Richard L. Garwin and Georges Charpak Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2001. $30.00 (412 pp.). ISBN 0-375-40394-9
If you wanted to offer a class on nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors, why not get a brilliant American theorist, who designed nuclear weapons, and a Nobel-prize-winning French experimentalist to present the material. That is Richard L. Garwin and Georges Charpak’s Megawatts and Megatons.
Garwin, the American, and Charpak, the Frenchman, provide an excellent primer on nuclear fission and the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear power. Radioactivity is described from the Curies to Fermi. All current types of reactors are covered, including light water, heavy water, high-temperature gas, and breeders. The authors are not enamored of the breeder. Charpak provides insights into the French breeder program and the authors note that, if effort is devoted to developing extraction of uranium from seawater, the breeder’s main advantage (to compensate for a shortage in uranium) may not be economic for centuries.
Both the once-through (direct disposal of spent nuclear fuel) and the closed fuel cycle (involving reprocessing) are described, along with the front-end enrichment process. The authors discuss the US and French nuclear programs, often seen as the world’s most successful. They describe the accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Tokaimura, and the unresolved problem of permanent disposal of high level nuclear waste, which they see as a major obstacle to continuation of nuclear power.
The authors address energy issues: global warming and the potential benefit of nuclear power; the relative radioactivity risks of coal and nuclear (coal is about equal to nuclear over 10 000 years and higher for the first 500 years); cogeneration of electricity and energy efficiency (they are in favor); forecasts for 2050 and beyond (they advise “a certain humility”); and the California electricity crisis of 2000–2001. They are critical of error and exaggeration by both proponents and opponents of nuclear power. While the authors seem to favor nuclear power (in my opinion), their emphasis on objective analysis provides the necessary data for readers to make their own calculations about the relative risks of nuclear and coal power plants.
Both authors are familiar with nuclear weapons, and Garwin has worked on and advised on them since the Manhattan Project. The authors present the basics of a nuclear weapon and stress the critical importance of the choice of the fissionable material. They discuss the need to restrict access to plutonium that is separated during reprocessing of spent reactor fuel, since such plutonium can be used to make an adequate nuclear weapon. The authors cover an increasingly important issue: how to dispose of the large amounts of weapons-grade plutonium becoming available from the START treaties’ reduction in nuclear weapons.
Readers interested in understanding the current debates about mixed oxide (MOX) fuel and the Rubbia energy amplifier will find those topics well covered. Since the current US administration has decided to continue supporting programs to safeguard and dispose of Russian weapons material, Megawatts and Megatons provides the necessary background to understand the issues involved. (Many in the government could use this book.)
Other topics covered include the subtleties of nuclear strategy; the nuclear arms race (“mutual assured destruction,” “sufficiency”), arms control debates, the Strategic Defense Initiative (also known as Star Wars); the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and the authors’ recommendations on significant reductions in nuclear arms.
Both Garwin and Charpak have been advisers at the highest levels of their governments and bring to this book the insights gained from decades of such service. They support the use of experts as advisers—if independent (both financially and ideologically) and competent—but for providing advice, not making decisions.
The authors’ goal is to develop the level of understanding required to make reasoned judgments about nuclear power and nuclear weapons. While some books listed by the authors as further reading have more details on some of the subjects covered here, I know of no one book that provides the breadth and depth that this one does on both nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Megawatts and Megatons is a valuable text for anyone interested in becoming informed on two crucial technology areas.