Best nuclear engineering books according to redditors
We found 77 Reddit comments discussing the best nuclear engineering books. We ranked the 33 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 77 Reddit comments discussing the best nuclear engineering books. We ranked the 33 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
I read about a guy who committed suicide by carrying a bit of radioactive material in his pocket for a while. Slow and painful death.
think it was in this book.
The reactor designs in use in the US all require enriched Uranium. According to the author of The Curve of Binding Energy, nuclear reactors in the US were intended to produce plutonium for sale to the US Government, with a price around $1,000,000 per KG of plu. When the US stopped buying privately produced plutonium, the bottom fell out of the market for nuclear power plants. This happened at about the same time that the movie China Syndrome came out, and Three Mile Island happened. It is far more convenient to blame treehuggers than cold hard economics.
Last time I looked up the stats, the US military owned about 100 tons of plutonium, about half in nuclear weapons. There were about 1700 tons of privately produced plutonium sitting around in casks scattered around the world.
Thorium as well as CANDU reactor designs would be far more useful as neither of them can produce plutonium. However the thorium designs have never gotten far, and CANDU comes from Canada and doesn't enrich large US corporations, so we'll never promote that either.
Such material can be stolen. Read The Curve of Binding Energy to see just how poorly guarded this stuff was when Philips (the princeton student) designed his bomb.
In that book McPhee describes finding one storage location where he could have cut through a chain link fence a couple of hundred yards from
a couple of sleepy guards, pried open a window with a faulty alarm, and found himself in a room filled with crates of enriched uranium. Shit was crazy.
Your post has too little context/content for anyone to give you particularly relevant or specific advice. You should list what you know already and what you’re trying to learn. I find it’s easiest to research a new subject when I have a concrete problem I’m trying to solve.
But anyway, I’m going to assume you studied up through single variable calculus and are reasonably motivated to put some effort in with your reading. Here are some books which you might enjoy, depending on your interests. All should be reasonably accessible (to, say, a sharp and motivated undergraduate), but they’ll all take some work:
(in no particular order)
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (wikipedia)
To Mock a Mockingbird (wikipedia)
Structure in Nature is a Strategy for Design
Geometry and the Imagination
Visual Group Theory (website)
The Little Schemer (website)
Visual Complex Analysis (website)
Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos (website)
Music, a Mathematical Offering (website)
QED
Mathematics and its History
The Nature and Growth of Modern Mathematics
Proofs from THE BOOK (wikipedia)
Concrete Mathematics (website, wikipedia)
The Symmetries of Things
Quantum Computing Since Democritus (website)
Solid Shape
On Numbers and Games (wikipedia)
Street-Fighting Mathematics (website)
But also, you’ll probably get more useful response somewhere else, e.g. /r/learnmath. (On /r/math you’re likely to attract downvotes with a question like this.)
You might enjoy:
https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/2mkmk0/a_compilation_of_useful_free_online_math_resources/
https://www.reddit.com/r/mathbooks/top/?sort=top&t=all
I was reading about these while on holiday (this is one of a series of 3 books that are quite interesting and look at the history of nuclear power, various accidents over the course of developing it and what the future might hold: https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Awakening-History-Future-Nuclear/dp/1605981273 ), and the US spent billions developing nuclear powered planes in 60's and they were wild. Basically take a regular nuclear reactor and remove all the thick and heavy concrete and lead shielding around (which is crazy heavy!), and you have a flying nuke that irradiates pretty much everything around it (better hope you don't live near an airfield one of these takes off from!). They even built a dedicated testing facility out in Georgia so they could figure out what affect radiation would have on various plane parts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Nuclear_Aircraft_Laboratory), which it turns out lots of plane parts didn't like massive doses of radiation, rubber in the tyres would turn solid, hydraulic fluid would turn to jelly, oh and the pilots were recommended to be older men who already had kids since even with a special 12 tonne shield between the reactor and the pilots they would still get some exposure.
safety protocols in fukushima were not dangerously lax.
read this, it is fantastic and not given to hype or hysteria:
http://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Accidents-Meltdowns-Disasters-Mountains/dp/1605984922
basically most nuclear disasters have happened when people decide to override the automated safety systems.
