but it's not meant to be. It's a memoir of a man was active in all phases of atomic energy, from engineering to government bureaucracy. (He only spent a year in Washington D.C., and was happy to leave.) Most interesting for me was the explanation of why the U.S. adopted the pressurized light water design for reactors, as opposed to the several other designs that the author describes, among them reactors that used a molten salt coolant. Answer: Admiral Rickover wanted it that way for his submarines, and once it was demonstrated to work, everybody else followed that design since it seemed to work well.

There is increasing interest--post Fukushima--in the early decisions made to adopt various reactor designs in various countries, particularly the U.S. The whole panorama of the physics, economics and politics around these decisions, starting with the Manhattan project thru the next few decades is recorded here in a very accessible way by one of the greats of the field--Alvin Weiner. Alvin was Eugene Wigner's right hand man in designing reactors for the production of plutonium during the second world war Manhattan project. He was crucial in admiral Rickover's seclection of the light water reactor (LWR) for use in submarines, but preferred other fuel cycles for civilian power plant applications for their greater inherent safety, fewer long-lived waste products and lower proliferation risk. It's truly amazing how Weinberg and his merry band of scientists and engineers could design, fabricate, test, generate power with novel reactor types in a matter of months at Oak Ridge in the 50's. This occurred with Alvin's favorite reactor--the molten salt thorium reactor. This was known as Alvin's "3P" or three-pipe reactor, the only one of its type ever developed. It was nicknamed "3P" because of its simplicity. The reactor basically consisted of "three pipes". There were no complex reactor fuel assemblies, as the fission occurred in the molten salt which circulated through a heat exchanger to generate steam. For many reasons, Weinberg felt the Molten Salt "Breeder" would inevitably inaugurate the "Second Nuclear Era." He forecasted the end of the First Nuclear Era while he was still at Oak Ridge (for reasons of safety, stability and proliferation risk) and for this reason was fired by Nixon in 1974. He was soon hired by President Ford to be head of ERDA. His account of this latter period of his career is also of great historical interest. His writing style is very lucid and crisp, and the pages turn quickly. There is only one equation in the whole book.

FYI, I bought this book used via Amazon, and found this wonderful hand-written message on the first page: "To Mr. Olana Strunk, February 6, 2001, who rescued Ms. Weinberg and me on the Solway Road when our car conked out at 10 pm. Best of luck in your program to become an environmental engineer. With best wishes, Alvin Weinberg." This quote reminds me that Alvin stated in his book (copywright 1994) that he felt, way back in the '70's, that wide adoption of nuclear power was inevitable due to the global warming problem associated with fossil fuel combustion. A true prophet for our times!