Reddit mentions: The best nuclear engineering books

If you're going to be modeling the edge/divertor region then I would highly recommend looking into [The Plasma Boundary of Magnetic Fusion Devices by Stangeby.] (https://www.amazon.com/Boundary-Magnetic-Devices-Physics-Dynamics/dp/0750305592) I personally have not read it, but my friends in the edge community swear by it. It's not cheap, and I don't know how much money you have to spend, but if you're going to do edge physics then it's worth considering.

Chen's Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion is the classic introduction to plasma physics text book. If you haven't taken any plasma physics then it is a good starting point.

Freidberg is a classic text on ideal MHD. You can't go wrong with it. It's also a good book for new PhD students in Fusion research. In case you want to save some money I'll point out that Friedberg's book is based off of his Ideal MHD review paper. You'll probably be able to access the paper for free through your university's library. At some point you'll probably want the book if you stay in the field. It goes into more detail, and the latest edition has been updated to reflect modern trends in confinement.

Hazeltine & Meiss is a good book for people going into plasma theory/computation. It does a good job of introducing a lot of advanced topics relevant to plasma physics. It's a great deal for it's price.

I think Steve Jardin's book is a good tool if you don't have a background in computation. In one chapter he introduces methods to solve a particular type of equation (elliptic, hyperbolic, parabolic, etc) and then in the next he applies those methods to problems relevant to magnetic fusion research.

Styx is a good reference if you know plasma waves, but I don't think it's a good book for learning plasma waves. Sawnson's book is better for learning waves.

I'm not too familiar with the other books you mentioned. I've heard good things about Birdsall & Langdon. I've heard mixed reviews of Goedbloed. I'm aware of Tajima's book but I know nothing about it. I've never heard of Hsu's book.

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:

• First and foremost, read Feynman's Lectures on Physics and do not skip a lecture. You can find them free on the link there, but they also sell the 3 volumes on amazon. I love annotating so I got myself physical copies. These are the most comprehensible lectures on anything I've ever read. Feynman does an excellent job on teaching you pretty much all of physics + math (especially electromagnetics) up until basics of Quantum Mechanics and some Quantum Field Theory assuming little mathematics background.
  
• Feyman lectures on Quantum Electrodynamics (The first Quantum Field Theory). This is pop-sciency and not math heavy at all, but it provides a good intuition in preparation for the bullet points below
  
• You're going to need Calculus. So if you're not familiar comfortable with integral concepts like integration by parts, Quantum Mechanics will be very difficult.
  
• I watched MIT's opencourseware online lectures on Quantum Mechanics and I did all the assignments. This gave me what I believe is a solid mathematical understanding on Quantum Mechanics
  
• I'm currently reading and performing exercises from this Introduction to Classical Field Theory. . This is just Lagrangian Field Theory, which is the classical analog of QFT. I'm doing this in preparation for the next bullet-point:
  
• Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell. Very math heavy - but thats what we're after isnt it? I havent started on this yet since it relies on the previous PDF, but it was recommended in Feynmans QED book.
  
• I've had training on Linear Algebra during my CS education. You're going to need it as well. I recommend watching this linear algebra playlist by 3Blue1Brown. It's almost substitute for the rigorous math. My life would've been a lot easier if that playlist existed before i took my linear algebra course, which was taught through this book.
  
• Linear Algebra Part 2 - Tensor analysis! You need this for General Relativity. This is the pdf im currently reading and doing all the exercises. This pdf is preparing me for...
  
• Gravity. This 1000+ page behemoth comes highly recommended by pretty much all physicist I talk to and I can't wait for it.
  
• Concurrently I'm also reading this book which introduces you to the Standard Model.
  
  ​
  
  I'm available if you want to PM me directly. I love talking to others about this stuff.

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.

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).

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.

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

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.

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!

>If this technology was truly viable I believe that at least some company/government would be using it currently.

-----------------

>but it just seems to impossible to believe that such an important, flawless technology could simply be lost to a government


If it were not for the fact it would take billions in research and development to go from a small prototype reactor built in the 60's to a large commercial power plant, and that the existing solar/wind/renewable, fossil fuel, and nuclear power generation lobbies vehemently oppose LFTR, coupled with it's inability to produce weapons grade material, then yes we probably would already be using it. The head of Oak Ridge National Labs sacrificed his career to go to bat for LFTR, ultimately the Nixon administration canned LFTR research and went for the Sodium Fast Breeder because it could breed PU239 for use in weapons, and LFTR could not generate weapons grade material.

I want to quote you something from a book written about LFTR technology from an editor at wired magazine.

