It strikes fear into the hearts of millions across the world. It could destroy a city with a single blow. It also provides America with 20% of its electrical energy and is the number one source of emission-free energy in the world (NMC-Nuclear Facts-General Information, 2004, p.1). It is nuclear energy. The discovery of nuclear energy and radiation can be traced back to a man named Antoine Henri Becquerel. Becquerel was born in Paris on December 15, 1852. In 1896, Becquerel had a discussion with Henri Poincaré about the radiation which had been discovered recently by Röntgen. Becquerel decided to investigate the discoveries further. He had inherited a supply of uranium salts from his father. When the salts were placed near a photographic place covered with opaque, which means basically no light would get through it, the photographic plate was found to be fogged. The phenomenon was found to be the same with all of the uranium salts that Becquerel used. He concluded that this fogging of the photographic plate was a property of uranium. Later, Becquerel showed that these "rays" that were being emitted from the uranium caused gases to ionize and that the rays from uranium were completely different from x-rays because they could be deflected by electric or magnetic fields (Nobel Lectures,1967, p.1).
             With this discovery of radiation, the nuclear power field grew rapidly. Today, nuclear energy is around us every day. Nuclear energy can be used in two main ways; power plants and bombs. There are also many myths about nuclear energy that should be cleared up as well. First is the nuclear bomb. The nuclear bomb traces its roots to World War II. The Germans and the Allies were racing to develop the first atomic bomb. On October 12, 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the government funding of atomic research (Best,1998, p.1). There are two main types of bombs that release energy from the nuclei of atoms. The simplest of the two ...