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Chapter 2 begins by outlining the origins and history of nuclear technology. It goes on to show how claims that nuclear fission is a low-carbon technology are false. Such claims rely on a variety of flaws, the first of which is the fact that most nuclear-emissions studies count greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions only at point of electricity use, rather than from the entire, 14-stage nuclear-fuel cycle. By thus “trimming the data” on nuclear-related GHG emissions, proponents falsely portray fission as a “green,” low-carbon technology. In reality, once one counts GHG emissions from all nuclear-fuel-cycle stages, fission has roughly the same GHG emissions as natural gas. Another flaw with the claim that nuclear GHG emissions are low is that it fails to take into account the much higher emissions that arise from using low-grade uranium ore to create reactor fuel. Third, those who claim that nuclear GHG emissions are low are inconsistent in that they fail to apply their own logic (that we should implement energy technologies with low GHG emissions) to electricity sources (such as wind and solar photovoltaic) that are much better GHG-emissions avoiders than is nuclear power. A fourth problem is the fact that reactors generate only about 25 percent more energy, in their lifetime, than is required, as input, to the 14 stages of their fuel cycle. A fifth flaw of those who propose using nuclear energy to address CC is their failure to take account of the fact that reactors massively increase risks of nuclear proliferation and terrorism. Using atomic energy to help combat CC worsens another, and equally catastrophic, energy problem: nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. A sixth flaw of using fission to address CC is failure to take account of the practical difficulties of tripling the number of global reactors. For all these reasons, the chapter shows that commercial atomic energy cannot address CC.

Nuclear power is an example of a technology that, in the absence of military and defense-related research, development, and procurement, would not have been developed at all. The demonstration of controlled nuclear fission at the University of Chicago’s Stagg Field on December 2, 1942 initiated a chain of events that led to the development of the atomic bomb and nuclear power. The design of the first nuclear power reactor, located at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, was adapted from nuclear reactors developed to power nuclear submarines. Premature commitment to light water reactor technology appears, in retrospect, to have been a source of failure of the nuclear power industry to realize the promise it appeared to have in the 1950s. It is possible that during the first half of the 21st century, nuclear power will be able to make a significant contribution to meeting the growth in demand for electric power; by substituting for carbon-based fuels, it may also contribute to slowing the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Chapter 1 begins by stressing the severity of climate change (CC) and showing how, contrary to popular belief, atomic energy is not a viable solution to CC. Many scientists and most market proponents agree that renewable energy and energy efficiencies are better options. The chapter also shows that government subsidies for oil and nuclear power are the result of flawed science, poor ethics, short-term thinking, and special-interest influence. The chapter has 7 sections, the first of which surveys four major components of the energy crisis. These are oil addiction, non-CC-related deaths from fossil-fuel pollution, nuclear-weapons proliferation, and catastrophic CC. The second section summarizes some of the powerful evidence for global CC. The third section uses historical, ahistorical, Rawlsian, and utilitarian ethical principles to show how developed nations, especially the US, are most responsible for human-caused CC. The fourth section shows why climate-change skeptics, such as “deniers” who doubt CC is real, and “delayers” who say that it should not yet be addressed, have no valid objections. Instead, they all err scientifically and ethically. The fifth section illustrates that all modern scientific methods—and scientific consensus since at least 1995—confirm the reality of global CC. Essentially all expert-scientific analyses published in refereed, scientific-professional journals confirm the reality of global CC. The sixth section of the chapter shows how fossil-fuel special interests have contributed to the continued CC debate largely by paying non-experts to deny or challenge CC. The seventh section of the chapter provides an outline of each chapter in the book, noting that this book makes use of both scientific and ethical analyses to show why nuclear proponents’ arguments err, why CC deniers are wrong, and how scientific-methodological understanding can advance sound energy policy—including conservation, renewable energy, and energy efficiencies.

Chapter 8 concludes with suggestions about how to promote cheaper, safer, more ethical, and less carbon-intensive energies, such as renewables, conservation, and energy efficiencies. It shows that people are misled not only about the energy costs of nuclear fission, but also about fission's climate-emissions costs (chapter 2), its financial costs (chapter 3), its safety costs (chapter 4), its equity and justice costs (chapter 5), and its opportunity costs—because nuclear investments take money away from cleaner, cheaper, safer, more equitable, and more abundant renewable-energy sources (chapter 6). The seemingly disparate interests of the market, citizens’ safety concerns, CC, ethical concerns, and common sense actually all dictate the same course of action: using renewable energy, conservation, and efficiency to address CC.

The story of nuclear fission begins in 1932, the annus mirabilis of physics. The subsequent flurry of research in many laboratories led to the production of radioactive forms of many elements, with many practical applications, particularly in medicine. Neutron research also led to a better understanding of the interactions between protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei. The discovery of nuclear fission, reported in 1939 by Lise Meitner and Robert Frisch, would have attracted little public attention as a purely scientific advance. But by opening the way to the use of nuclear energy for peaceful and military purposes, it had an impact on the course of human affairs out of all proportion to its contribution to fundamental physics. The most intensive experimental studies with neutrons were carried out in Rome, where Enrico Fermi and his team systematically bombarded the nuclei of nearly all the elements with slow neutrons. The results from uranium proved to be very puzzling because of the large number of radioactive species produced, each characterized by its half-life.

With the exception of nuclear submarines and some military applications, nuclear energy is only used to generate electricity. In the United States, uranium and plutonium are the fuels of choice, while some other countries, notably India, are developing thorium as the nuclear fuel. There are two main types of nuclear reactors—the pressurized water reactor (PWR) and the boiling water reactor (BWR). The PWR is the more common design, where the water used to generate steam and drive the turbine is isolated from the reactor core. In contrast, the water that moderates reactor heat in the BWR is also used to generate the steam, so this water must be contained to prevent radioactive contamination. In the United States, nuclear energy accounts for about 20% of electricity generation. Worldwide uranium reserves are about 6 million tonnes based on a price of $130/kg, but if this price constraint is relaxed, the supply of uranium is virtually unlimited since it is present in seawater at parts per billion levels.

This chapter focuses on addressing the problems faced by current climate policy and attempts to show how equitable it would be to increase commercial nuclear energy in an effort to help address climate change. This type of assessment, as is argued here, must not only focus on what is wrong with current climate policy but also on proposing solutions to current problems or ways on how to correct flawed policies. This chapter shows first that because atomic power has nearly the same CO₂-equivalent emissions as natural gas and because it is far more expensive than many renewable-energy technologies, it is not one of the more effective ways to address climate change. Next, it is explained that because of ethically flawed radiation-protection standards, using nuclear fission imposes environmental injustices on indigenous communities, workers, children, and members of future generations.

Not all the earth's energy comes from sunlight. A small fraction — one part in four or five thousand — comes from the earth's internal heat. This is the energy that shifts tectonic plates and that powers earthquakes and volcanoes. It heats rocks to temperatures high enough to change them to metamorphic rocks — limestone to marble, for example, and granite to schist. It drives the circulation of liquid iron in the earth's core, which makes the whole earth a magnet. It heats hot springs and geysers. This chapter discusses the following: atomic nuclei; the binding together of nuclear particles; nuclear fusion; and nuclear fission.

During this period the diagrams that convey the ideas of physics become more symbolic and less representational. Rutherford’s discovery of the atomic nucleus (1910), Niels Bohr’s model of the Hydrogen atom (1913), matter waves (1924), and the transition from an early universe with no Higgs field to a universe with a Higgs field (2012) are examples of this point. The photoelectric effect (1905), Brownian motion (1905), X-rays and crystals (1912), general relativity (1915), the expanding universe (1927-1929), and the global greenhouse effect (1988) remain accessible with a simple representational sketch.

On December 19, 1938, Otto Hahn wrote to Lise Meitner in Stockholm, asking her if she could propose some “fantastic explanation” for his and Fritz Strassmann’s finding of barium when bombarding uranium with neutrons. She and Otto Robert Frisch found such an explanation for what he called “nuclear fission” over the Christmas holidays, based on Gamow’s liquid-drop model of the nucleus. Bohr was astonished by this, but in 1936 he had speculated that the uranium nucleus would just explode. He, his son Erik, and his associate Léon Rosenfeld then took a ship to New York, arriving on January 16, 1939. Rosenfeld reported the discovery of fission that evening to the Princeton physics journal club. On January 26, physicists everywhere learned about this stunning discovery when Bohr and Fermi reported it at a conference in Washington, D.C. Physicists entered the New World of Nuclear Physics, taking Humanity with them.

Traces the series of Monte Carlo simulations run on ENIAC from their genesis in January 1947 exchanges between John von Neumann, Robert Richtmyer, and Stanislaw Ulam through the completion of detailed planning work for the initial batch of calculations in December 1947. Close attention to successive drafts illuminates the process by which John and Klara von Neumann worked with Adele Goldstine to transform the former’s outline plan of computation into a fully developed flow diagram documenting the flow of control and manipulation of data for a program written in the new style.

Nuclear energy is one of the most significant sources of low carbon energy in use in the power sector today. In 2013, nuclear energy represented roughly 11% of the global electricity supply, with growth projected to occur in China, India, and Russia (International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], n.d.a; NEA, n.d.). As a stable source of electricity, nuclear energy can be a stand-alone, base-load form of electricity or complement more variable forms of low carbon energy, like wind and solar power. Among the energy technologies considered here, nuclear energy is complex not only for the science behind it, but also for its societal, environmental, and economic dimensions.This chapter explores the rapid rise of French nuclear energy in the civilian power sector. It considers what a national energy strategy looks like under conditions of high concern about energy supply security when limited domestic energy resources appear to exist. The case reveals that centralized planning with complex and equally centralized technology can be quite conducive to rapid change. However, continued public acceptance, especially for nuclear energy, matters in the durability of such a pathway. France is a traditional and currently global leader in nuclear energy, ranking the highest among countries for its share of domestic electricity derived from nuclear power at 76% of total electricity in 2015 (IAEA, n.d.b). France is highly ranked for the size of its nuclear reactor fleet and amount of nuclear generation, second only to the United States. In 2016, this nation of 67 million people and economy of $2.7 trillion had 58 nuclear power reactors (CIA, n.d.; IAEA, n.d.b). Due to the level of nuclear energy in its power mix, France has some of the lowest carbon emissions per person for electricity (IEA, 2016a). France is also one of the largest net exporters of electricity in Europe, with 61.7 TWh exported (Réseau de Transport d’électricité [RTE], 2016), producing roughly $3.3 billion in annual revenue (World Nuclear Association [WNA], n.d). This European country has the largest reprocessing capacity for spent fuel, with roughly 17% of its electricity powered from recycled fuel (WNA, n.d.).

The first of our seven elements, protactinium, was one of the many elements correctly predicted by Mendeleev even in his early publications. This is not true of the famous 1896 paper, where Mendeleev used incorrect values for both thorium (118) and uranium (116). A mere two years later, in 1871, Mendeleev corrected both of these values and indicated a missing element between thorium and uranium. But Mendeleev did not just indicate the presence of a missing element; he added the following brief paragraph in which he ventured to make more specific predictions: . . . Between thorium and uranium in this series we can further expect an element with an atomic weight of about 235. This element should form a highest oxide R 2 O5, like Nb and Ta to which it should be analogous. Perhaps in the minerals which contain these elements a certain amount of weak acid formed from this metal will also be found. . . . The modern atomic weight for eka-tantalum or protactinium is in fact 229.2. Mendeleev was somewhat unlucky regarding this case since he was not to know that protactinium is a member of only five “pair reversals” in the entire periodic table. This situation occurs when two elements need to be reversed, contrary to their atomic weights, in order to classify them correctly. The most clear-cut case of this effect was that of tellurium and iodine, as discussed in chapters 1 and 2. It was not until the work of Moseley in 1914 that a clear understanding of the problem was obtained. As Moseley showed, the more correct ordering principle for the elements is atomic number and not atomic weight. The justification for placing tellurium before iodine, as demanded by their chemical properties, is that tellurium has a lower atomic number. Returning to protactinium, it appears that Mendeleev’s brief predictions were broadly fulfilled since the element does indeed show an analogy with tantalum in forming Pa2 O5 as its highest and most stable oxide.

As soon as Metropolis had completed the initial configuration of ENIAC for the new programming method, and before it was working properly, Klara von Neumann arrived to help. She had taken the leading role in converting the flow diagrams into program code, and together they worked around the clock for several weeks to get both program and machine into a usable state and to shuffle tens of thousands of cards in and out of it during Monte Carlo simulation of each exploding fission bomb. This chapter integrates the narrative of this initial “run,” of and a second batch of calculations carried out in late-1948 with analysis of the structure of the program itself. It finishes with an exploration of further Monte Carlo work run on ENIAC, including reactor simulations, simulation of uranium-hydride bombs, and in 1950 simulation of the “Super” concept for a hydrogen weapon.