Radiation And Modern Life: Fulfilling Marie Curie's Dream
Written by Alan E. Waltar
Introduction by Dr. Hélène Langevin-Joliot, granddaughter of Marie Curie
“Radiation has existed since the very beginning of the
universe...”
In this overview of radiation's many great benefits and as yet untapped potential, Dr. Alan E. Waltar, past president
of the American Nuclear Society, explains how this important energy source has been harnessed to serve a plethora of
humanitarian functions. Through the use of anecdotes, Waltar provides numerous examples of radiation's many uses
in agriculture, medicine, electricity generation, modern industry, transportation, public safety, environmental
protection, space exploration, and even archeology and the arts. Estimating the total financial contribution of all
these varied uses, Waltar comes to the revelation that radiation technology now contributes more than $420 billion
to the US economy and provides over 4.4 million jobs. In the future, Dr. Waltar foresees continuous improvement in
many areas of science, industry, and medicine through tapping the incredible potential of Marie Curie's initial insights.

Beyond Fossil Fools: Roadmap to Energy Independence by 2040
Written
by Joe
Shuster
Energy
is destined to be the single most important issue of this century.
War and economic prosperity will always loom large as they do today,
but both of these concerns are inextricably entwined with energy matters.
Energy
issues will determine the kind of life future generations will live,
will probably cause more wars, and, as unthinkable as it is, could become
a matter
of life or death for many.
There is no silver bullet, no magic pill, no one-size-fits-all solution;we
must try to dovetail many changes immediately and at the same time...
The transition to new energy sources must begin
immediately if the inevitable transition to alternative forms of energy
is to be manageable and timely rather than chaotic, destructive, and violent.
Read more...

Power to Save the World—The Truth About Nuclear Energy
by Gwyneth Cravens
In this timely book, Gwyneth Cravens takes an informed and clarifying
look at the myths, the fears, and the truth about nuclear energy.
With concerns about catastrophic global warming mounting,
it is vital that we examine all our energy options. Power
to Save the World describes the efforts of one determined
woman, Gwyneth Cravens, initially a skeptic about nuclear
power, as she spends nearly a decade immersing herself in
the subject. She teams up with a leading expert in risk assessment
and nuclear safety who is also a committed environmentalist
to trace the path of uranium—the source of nuclear fuel—from
start to finish. As we accompany them on visits to mines as
well as to experimental reactor laboratories, fortress-like
power plants, and remote waste sites normally off-limits to
the public, we come to see that we already have a feasible
way to address the causes of global warming on a large scale.
On the nuclear tour, Cravens converses with scientists from
many disciplines, public health and counterterrorism experts,
engineers, and researchers who study both the harmful and
benign effects of radiation; she watches remote-controlled
robotic manipulators unbolt a canister of spent uranium fuel
inside a “hot cell” bathed in eerie orange light;
observes the dark haze from fossil-fuel combustion obscuring
once-pristine New Mexico skies and the leaky, rusted pipes
and sooty puddles in a coal-fired plant; glimpses rainbows
made by salt dust in the deep subterranean corridors of a
working nuclear waste repository.
She refutes the major arguments against nuclear power one
by one, making clear, for example, that a stroll through Grand
Central Terminal exposes a person to more radiation than a
walk of equal length through a uranium mine; that average
background radiation around Chernobyl and in Hiroshima is
lower than in Denver; that there are no “cancer clusters” near
nuclear facilities; that terrorists could neither penetrate
the security at an American nuclear plant nor make an atomic
bomb from its fuel; that nuclear waste can be—and already
is—safely stored; that wind and solar power, while important,
can meet only a fraction of the demand for electricity; that
a coal-fired plant releases more radiation than a nuclear
plant and also emits deadly toxic waste that kills thousands
of Americans a month; that in its fifty-year history American
nuclear power has not caused a single death. And she demonstrates
how, time and again, political fearmongering and misperceptions
about risk have trumped science in the dialogue about the
feasibility of nuclear energy.
In the end, we see how nuclear power has been successfully
and economically harnessed here and around the globe to become
the single largest displacer of greenhouse gases, and how
its overall risks and benefits compare with those of other
energy sources.
Power to Save the World is an eloquent, convincing argument
for nuclear power as a safe energy source and an essential
deterrent to global warming.
About the Author
Gwyneth Cravens has published five novels. Her fiction and
nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, where she also
worked as a fiction editor, and in Harper’s Magazine,
where she was an associate editor. She has contributed articles
and op-eds on science and other topics to Harper’s Magazine,
The New York Times, and The Washington Post. She grew up in
New Mexico and now lives on eastern Long Island, where she
was part of the opposition to the Shoreham Nuclear Power
Plant. In her book Power to Save the World—The Truth
About Nuclear Energy,
Gwyneth Cravens tells us how she became convinced that her
anti-nuclear beliefs were wrong and Nuclear energy is
safe.
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