I’ve spent a few years of my life aboard navy submarines and, much later, I lived practically next door to the Hanford site in Washington. I can tell you from first hand experience that those brainy, nerdish types who earn their living near nuclear reactors and radioactive substances are fairly interesting individuals.

First of all, most of them are above-average intelligent. Ask a ‘nuke’ about the atomic number of cobalt and you have a 97% chance that you’ll get a 45 minute dissertation and an 84% chance that they’ll eventually say, “twenty seven.”

Secondly, they all have fascinating tales to tell. Imagine having a job where a slip-up could mean an extended stay in a high pressure anti-contamination shower and a follow up federal investigation—not to mention a spot on the six o’clock TV news. A hundred bad days = a hundred good stories.

Atomic Adventures is an assembled collection of such stories. Some of them are the author’s own (see: experiments in cold fusion); others are events that happened to someone else. There are a few incidents (and accidents) recounted here that require a rudimentary understanding of quantum mechanics. Although Mahaffey valiantly tries to give lay level explanations (sans Schrödinger's cat) I’m not certain he is always successful. Still, for the science-minded among us, it is a very good read.