Some of the disasters they talked about are just mind-bendingly stupid. like the SM-1 plant incident. Some are complex and painful lessons learned such as the placement of sensors in early plants giving false information. Most modern plants that have had problems, however, had them because people thought they were smarter than the automated safety systems and over rode them.
It's not true of conventional reactors, but is true of fast reactors. Russia has several in production right now and is building more. The U.S. spent 30 years developing an advanced design called the Integral Fast Reactor, which was canceled by the Clinton administration just prior to completion. GE-Hitachi has a production-ready design based on the IFR, which they're attempting to sell to the U.K. and China.
About 99% of our nuclear waste, and essentially all the long-lived waste, is unfissioned uranium, plutonium, and other transuranics. Fast reactors burn all that up. All they leave is the fission products, which go back to the radioactivity of the original ore in a couple hundred years.
Sources are abundant, it's well-known nuclear physics. Here's a sampling:
Energy For Future Presidents (a book by a Berkeley physics professor)
BraveNewClimate
Wikipedia here and here
World Nuclear
Plentiful Energy (a book by lead engineers on the IFR project)
The IFR also does a good job with safety and proliferation issues. Liquid thorium reactors would have similar advantages but aren't as far along.
Loved it.
This one was good too:
https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Accidents-Meltdowns-Disasters-Mountains-ebook/dp/B00HVPI1IA/ref=mp_s_a_1_6?keywords=nuclear+incidents&qid=1564888260&s=gateway&sr=8-6
There was a time the US government wanted to build a harbor in the Aleutian islands of Alaska with atomic explosives. Needless to say that did not happen. There is a story about how the natives made them stop. https://www.amazon.com/Firecracker-Boys-H-Bombs-Environmental-Movement/dp/B00EFCW1GA
If he was honest he would have advocated for the working solutions regardless of left or right. Here's a great source for what works and how we can move forward.
Shapiro is too political to see a path forward.
Explaining anything quantum is always frustrating, because the logic behind it is completely alien to our brains, and you have to use a complex mathematical framework to explain it ... unless your name is Richard Feynman and you have God-like explaining powers.
Here's a book with transcripts of seminars that he gave explaining one of his theories named "quantum electrodynamics" - theory for which he was awarded a Nobel prize. The seminars were geared towards people who do not have a mathematics background, but are curious and still want to understand a bit more about quantum mechanics. And he nails it. I think that he uses only a single equation during all the seminars, and still he manages to pass the ideas behind his theory very well.
I'll try to explain the advantage of quantum computers without entering into the ... well ... quantum details. First thing, forget anything from the video that talks about "parallelization" and stuff like this. It's not technically incorrect, but it's not a good way to describe the advantages of a quantum computer.
Let us take the classical example of finding the prime factors of a number (which she talks about a bit at the end of the video). This problem has a series of mathematical properties which we can exploit to solve it. The thing is, the ways that we can use these exploits are limited by the tools that we have at hand - in this case, which operations a computer can do.
In the case of this factorization, the toolset of classical computers is not good enough to do this efficiently - there's a key component (named Fourier transform) of this exploit that's reeeeally expensive to be done using a classical computer's toolset.
BUT, quantum computers have a different, more general toolset than classical computers ... including a "built-in" and fast form of Fourier transform. That's why a quantum computer can solve certain problems faster than a classical one: not because it's faster or more powerful (a quantum computer will never run Crysis ...), but because it has a more appropriate toolset to deal with the problem.
For a comparison in terms of real-world computers: take an old Pentium 4 and a modern Core i7. Their clocks are not so different, maxing around 3.8 ~ 4GHz. Still, there is no question that the i7 is a lot more faster than the P4. Why? Because it has a more efficient architecture and instruction set - a better toolset - and can do more at this same frequency. A similar thing happens with quantum computers, but on steroids.