---------------------------------------------------------

"I’ve written for Wired for ten years, and I’ve often joked that every
story in the magazine has to use the word revolutionary. Thorium
power actually seemed to justify that label. The more I learned about
the lost history of thorium — especially the successful creation of a
thorium-powered reactor at Oak Ridge in the 1960s and the career of
the Oak Ridge director Alvin Weinberg, who championed safe thorium
reactors and lost his job for it the more astonished and outraged I
became. Here was an inexpensive, safe, abundant energy source that
could power every city on Earth, with enough left over for hundreds of
millions of electric vehicles, for several millennia. And we were sitting
on it, essentially doing nothing. It was insane. And the small band of
technologists I was traveling with that day seemed like the only ones
who were actually trying to bring the technology back to life, with zero
encouragement from the government and plenty of disdain from the
nuclear power industry."

https://www.amazon.com/SuperFuel-Thorium-Energy-Source-Future/dp/113727834X/


SuperFuel: Thorium, the Green Energy Source for the Future

-Richard Martin

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

This one is good, easy reading: http://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle-Analysis-Management/dp/0894484516

For historical perspective (free): http://books.google.com/books?id=aeB_gqp-QFwC&source=gbs_navlinks_s

One of the best books ever, very rare and hard to get: Nuclear Reactor Engineering: Reactor design basics, by Samuel Glasstone and Alexander Sesonske

For MSRs, the best is still FFR Section 2: http://energyfromthorium.com/pdf/

and the recent French papers: http://lpsc.in2p3.fr/index.php/en/scientific-activities/reactor-physics/systems-scenarii/molten-salt-reactor/38-activites-scientifiques/physique-des-reacteurs-nucleaires/523-msfr-bibliography

> Yeah, because the energy companies are just waiting to build new plants. Oh wait, they don't. They have invested in nuke tech in the 70s and just try to milk every cent out of that without any intention to create new plants.

What are you talking about?

There have been a lot of attempts at building new plants, but objections from "environmentalists" and NIMBYs make it so difficult that sites don't get approved. In addition, the government won't fund development of new forms of nuclear power station because of exactly the above reasons.

Water cooled uranium reactors were never originally considered to be the end all and be all of nuclear power, it was only step 1 up the nuclear technological ladder. We never even got to step 2. We've just spent 60 years trying to improve the design of step 1. There is a good book on the subject, that I'd recommend, not that anyone on reddit actually ever reads books that contain controversial things like "facts", but I can but try..

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.

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.

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

There are many benefits to hydrogen as a storage medium over chemical batteries: more energy per unit of space, less crazy rare elements, less toxic manufacture/disposal, better energy storage over time to name just a few.
Unfortunately to go from a petroleum to a hydrogen economy in the US would require a WWII like effort, where as we pretty much have functioning electrical distribution everywhere.
-> the argument for hydrogen is spelled out pretty well in this book : http://www.amazon.com/The-Phoenix-Project-Shifting-Hydrogen/dp/0970250207

but there's a giant amount of investment in infrastructure required in the front end. Making the endeavor a pipe dream.

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.

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

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

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

Funnily enough, intentionally or not, Koch businesses on the whole help combat global warming.

Nothing we do in the west will make much difference as long as China is building 1GW worth of new coal plants per week (each of which dumps 1 ton of CO2 into the atmosphere every 2 seconds). The only thing that can make a real difference is making natural gas cheap enough to compete with coal for energy generation in China and other developing countries. This ultimately comes down to the economics of the fracking process, i.e. making it as cheap as possible to extract.

Source: Energy for Future Presidents by Richard Muller

Alright, basically - this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Systems-Volume-Hydraulic-Fundamentals/dp/1439808872/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341343789&sr=8-1&keywords=nuclear+systems+1

Nuclear Systems I by Kazimi and Todreas. Previous edition is good too. Volume II is more about individual components, volume I is more plant-wide.

One thing to remember - a lot of thermal hydraulics in a NPP are safety systems (emergency cooling, etc.) and not directly to energy conversion. An example of that would be the containment itself, which is a giant control volume, essentially.

That book will have all you need.

Better yet, avoid YouTube university and read something like this or this. No? Too much work? Well, ok, I guess you could go on making silly statements on the internet.

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

I just looked it up. It's called Nuclear Heat Transport. Here's a link to it on Amazon. I'll be honest though, we didn't use the book too much but from what I've read it has some good information

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

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.

If you're looking for a good lay explanation, start here: QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Nice short book by Feynman.

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.

I'm reading this now. Quite a good introduction, and published in 2017, so pretty up to date.

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

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.

Or we could fund fusion...

https://smile.amazon.com/Future-Fusion-Energy-Jason-Parisi/dp/1786345420

I got it for my Kindle

" 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.