Literature Recommendations

Anyone getting into nuclear chemistry, or radioactivity in general, wants a decent reference book on hand. These days most academic literature is written in English anyway. Here's my quick take on a few books I've at least partly read.

Nuclear and Radiochemistry by Karl Heinrich Lieser

"Nuclear and Radiochemistry" by Karl Heinrich Lieser. This is the classic reference we hand students in the 4th bachelor semester here at our university. Gives academics a solid overview of the theoretical basics of nuclear chemistry, with plenty of diagrams to illustrate things. Equations only show up where they're actually needed. Some editions even come with exercises. Lab work isn't really the focus. A few sloppy formulations got fixed in a later edition, affectionately nicknamed "Kratz-Lieser" after its authors. That said, it makes the content a bit tougher going.

Availability	1/5
Beginner-friendliness	2/5
Language	English/German
Technical-depth	5/5

Methoden der Kern- und Radiochemie by P. Hoffmann und K. H. Lieser

Comes as a slightly oversized A5 softcover. 224 pages of practical methods and experiments for the nuclear chemistry lab. Part one covers the basics, and only the theory you actually need for practice. Radioactive decay gets explained briefly, straight away tied back to the measurement techniques you'd use in the lab. No exotic decay types or effects you'd never see during training here. Radiation-protection quantities are covered too.

Part two lays out instructions for some genuinely exciting experiments, ones you could, in theory, replicate 1:1 in the lab.

Try to actually run them, though, and you notice this book was written in the golden age of nuclear chemistry. Take the "stock solution of 227Ac (0.1 to 1 MBq/ml)" needed for the "Separating 227Ac from its daughter products" experiment. Maybe a handful of professional labs have access to that today.

Still, the procedures are described in a lot of detail. Some are even accompanied by drawings of the setups. A book that's sadly gone out of practical reach, but still a fun read.

Availability	5/5
Beginner-friendliness	3/5
Language	German
Technical-depth	5/5

Discovery of Isotopes by Michael Thoennessen

What a great book! Page after page, it walks through the discovery history of isotopes in chronological order, radioactive and stable alike. New isotopes usually turned up in waves, often triggered by some new piece of kit, like the mass spectrometer, which suddenly opened up a whole new range of isotopes to find. The book captures that structure well. Every chapter has tables listing all the newly discovered isotopes with date, reference, and isotope type, usually one table per "discovery event." Take Francis W. Aston's first and second measurement series with his mass spectrograph, for instance.

It's a fairly recent book and gets updated every year with the latest discoveries. You can also read it online for free.

Sometimes I don't actually agree with the credited "discovery" of a given isotope. I feel like the full story behind that date often gets lost. Still, I'm giving it 5/5, since the criteria laid out at the start get applied consistently throughout.

Availability	5/5
Beginner-friendliness	5/5
Language	English
Technical-depth	5/5

European Atlas of Natural Radiation by JRC

And the award for the strangest print format goes to... (Who prints a book in A3, seriously?)

Jokes aside, it's a genuinely good book with valuable information. Fine to cite in a thesis for general facts. A book from 2019 obviously can't give you the latest details, but what it does cover is laid out clearly. Chapter 2, "General Background Information," would work great in physics class. It explains the relevant basics and also walks through practical measurements, right down to screenshots of a gamma measurement in GammaVision.

Chapter 3, "Terrestrial Radionuclides," gives a nice overview of how uranium, thorium, and 40K are distributed across Europe. If you're after geochemical explanations for why radionuclide levels are elevated in certain spots, though, you won't find them here. Later chapters cover radon and how it's measured, plus other radionuclides relevant to the environment and food. Geochemical tracers like cosmogenic radionuclides don't get a mention. Overall it's a very solid overview, especially on environmental radioactivity. Anyone writing a paper on the topic should definitely read the relevant chapter first.

This is a book I'd recommend to every school. Digitally, it's free here. As a print copy, you can order it from the Europe Direct library, though you'll have to cover about 20 euros in shipping. The book itself is supposedly free.

Availability	5/5
Beginner-friendliness	5/5
Language	English
Technical-depth	5/5