Here's a blog post that explains all this quite well, and in relatively simple terms.. He also explains what is this "Fourier transform" operation in the context of quantum computers.
Study, I dunno. I like to listen to books about nuclear science, nuclear power, weapons, accidents and the like while I'm driving. I don't do many fiction books.
While it may not be studying, learning about the world around you can help expand your mind and keep it active while you're focusing on the road. I've listened to these books a few times over by now.
Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
Link 4
Link 5
Link 6
Or we could fund fusion...
https://smile.amazon.com/Future-Fusion-Energy-Jason-Parisi/dp/1786345420
We had to use our at-the-time chairs' book: Nuclear Reactor Physics, Weston Stacey. Everyone, including our professor, recommended using Duderstadt and Hamilton instead. It is the "blue bible" of reactor physics. You have the two most recommended resources.
This book goes into great detail about Mini Nuclear Reactors. The primary benefit being that they could be manufactured on an assembly line similar to a Boeing 737.
https://www.amazon.com/Answer-Inherently-Nuclear-Power-Plants/dp/1593720459
Personally, I love learning about quantum mechanics and relativity.
Stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7_gcs09iThXybpVgjHZ_7g if you want to watch cool animated explanations of advanced science.
* Almost forgot Fermilab: https://www.youtube.com/user/fermilab
Stuff like this if you want to read laymen textbooks to wrap your head around QM and relativity: (Altho get the paper versions, because they have diagrams and illustrations and stuff illegible on the ebooks):
https://www.amazon.com/Six-Not-So-Easy-Pieces-Einstein-s-Relativity/dp/0465025269/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0
https://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Princeton-Science-Library/dp/0691164096/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0
https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Universe-Anything-That-Happen/dp/0306821443/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_1
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-mc2-Should-Care/dp/0306818760/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_2
All of those are mind-bogglingly cool, as well as being actual real science!
You won't find any argument from me concerning the fact that ITER is an expensive, time-consuming, bureaucratic and poorly managed project. There are improved concepts out there, including better ones in the tokamak regime. I personally am involved with a startup that seeks to commercialize a spheromak configuration into something called a dynomak (www.ctfusion.net), which could reduce the cost of fusion by a factor of 10 below tokamaks. All that being said, tokamaks perform the best out of any other device today. Part of the reason why is surely that the majority of funding has been spent on it, but realize that the physics going into ITER is based on decades of learning from many failures. As someone working in the field, I'd encourage you to read this book (http://www.amazon.com/Piece-Sun-Quest-Fusion-Energy/dp/1468308890) as it describes the history of fusion in quite some detail. It really put ITER more in context. I still think there are many different ideas that we should be pursuing in parallel, but do realize we're not just sitting on our asses doing nothing because we want job security. Fusion really is very hard, so much so that we had to invent a whole new branch of physics to understand what's going on, called plasma physics. We have built hundreds of small reactors, and we have determined that with the technology of the time, ITER was one of the best shots at making a net gain reactor based on our data. Using improved technology, of course, would improve the design point, but the issue with ITER is just how long it is taking... technology tends to become obsolete over time. Do not think of ITER as being the consensus of the mainline fusion community of what we should be doing today. It isn't unanimously accepted as the right path, not even close, but at this point governments around the world have spent so much money that there's nearly unstoppable inertia behind it at this point. Governments choose what they fund, scientists can only give their opinions about those choices. You would be amazed at how little power we actually have over the decision process of what gets funded. But, we'll see what happens if it is further delayed and even more expensive. If we completely scrapped ITER and used new technology to redesign a net-gain tokamak, it would look different and likely be less expensive.
