An atomic empire : a technical history of the rise and fall of the British atomic energy programme / C.N. Hill, formerly Charterhouse, UK.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hill, C. N.

Series:

Gale eBooks

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nuclear industry--Great Britain.

Nuclear industry.

Nuclear energy--Great Britain.

Nuclear energy.

Nuclear engineering--Great Britain.

Nuclear engineering.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 355 pages) : illustrations, plans

Place of Publication:

London : Imperial College Press, [2013]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Britain was the first country to exploit atomic energy on a large scale, and at its peak in the mid-1960s, it had generated more electricity from nuclear power than the rest of the world combined.The civil atomic energy programme grew out of the military programme which produced plutonium for atomic weapons. In 1956, Calder Hall power station was opened by the Queen. The very next year, one of the early Windscale reactors caught fire and the world's first major nuclear accident occurred.The civil programme ran into further difficulty in the mid-1960s and as a consequence of procrastination in

Contents:

Contents; Acknowledgements; List of Acronyms; 1. Introduction; 2. Atomic Physics; Nuclear Reactors; Fuel Elements; 3. People and Places; Cockcroft, Hinton and Penney; Creation of the Atomic Energy Authority; Harwell; Dounreay; Winfrith; Reorganisations; The Electricity Industry; 4. The British Production Piles; The Chemical Plant; 5. The British Bomb; Megaton Weapons; The Large Fission Device; The 'Layer Cake' Bomb; The Two-Stage Device; The Search for an Underground Test Site; Anglo-American Cooperation; 'Special Materials'; Nuclear Weapons Deployed by the UK; 6. The Windscale Incident

The Emergency ProceduresRadiation Received by the Workers; The Report; What Caused the Fire?; 'Errors of Judgement'; A Cover-Up?; The Future of Pile 2; The Clean Up of Pile 1; Polonium Fallout; 7. The Fast Reactor; Safety; ZEPHYR, ZEUS and ZEBRA; Dounreay Fast Reactor; The Commercial Fast Reactor; The Prototype Fast Reactor; 8. PIPPA and Calder Hall; The Military Requirement; The Steam Cycle; Building Calder Hall; The Opening Ceremony; 9. CTR and ZETA; 10. Research Reactors; GLEEP and BEPO; Other Research Reactors; DIMPLE; DIDO, PLUTO and DMTR; LIDO; NESTOR; HERALD; HECTOR; JASON

11. The Magnox StationsThe Consortia; The Stations; Bradwell and Berkeley; Hunterston; Hinkley point; Trawsfynydd; Dungeness; Sizewell; Oldbury; Wylfa; Exports; The Corrosion Problem; Was Magnox Economic?; 12. The Second Power Programme: The Alternatives; The Sodium-Graphite Reactor; Water-Moderated Reactors; 13. The Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor; The Saga of Dungeness B; The Hunterston Incident; The Stations; 14. The SGHWR; 15. DRAGON and the HTR; A Commercial HTR?; 16. Atomic Energy at Sea; Marine Reactors; AEI-John Thompson nuclear energy company limited; Babcock and Wilcox, Ltd

De Havilland17. Finale; The Commercial Programme; Appendix: Chronology; Bibliography; Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781908977434

1908977434

OCLC:

857066061