The first nuclear era
by Alvin Martin Weinberg · first published 1994
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The First Nuclear Era is Alvin Weinberg's autobiography, the memoirs of a most influential American nuclear engineer/physicist. These reminiscences date from the dawning of the nuclear age in the early 1940s to the present. It is the story of one notable scientist's life and times and a look back at one of humankind's most ambitious endeavors: the attempt to harness and safely distribute nuclear power. Weinberg has witnessed and played a major part in many of the defining scientific moments of his era. Here he describes his academic career at the University of Chicago, under the tutelage of N
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…and before we worried about ALARA. Furthermore, MSRE cannot to this day account for about half of their radioiodine inventory. Furthermore, Alvin Weinberg himself says in his 1990s autobiography, The First Nuclear Era (amazing read btw) that they were just piping radioactive gas into the forest nearby back then (or, wait, was that the aqueous homogeneous reactor? I forget, I left all my copies of that book at the office...).…
on “Safer Nuclear Reactors Are on the Way” ↗--Providing HN the details about Thorium that the Forbes article lacks-- tl;dr - Read Dr. Alvin Weinberg's book from the late 1990s. Amazon link here: http://www.amazon.com/First-Nuclear-Era-Times-Technological/... -Background- I discovered liquid fueled nuclear reactors, and the thorium subset thereof, as a consequence of the chemistry minor I undertook in grad school at Georgia Tech (my…
on “Thorium Reactors” ↗…AEC), which had decided to favor the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor (LMFBR). The Director of ORNL, Dr. Alvin Weinberg, pushed for the MSR, but was fired for his efforts 8. > 8. Pages 198 - 200, "The First Nuclear Era : The Life and Times of a Technological Fixer", by Alvin Martin Weinberg (1994). I've read a longer history of Molten Salt reactors that described the events referenced in the above quote. Evidently…
on “Why isn't differential dataflow more popular?” ↗