That being said, myself, and many others, are thinking of ways to bring about fusion quicker, and for a much lower price than a conventional tokamak. And, though ITER represents the best chance at making fusion work at this point, I do not believe it will scale into an economical power plant. We have to start thinking differently, which is part of the reason why I'm focused on an alternative fusion idea that could solve the economic problems facing fusion without throwing out all the ideas that we know work. Some of the biggest errors you can make while doing something new is that you listen to much to past failures that you don't try anything new, or that you don't listen enough and end up repeating past mistakes thinking its a new discovery. There's a optimal point in between where I think we'll have the best chance of making something work that is also economically attractive.
There's the Los Alamos Primer, which is an original publication of the Manhattan Project.
Another one is The Physical Principles of Thermonuclear Explosive Devices.
There's also a newer book The Physics of the Manhattan Project which has a website that has FORTRAN code and Excel spreadsheets for calculations.
The physics actually isn't all that exotic. Even the engineering aspects of the bomb's design is fairly straightforward. The complications are in the actual production of the materials and building the thing to work as designed. While a lot of this stuff is probably technically classified, it's been published publicly. The US Government makes it a policy not to comment on the content of these publications, as if they do, it's a giveaway that it contains something classified.
Read this. We had a working reactor back in the 1950s. TLDR: It was thrown in the bin because the Navy wanted a water cooled reactor (because they were familiar with working with heated water under pressure) for their nuclear subs that could be re purposed as a civilian reactor that could also produce plutonium for bombs.
We have a design for a liquid thorium reactor, but you can't "prove" it works unless someone actually builds the 'effing thing.
I'm no physicist. My degree is in computer science, but I'm in a somewhat similar boat. I read all these pop-science books that got me pumped (same ones you've read), so I decided to actually dive into the math.
​
Luckily I already had training in electromagnetics and calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra so I was not going in totally blind, though tbh i had forgotten most of it by the time I had this itch.
​
I've been at it for about a year now and I'm still nowhere close to where I want to be, but I'll share the books I've read and recommend them:
​
I'm available if you want to PM me directly. I love talking to others about this stuff.
I'm no expert, just started reading about it a month ago. As you said, it is fascinating!
Here's where I started -
https://omegataupodcast.net/304-the-past-present-and-future-of-fusion/
OmegaTau also has many other science episodes.
The book linked in the podcast is a good read too - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Future-Fusion-Energy-Popular-Science/dp/1786345420
If you are interested in weird nuclear weapons you should read John McPhee's book The Curve of Binding Energy. He interviews a number of people that worked in the US weapons program. He spends a lot of time talking with Ted Taylor, who built some unique designs for small and large non-fusion weapons.
I got it for my Kindle
Fun/informative books:
[A Piece of the Sun: The Quest for Fusion Energy: By Daniel Clery] (https://www.amazon.com/Piece-Sun-Quest-Fusion-Energy/dp/1468308890)
[Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking by Charles Seife] (https://www.amazon.com/Sun-Bottle-Strange-History-Thinking/dp/0670020338)
[An Indispensable Truth - How Fusion Power Can Save the Planet, by F.F. Chen] (http://www.springer.com/us/book/9781441978196)
[A Green Sun by Charles Gray] (https://www.amazon.com/Green-Sun-The-Fusion-Book-ebook/dp/B005GBPEAE)
-------------
Technical books:
[Physics of Fully Ionized Gases by Lyman Spitzer Jr.] (https://www.amazon.com/Physics-Fully-Ionized-Gases-Revised/dp/0486449823)
[The Physics of Inertial Fusion: Beam Plasma Interaction, Stefano Atzeni] (https://www.amazon.com/Physics-Inertial-Fusion-Hydrodynamics-International/dp/0199568014)
[Tokamaks by Wesson] (https://books.google.com/books/about/Tokamaks.html?id=BH9vx-iDI74C)
[The Release of Thermonuclear Energy by Inertial Confinement: Ways Towards Ignition by Friedwardt Winterberg] (https://www.amazon.com/Release-Thermonuclear-Energy-Inertial-Confinement/dp/9814295906/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1473696256&sr=1-1&keywords=winterberg+inertial+confinement)
Note: This last book by F. Winterberg contains some of the most difficult mathematics (perhaps something that a Junior in Math might not mind) but contains an extraordinary wealth of new fusion ideas - something that old guard fusioneers would like to see in the hands of the young.
