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I guess this is Actinides Month, because I picked up both Jeremy Bernstein's "Plutonium: A history Of The World's Most Dangerous Element" and Tom Zoellner's "Uranium: War, Energy and the Rock That Shaped The World" at the same time. Additionally, the "plates" referred to are not plates at all (at least in the paperback edition) but ordinary grayscale pictures reproduced in the standard manner, which means that the Periodic Table fails to get the glossy insert status it deserves because you'll end up flipping back and forth to it dozens of times throughout the course of the story.Despite all the detail presented of weapons manufacture, little is presented regarding the working of breeder reactors, which is half the picture. The main attraction for "Plutonium" is simply that much less has been written about it - so little, that this may be the only book (so far) about the element intended for a wide audience.Jeremy's book (Cornell University Press) reads like a story written by a professor with little writing experience outside of academia so he's kind of out of his element when it comes to spinning a tale and general storycraft. For the most part, the book reads like a collection of very interesting historical bits glued together with a whole lot of digressions, so many that that after a few chapters of this you're dying for a timeline. The author was also surprisingly unaware that Pu (Pu-244) is available in nature as a trace element, so one could say that it's not completely synthetic - just darn close. Points for mentioning the temporary shutdown of the Hanford reactor in Washington due to a lucky strike from a Japanese Fu-Go fire balloon, Hanford's impact on the environment, some empirical opinions (from the Los Alamos scientists themselves) regarding plutonium's toxicity, and that fact that you can actually purchase a few milligrams of this from Oak Ridge if you've got the paperwork.
Even if you have no interest in science related books, this is a must-read one. The author/witness describes how the knowledge of fussion became known and how the scientists have perfected the bombs. It is a good reading that do not require previous readings.
Purchased on 07/30/2008, account charged but still haven't received book. Stationed overseas so I figured it might take a little longer but I sent an e-mail requesting shipping date and still have no status on my order.
The author focuses on the historical discovery, and race to find and learn about Plutonium, and its applications/hazards. I am a fan of high end engineering and science topics. Nuclear engineering and achievements are one of those topics I enjoy learning about. The end of the book has an excellent while brief take on Hanford and Rocky Flats locations and proliferation concerns. A whole nother book about those topics should be done just due to the stockpiles of plutonium around the word, and the impacts it continues to have.The debunking of "Reactor grade" and "Weapons grade" plutonium in the book is also a excellent item that brings up serious proliferation concerns.
I have read many of the books on the Manhatten project but I really like this one because it focused in on one part plutonium. It made sense why each of these groups were so similar chemically. Also I found it interesting that the bomb was not as easy to make as I had read earlier. Second it gave you a history of each of the scientists involved in the discoveries.I never really realized how important it is to the scientific community that they stay well published. I also didn't know that we stopped sharing the secrets with the British when the war ended. I found it hard to believe that scientists in Germany war like Heisenburg didn't think that the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was made out of plutonium or that the US would even make reactors for its production. If you really want the whole story read The Making of the Atomic Bomb. I will say that plutonium has some weird properties and states.
It was a good thing that the allies kept all the information out of the technical journals. I liked learning about all the scientists and where they had come from and what part no matter how small yet was very important to understanding the development of this element.It was somewhat of a technical read but I took many physics and chemistry classes in college so the terms were not unfamiliar to me even in that section near the end where he is explaining the lantanides and actinides radii and valance electrons. I was surprised after what Klaus Fuchs told the Russians all the details in that report near the end and it still took the Russians 4 years to create the bomb. The more I learn about this story the more interesting it gets.I would recommend this to any science savy person who wants to know more about the history of the scienctists who worked on creating Plutonium.
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