Evaluates the potential of nuclear technology as a non-polluting, renewable energy source while describing how nuclear energy's negative association with weapons development and the Cold War has stymied the progress of its beneficial uses.

Looks at nuclear energy and how a safer nuclear future might be possible.

Examines the history of nuclear fission and its role in weaponry and as an energy source.

With enthusiasm and witty intelligence, Mahaffey unearths lost reactors on far-flung islands and finds trees that were exposed to active fission--which then changed gender or bloomed in the dead of winter. He explains why we have nuclear submarines but not nuclear aircraft and why cold fusion does not--and cannot--exist. And who knew that radiation-counting was once a fashionable trend? Though parts of our nuclear history might seem like fiction--such...

Tells how uranium changed the world with the advent of the atomic bomb and nuclear power in the twentieth century.