---------
Mathematics is the portal to advanced skills in fusion physics and nuclear engineering. It is not really possible to find a professional first position in the fusion field without a high level of mathematics competency.
For those that have already had two years of college calculus I would recommend the following book if you are interested in a career in fusion.
[Higher Math for Beginners by Y.B. Zeldovich] (https://www.amazon.com/Higher-Mathematics-Beginners-application-physics/dp/B000IW9YSO/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1473696949&sr=1-2&keywords=Higher+for+Beginners+Zeldovich)
----------
Student Internship at the Nation’s National Labs
You get paid while you learn lots of terrific fusion related stuff and there is an avenue leading to a first job in the field of your choice (something everyone needs).
http://see.orau.org/ProgramDescription.aspx?Program=10055
https://internships.llnl.gov/
http://www.lanl.gov/education/undergrad/internships.shtml
http://science.energy.gov/wdts/suli/
-------
NIF Laser Fusion in Fulldome -true out of this world new technology
(note: this high-rez image is interactive - click on picture and drag with your mouse to see additional views of the NIF target chamber)
http://www.xrez.com/case-studies/nif-laser-fusion-in-fulldome/
------
Fusion is a lot closer than most of the main stream analysts currently believe.
Fusion from the engineering side perhaps does not get as much publicity, but many fusion jobs in funded projects have a lot of engineering content. It may actually be easier to get your first position if you have a math or engineering focus (only so many physics professionals get hired, even in really large fusion programs).
If you're interested in Nuclear accidents, I have been listening to the audiobook of this: http://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Accidents-Meltdowns-Disasters-Mountains/dp/1605984922 It is VERY a-political, unlike Pandora's Promise, IMHO. Although I agree with Pandora's Promise mostly, It feels like the producers are trying to convince me of something. The book "Atomic Accidents" doesn't feel that way at all, very factual, historical, informative, and as a lay-person, I didn't feel it was out of my depth at all. As for the Audiobook, it is pretty well read, and has good reviews on Audible: http://www.audible.com/pd/History/Atomic-Accidents-Audiobook/B00I2U1NLA
They are passively safe as long as they are rather small, EBR-II was 60MWt. Small reactors are expensive. Large metal cooled FRs have positive void coefficient, and need a lot of safety gear.
SFRs need more unique equipment since it has two heat transfer fluids (i.e. sodium and water pumps), double-walled HXes, 3 loops instead of 2, more complicated reactor vessel, etc.
From: http://www.amazon.com/Fast-Spectrum-Reactors-Alan-Waltar/dp/1441995714
>The cost increment over the LWR has generally been assumed to range between 10 and 25% for mature plants.
A more affordable paperback is forthcoming https://twitter.com/JB_Fusion/status/1094581684543111168
Also eBook here
If you're looking for a good lay explanation, start here: QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Nice short book by Feynman.
Well, I'm not super well-versed in physics tbh but I use to really want to be a physcisits so I know a little stuff here and there.
I've read:
https://www.amazon.com/Surely-Feynman-Adventures-Curious-Character/dp/0393316041
https://www.amazon.com/Genius-Life-Science-Richard-Feynman-ebook/dp/B004LRPQIO/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=genius+feynman&qid=1569787475&s=books&sr=1-1
https://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Princeton-Science-Library/dp/0691164096/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=QED+feynman&qid=1569787491&s=books&sr=1-1
Also, Feynman is related to philosophy because quantum physics makes many epistemological and metaphysical claims and Feyman made many advances in the quantum physics field. Look up some interviews online, his thought process is really cooled and really makes you wonder about the natural world and how its works/structured
Unfortunately, operating reactors tend to irradiate everything around them, so even if everything works great and you core stays intact, you end up with a highly radioactive spaceship.
