from Cavendish Press Ann Arbor
Nuclear Energy
the Book -- from a
Presidential Award Winning Teacher
• "Timely..."
•"dispels mystery and confusion surrounding nuclear energy"
•"focuses on facts ... a good resource"
--- J. Chemical Education 2003
American Chemical Society
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• "a high-quality source of information"
• "understandable and timely"
• "relevant, real-life material"
• "Even those who don't teach in these areas will find this book worth the time"
--- NSTA Recommends 2001
National Science Teachers Association
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• "Explanations ... innovatively expressed"
• "readers ... should find the treatment refreshingly balanced."
--- ALA's CHOICE Magazine 2001
Association of College and Research Libraries
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Special Features: UPDATES on Nuclear Technologies
 Update #1: The Pebble Bed Reactor
Update #2: Thorium: The Better Nuclear Fuel?
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"A serious but not ponderous book about Nuclear Energy"
by Walter Scheider
Over a period of 20 years, some 2000 high school students in an Ann Arbor, Michigan public high school learned to make their own informed judgments about the issues of nuclear energy.
Their teacher taught them the facts and gave them the understanding of the science and technology of this subject. He trusted that this knowledge and understanding would enable them as adult citizens to contribute to wiser policies for the nation and the world.
Now this presidential award winning science teacher has put the material of that five week study unit on Nuclear Energy in a book for students, teachers, and general readers alike. |
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- The book is designed for anyone with first-year high school algebra skills.
- 45 illustrations help make the science, from the feel of nuclear bonds to the layout of a reactor, visible.
- The author shows that Nuclear Energy is not mysterious, and can be understood without higher mathematics. The equivalence of mass and energy is seen to be a common and ordinary, if not always obvious, fact about the world around us. Mass comes off with the energy that is released in chemical reactions, the burning of coal and gasoline, and the heat produced by the neutralization of acids with bases, just as it comes off with the energy released in nuclear reactions. It happens everywhere, and explains neither the burning of fossil fuels nor the production of nuclear energy. What causes the release of nuclear energy is no more complicated than what causes the release of chemical energy, and is not any less accessible to the lay reader.
- The facts about how an inherently unstable chain reaction is tamed in a reactor, the risks and the ways in which they are assessed, are brought to the reader clearly and factually.
- The remarkable diary of the Three Mile Island accident that was prepared by the President's Commission brings the minute-by-minute unfolding of that story home in very human terms, and helps put in perspective a quandary that is, when seen as simply a hardware question, quite difficult to explain.
- The result is that ordinary citizens can learn to take part in the public discussion about nuclear policy as full partners, able to evaluate the testimony of experts and advocates with informed judgment.
Questions about nuclear energy that are frequently unanswered
see the Table of Contents of the Nuclear Energy Book
read the Preface of the Nuclear Energy Book
About the author
Ways to order the book
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