From World War II to the present day, nuclear power has remained a controversial topic in the public eye. In the wake of ongoing debates about energy and the environment, policymakers and laypeople alike are once more asking the questions posed by countless others over the decades: What actually happens in a nuclear power plant? Can we truly trust nuclear energy to be safe and reliable? Where does all that radiation and waste go? This book explains everything you would want to know about nuclear power in a compelling and accessible way. Split into three parts, it walks readers through the basics of nuclear physics and radioactivity; the history of nuclear power usage, including the most important events and disasters; the science and engineering behind nuclear power plants; the politics and policies of various nations; and finally, the long-term societal impact of such technology, from uranium mining and proliferation to final disposal. Featured along the way are dozens of behind-the-scenes, full-color images of nuclear facilities. Written in a nontechnical style with minimal equations, this book will appeal to lay readers, policymakers and professionals looking to acquire a well-rounded view about this complex subject.

On the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima, Nobel-winning physicist Hans Bethe called on his fellow scientists to stop working on weapons of mass destruction. What drove Bethe, the head of Theoretical Physics at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, to renounce the weaponry he had once worked so tirelessly to create? That is one of the questions answered by Nuclear Forces, a riveting biography of Bethe's early life and development as both a scientist and a man of principle. As Silvan Schweber follows Bethe from his childhood in Germany, to laboratories in Italy and England, and on to Cornell University, he shows how these differing environments were reflected in the kind of physics Bethe produced. Many of the young quantum physicists in the 1930s, including Bethe, had Jewish roots, and Schweber considers how Liberal Judaism in Germany helps explain their remarkable contributions. A portrait emerges of a man whose strategy for staying on top of a deeply hierarchical field was to tackle only those problems he knew he could solve. Bethe's emotional maturation was shaped by his father and by two women of Jewish background: his overly possessive mother and his wife, who would later serve as an ethical touchstone during the turbulent years he spent designing nuclear bombs. Situating Bethe in the context of the various communities where he worked, Schweber provides a full picture of prewar developments in physics that changed the modern world, and of a scientist shaped by the unprecedented moral dilemmas those developments in turn created.

ssei Gelegenheit der Vorarbeiten zu einem Colleg uber Spektralanalyse wurde mir der Mangel an einem Lehrbuch uber diesen Abschnitt der Physik aufs Neue fuhlbar, nachdem ich ihn schon fruher bei eigenen Untersuchungen sehr empfunden hatte. In unseren Lehrbuchern der allgemeinen Physik wird dieses so interessante Gebiet ausserordentlich stiefmutterlich behandelt, die neueren Versuchsmethoden und Resultate finden sich fast nirgends angegeben, und die enormen Fortschritte, welche die Spektralanalyse in den letzten 15 Jahren - nament- lich durch englische Forscher - gemacht hat, bleiben meist unerwahnt. Von den speciellen Werken uber Spektralanalyse, deren es eine recht grosse Anzahl giebt, verfolgen die meisten den Zweck, in ganz popularer Form den Gegenstand zu behan- deln; in dieser Richtung hat Roscoe Ausgezeichnetes geleistet. Andere Werke sind zwar wissenschaftlicher gehalten, aber sie be- tonen dann nur einzelne Capitel oder einzelne Richtungen der Spektralanalyse; so hat das sehr empfehlenswerthe Buch von H. W. Vogel nur die praktische Analyse, namentlich die durch Absorptionsspektren im Auge. Auch die sehr starke, neueste Auflage der Schellen'schen Spektralanalyse lasst recht viel zu wunschen ubrig. Es bleibt daher einem Jeden, der sich eingehend mit der Sache beschaftigen will, nichts anderes ubrig als selbst an die Quellen zu gehen und die Tausende von Abhandlungen, die in zahllosen Zeitschriften verstreut sind, zu studiren. Als nun auch ich mich dieser nicht kleinen Arbeit unterzog, schien es mir doch zweckmassig, sie nicht nur fur mich zu unternehmen, sondern sie auch fur Andere verwerthbar zu machen, VI VORWORT.

This book looks at the early history of nuclear power, at what happened next, and at its longer-term prospects. The main question is: can nuclear power overcome the problems that have emerged? It was once touted as the ultimate energy source, freeing mankind from reliance on dirty, expensive fossil energy. Sixty years on, nuclear only supplies around 11.5% of global energy and is being challenged by cheaper energy options. While the costs of renewable sources, like wind and solar, are falling rapidly, nuclear costs have remained stubbornly high. Its development has also been slowed by a range of other problems, including a spate of major accidents, security concerns and the as yet unresolved issue of what to do with the wastes that it produces. In response, a new generation of nuclear reactors is being developed, many of them actually revised versions of the ideas first looked at in the earlier phase. Will this new generation of reactors bring nuclear energy to the forefront of energy production in the future?

There have been many recent discussions of the 'replication crisis' in psychology and other social sciences. This has been attributed, in part, to the fact that researchers hesitate to submit null results and journals fail to publish such results. In this book Allan Franklin and Ronald Laymon analyze what constitutes a null result and present evidence, covering a 400-year history, that null results play significant roles in physics.

A deeper understanding of neutrinos, with the goal to reveal their nature and exact role within particle physics, is at the frontier of current research. This book reviews the field in a concise fashion and highlights the most pressing issues and areas of strongest topical interest. It provides a clear, self-contained, and logical treatment of the fundamental physics aspects, appropriate for graduate students. Starting with the relevant basics of the SM, neutrinos are introduced, and the quantum mechanical effect of oscillations is explained in detail. A strong focus is then set on the phenomenon of lepton number violation, especially in 0nbb decay, as the crucial probe to understand the nature of neutrinos. The role of neutrinos in astrophysics, expected to be of increasing importance for future research, is then described. Finally, models to explain the neutrino properties are outlined. The central theme of the book is the nature of neutrino masses and the above topics will revolve around this issue.