Too Dumb to Meter: Follies, Foibles, Dead Ends and Duds on the U.S. Road to Atomic Energy

 

Friends and Colleagues,

I’m writing to announce publication of my new book Too Dumb to Meter:
Follies, Foibles, Dead Ends and Duds on the U.S. Road to Atomic
Energy, which is now available at the CreateSpace bookstore
(https://www.createspace.com/3698924)  and Amazon.com in printed form
and (coming soon) at Amazon as a Kindle e-book. Too Dumb to Meter will
also soon be available at other bookstores.

More information about the the book and the book project is available
at the website www.toodumb.org. The site includes information about
the book,  along with a bonus chapter, a picture gallery, and the “Too
Dumb Film Festival.”

Too Dumb to Meter explores the history of misguided and mismanaged
projects that were pursued in the name of fostering uses of atomic
energy in the post-World War II era.

When World War II ended, the U.S. went wild for atomic energy. The
atom would be the rage of the age, transforming civilization, solving
a multitude of problems, and providing an endless source of energy for
time to come. It didn’t quite work out.

The book presents a different story that often is far more interesting
and amusing. It’s a cautionary account of the perils of government
hubris, public hysteria, and planning gone wild. Covering misguided
policy, misunderstood history, misapplied engineering, and mistaken
economics, it details some of the things that went wrong, often
terribly and expensively wrong, from the very first conception through
to the failed implementation. It discusses the stubborn belief that
big science, big engineering, and big government money provide the
means to solve any technical problem.

Too Dumb to Meter chronicles failed efforts to develop a variety of
atom-powered flying machines from bombers to air-breathing cruise
missiles to rockets and bomb-propelled space craft. It discusses the
mishaps encountered when the U.S. tried to substitute H-bombs for
dynamite and diesel engines in rearranging the landscape. It examines
the nation’s infatuation with what it thought was a scarce and
expensive mineral -- uranium -- which turned out to be plentiful and
cheap. And it dissects the repeated inability of the nation to figure
out what to do with what was left over from its endeavors: messy and
dangerous radioactive waste.

The book also puts these episodes into context, discussing the
formation of the post-war enterprise to push atomic energy, including
the Atomic Energy Commission and the congressional Joint Committee on
Atomic Energy.


I hope you enjoy the book.

Ken Maize