I recently read "Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima"; which talks about a bunch of "experiments" that led to issues. It was very enlightening.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HVPI1IA
" Specifically, the new evidence – based on modelling of air mass movements around the time of the accident – indicates Russia's Mayak nuclear complex in the southern Urals "should be considered as a likely candidate for the release", the researchers conclude. "
No surprise there. I've been reading "Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima" and the stuff Russia has let happen at Mayak makes even the US during the 50s and 60s look good.
why do you think the Clinton administration cancelled the fast breeder research at Argonne National Labs. I read this book and it didn't say: http://www.amazon.com/Plentiful-Energy-technology-scientific-non-specialists/dp/1466384603/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348456204&sr=8-1&keywords=plentiful+energy
And, do you think politically we can get fast breeders to happen in the US?
I got World of Atoms and Quarks for my own kids. Richard Feynman's book QED is also really good. I don't know your age or background, but learning about symmetries and Noether's theorem are really valuable.
My background is in physics, and though for a time I wanted to do particle theory, I learned of so much other interesting stuff going on while I was in grad school that I'm more content as a generalist. I work in an EE-type job now.
To be fair, they probably meant this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Atomic-Adventures-Islands-Forgotten-Isotopic-ebook/dp/B01MYNQLZX
Which does sound like a good read
Absolutely wrong. See http://www.amazon.com/Curve-Binding-Energy-Alarming-Theodore/dp/0374515980
If you have the fissibles, any idiot can build a nuke.
Have you read or watched Feynman's lectures on QED? I find the book better, but either is a decent overview of the topic.
It's pretty cool how he starts out with some simple but seemingly counter-intuitive ideas, but brings in how they explain diffraction gratings, focusing lenses, etc.
The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor
by John McPHee
Assassination Vacation
by Sarah Vowell
Public Therapy Buses, Information Specialty Bums, Solar Cook-A-Mats and Other Visions of the 21st Century
by Steven M. Johnson
Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date
by Robert X. Cringley
Tog on Interface
by Bruce Tognazzini
Atomic Accidents by James Mahaffey has a chapter on them. It's only a chapter, but it goes into the scientific details of what happened to their bodies without getting too complex for a layman reader. The book overall is wonderful and I highly recommend reading the whole thing. It's free to read on Kindle Unlimited if you have Prime. I also recommend his first book, Atomic Awakening, for a general history of nuclear power.
Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HVPI1IA/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_IcZpDbEYHGPZN
First of all I will say that no matter what you look at, physics is one of those things where you can never be "correct" per se without understanding the math. That goes double for QM which is math all the way down. No matter how you explain it, you will always find that "but what about this exception" can be answered to your satisfaction only by getting a mathematically rigorous treatment of the topic.
That said, for understanding quantum on a "fun" level (i.e. skipping a couple of years of calculus, linear algebra, and numerical analysis), I'd recommend Richard Feynman's QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. A very well-known and highly respected physicist with a talent for teaching. Although "quantum electrodynamics" as covered in the book is not strictly QM as generally imagined, he does cover the core of what is at interest in quantum theory (electromagnetic interactions at a subatomic level) in a pretty interesting and decently understandable way. That sounds like about what you're looking for.
I'm reading this now. Quite a good introduction, and published in 2017, so pretty up to date.
To quote Richard Feynman
>"...there is also an amplitude for light to go faster (or slower) than the conventional speed of light. You found out in the last lecture that light doesn't go only in straight lines; now, you find out that it doesn't go only at the speed of light! It may surprise you that there is an amplitude for a photon to go at speeds faster or slower than the conventional speed, c."
When Feynman said "amplitude" he meant "the square of the probability of an event." The above quote came from a series of lectures he gave at UCLA that were subsequently published.
Fukushima Meltdown: The World's First Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster