Atomic Accidents cover art

Atomic Accidents

A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters; From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima

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Atomic Accidents

By: James Mahaffey
Narrated by: Tom Weiner
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About this listen

From the moment radiation was discovered in the late nineteenth century, nuclear science has had a rich history of innovative scientific exploration and discovery, coupled with mistakes, accidents, and downright disasters.

Mahaffey, a long-time advocate of continued nuclear research and nuclear energy, looks at each incident in turn and analyzes what happened and why, often discovering where scientists went wrong when analyzing past meltdowns.

Every incident has lead to new facets in understanding about the mighty atom—and Mahaffey puts forth what the future should be for this final frontier of science that still holds so much promise.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2014 James Mahaffey (P)2014 Blackstone Audio History History & Philosophy Science Nuclear Engineering
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The walk-away-safe Molten Salt Reactor Experiment at Oak Ridge in the 60’s ran for almost four years without incident before funding was pulled because it wasn’t going to create jobs that would benefit Nixon. Now China is looking like the first to get this going. This was the USA dropping the ball that in retrospect will have dire consequences due to climate change. Instead, four decades of a massive MSR roll out would have dramatically mitigated Climate change to degrees solar, wind, geothermal and hydro never could our ever will…IMHO.

No Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) accidents !!!

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The reader is excellent. You'll soon learn to dread the blue flash. I have liatened to this book now four times and it still gives me the utter creeps.

Terrifying

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From the beginning of nuclear power fear of the mushroom cloud and China Syndrome have been a very real bogey man in the public mind. The secrecy of the initial nuclear program, invisible radiation dealing death, and poor understanding have lead to myth and legend masquerading as fact in public discussed on the topic. Into this morass comes Mahaffey, someone with not only decades of experience in the nuclear industry but the technical knowledge and understanding to cut through technical jargon from accident reports and tease out, in plain English, what happened. Well worth a listen for everyone!

Entertaining and genuinely informative

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Some of the facts in this book fill you with wonder as to just how we survived the last 50 years of the 20th century, really interesting and insightful

Entertainingly scary

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Mahaffey continues his first class writing with this highly scientific, entertaining and terrifying book. Enjoyed every minute of it.

Excellent book - entertaining, informative & scary

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I listened to this gem of a book from start to finish in about 4 days. I guess it's the equivalent of not.being able to put a book down. Informative, funny, harrowing, cautionary, and hopeful. A masterful narrative of the history of development of nuclear physics. Bravo.

Spectacularly informative and interesting.

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if you are a nuke need like me, you will enjoy the well presented details of this complex and truly tenements story. some of the detail from Mahaffey's related atomic books is repeated, but its worth hearing again!

known knowns to know

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It is staggering the breath, depth and details of the data presented. Covering the whole spectrum of nuclear science and application.

outstanding, interesting, scary, revealing

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Well written and covers a good breadth on the topic. Leaves one thinking we have been extraordinary lucky to get this far without worse!
The narration unfortunately lets this book down badly. The narrator has a great voice and is easy to understand but does not care for the topic or the content. It could almost be a robot speaking he is so flat in delivery.
Other than the off-colour comment about India this would be worth re-recoding with someone who cared more.

Fascinating topic, tragic narration.

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