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Nuclear engineering
Of all branches of engineering, nuclear is most mired in politics.  It had a hard time during the past decades.  Yet, the 2001 US National Energy Policy recommended “the expansion of nuclear energy in the United States as a major component of our national energy policy.” (www.whitehouse.gov/energy/)  Is its darkest day over? 

References  

Hochfelder, D. 1999.  The promise of nuclear power.  Proceedings of the IEEE, 87: 1405-9.

Morone, J. G. and Woodhouse, E. J. 1989.  The Demise of Nuclear Energy?  New Haven: Yale University Press.

Okrent, D. 1981. Nuclear Reactor Safety, on the History of the Regulatory Process.  Madison: University Of Wisconsin Press.

OTA (Office of Technology Assessment).  1981a.  Nuclear Powerplant Standardization.  PB81-213589.  www.wws.princeton.edu/~ota/ns20/pubs_f.html.

OTA (Office of Technology Assessment). 1984.  Nuclear Power in an Age of Uncertainty.  OTA-E-216.  www.wws.princeton.edu/~ota/ns20/pubs_f.html.

Pool, R. 1997. Beyond Engineering.  New York: Oxford University Press.

Talbott, E. O. et al. 2000.  Mortality among the residents of the Three Mile Island accident area: 1979-1992.  Environmental Health Perspectives, 108: 545-52. (No detectable increase in cancer rates among the population.)

Walker, J. S. 2000.  Permissible Dose: a History of Radiation Protection in the Twentieth Century.  Berkeley: University of California Press.

Weinberg, A. M. 1992.  Nuclear Reactions: Science and Trans-science.  New York: American Institute of Physics.

Wolfson, R. 1991.  Nuclear Choices: a Citizen’s Guide to Nuclear Technology. Cambridge: MIT Press.

The future

Brown, S. F.  2002.  How do you feel about nuclear power now?  Fortune, March 4, pp. 130-4.

Cohn, L. and Carey, J. 2001.  A comeback for nukes?  Businessweek, April 23: 38-40.

Corradini, M. et al. 2000.  The future of university nuclear engineering programs and university research and training reactors.  At www.nuclear.gov/nerac/finalblue.pdf.

Ebinger, C. K. 1991.  Nuclear Power: the Promise of New Technologies.

Garwin, R. L. and Charpak, G. 2001.  Megawatts and Megatons.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Holdren, J. P. 2001.  Changing global and social determinants for nuclear power.  The Bridge, 31(3).  www.nae.edu.

Lowinger, T. C. and Hinman, G. W., eds. 1994.  Nuclear Power at the Crossroads.  Boulder CO: ICEEE.

Moore, T. 2000.  License renewal revitalizes the nuclear industry.  EPRI Journal, 25(3): 8-17.

Nordhaus, W. D. 1997.  The Swedish Nuclear Dilemma.  Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future.

Quinn, E. L. 2001.  U.S. commercial nuclear power industry: assessment for Department of Energy Information Agency.  www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_reactors

Sailor, W. C., et al. 2000.  A nuclear solution to climate change?  Science, 288: 1177-8.

Talbot, D. 2002.  The next nuclear plant.  Technology Review, 105(1): 54-9.

The Bridge, 31(3) (Fall, 2001), special issue on “The future of nuclear energy.”