(guest post by Charles Barton) Eugene Wigner spent a brief period as Research Director of what was then called the Clinton Laboratories. Oak Ride was in 1943 a town that did not exist, so the Laboratory could not be named for it. Instead the assigned name that of Clinton, the old East Tennessee town that […]
In 1957 Alvin Weinberg presented a paper whose ostensive lead author, Raymond Clare Briant had been dead for three years. This is a procedure is science to memorialize a scientist who had made a significant contribution to a research project but who had died before the contribution could be recorded in a scientific paper. In […]
Eugene Wigner (left), Enrico Fermi (right)Some of the best scientist of the 20th century hung around around the “Metallurgical Laboratory” of the University of Chicago. The “Metallurgical Lab” was a cover for the nuclear research establishment which Author H. Compton set up at the University of Chicago during World War II. The Metallurgical Lab was […]
From Issues in Science and TechnologySummer 2003 New Life for Nuclear Powerby ALVIN M. WEINBERG Most of what I wrote in “Engineering in an Age of Anxiety” and “Energy Policy in an Age of Uncertainty” I still believe: Inherently safe nuclear energy technologies will continue to evolve; total U.S. energy output will rise more slowly […]
At the University of Tennessee (where I have been a distance student for the past three years) they regularly have webcasts of nuclear colloquia that they offer on a variety of topics. In commemoration of Dr. Weinberg I wanted to post a set of links to broadcasts of four colloquia he gave over the last […]
Alvin Weinberg passed away last night at the age of 91 at his home in Oak Ridge. He was the director of Oak Ridge National Lab from 1950 to 1970 and supervised the development and construction of two molten-salt reactors. In his book “The First Nuclear Era”, he stated that the reason he took the […]
Introduction and Basic Principles of Energy The generation and use of energy is central to the maintenance of organization. Life itself is a state of organization maintained by the continual use of sources of energy. Human civilization has reached the state it has by the widespread use of energy, and for the large fraction of […]