Presents an account of significant energy sources, evaluated according to their capacity, reliability, cost, safety and effects on the environment. This book considers non-renewable sources (for example, coal, oil, gas and nuclear fuel) together with renewable sources like wood, hydro, biomass, wind, solar, geothermal, ocean thermal, and tidal.

Thomas Brody had one of the most powerful and wide-ranging intellects of his generation. Although primarily a physicist who worked on statistical prob lems in nuclear physics, on probability theory and on computational physics he had an extensive knowledge of the philosophy of science and of philosophy, and was fluent in many languages. He is well-known among physicists for the Brody-Moshinsky transformation but his extensive work on probability and on the philosophy of science remained almost unknown. This was because the originality of his ideas entailed many lengthy battles with...

In recent years there has been growing interest in the nucleon-nucleon correl ations inside nuclei. In many respects the motions of the nucleons can be very well described by an overall mean field, so that the motion of each nucleon is governed by the mean field due to all the other nucleons. This concept underlies the Fermi-gas, Hartree-Fock and shell models and has enabled a range of nuclear properties to be calculated, often to surprising accuracy. It gradually became clear, however, that these mean-field models are limited by the effects due to the very strong interactions between the...

This text surveys available energy sources and their effects on the environment in the context of moral imperatives and political realities. It considers: the political aspects of the energy crisis; nuclear power; effects on the environment; and choosing the best energy sources.