Nuclear Weapons: What You Need to Know (review)

Jeremy Bernstein is one of the rare scientists who can write about complex subjects in prose that is accessible to the lay public. He is the author of dozens of technical papers as well as several books on science and scientists. He decided to write this book because of “the appalling lack of understanding” (p. 6) of nuclear basics that he found prevalent in many media reports and commentaries on nuclear weapons. He is keenly aware that he is covering well-trodden ground, but he submits that new information and some omissions in the existing literature make room for another look at “a living subject about which the potential for discussion and discovery seems inexhaustible” (p. 9).

Bernstein’s book is part primer, part history, and part memoir. The author provides an elegant account of the scientific discoveries that culminated in nuclear fission, and later, fusion. Much of this is familiar to historians of science and technology, but Bernstein adds details that will be of interest to them. He also gives brief and illuminating biographical sketches of some of the leading scientists whose work led to the development of the atomic bomb. His coverage of specific topics is episodic and rather arbitrary. More than half of the book is devoted to the complexities of fission and the ingenious experimentation, realizations, and calculations that eventually produced both uranium- and plutonium-fueled weapons during World War II. Bernstein also offers chapters on his own experience in witnessing an atomic test shot in Nevada in 1957, on Edward Teller and the fusion bomb, on atomic spies Theodore Hall and Klaus Fuchs, and on Pakistani A. Q. Khan’s role in nuclear proliferation.

The book is a narrative rather than a highly interpretive analysis. Bernstein does not draw grand conclusions or offer policy prescriptions. Indeed, he gives little attention to nuclear politics and diplomacy. His major purpose in writing the book was to inform and elevate discussion of scientific issues relating to the control of nuclear weapons, and, by any standard, he admirably accomplishes his objective. Despite his skill as a writer, his explanations of nuclear science will be heavy lifting for the lay audience he seeks to reach. But that is an unavoidable burden of explaining nuclear energy, and Bernstein’s book should be required reading for anyone who studies, considers, or reports on the subject.