Nuclear Energy: Amazing Atoms

Children's Literature - Barbara L. Talcroft

This "Powering Our World" series entry appears designed to bring information about energy sources to a younger audience than usual. The reader-friendly, slim, square books cover basic information in a format using large, sans serif type and a color photo for each page of text (possibly putting off older readers because any photographs of children are of primary-age students). That said, the content is accurate, and the illustrations are appropriate and well chosen. In this book, students are introduced to atomic particles (protons, electrons, neutrons) circling around a nucleus, and the two ways energy is released: fusion—as in the Sun—and fission, when uranium atoms break apart. As a reaction occurs in a nuclear plant, water is heated and used to make electricity in a generator. Nuclear plants are controversial—although tempting to build, their problems may be too great to make them safe. Nuclear energy does not pollute, but uranium is nonrenewable, mining destroys land, and, worst of all, toxic waste is produced. (The author warns that nuclear waste will leak radiation for some 100,000 years.) The danger of accidents is illustrated by the bleak picture of an abandoned town near Chernobyl; another photo shows costumed women protesting the proposed nuclear waste dump under Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Each book includes a fuel time line and a glossary, but teachers will need to plan additional activities and projects, with field trips to nearby sources of energy production. Reviewer: Barbara L. Talcroft