Enzo De Sanctis is Director of Research Emeritus at the Frascati Laboratory of INFN, Member of the Energy Group of the European Physical Society, and Associate-Editor of the Journals EPJ-Plus, Il Nuovo Cimento and Il Nuovo Saggiatore.
He served in a number of national and international scientific committees, among which: EPJ-A (Editor in Chief), Italian Physical Society (Vice President and Councilor); INFN Board of Directors; OECD Megascience Forum; Editorial Board of Physical Review C; CERN-NuPECC Working Group for the ELFE project (Director); Programme Advisory Committee of JLab; Council of Frascati Laboratory, INFN National Committee for Nuclear Physics.
He has been working on experimental nuclear and hadron physics for more than 45 years, leading research projects at the accelerators of Frascati, Saclay, Bonn, DESY (Hamburg) and Jlab (Newport News, VA, USA).
He has published more than 300 papers on refereed, international journals. He is also co-author of six physicsbooks for university students and he has co-edited ten proceedings of Conferences/Workshops.

Stefano Monti is the Scientific Secretary of the IAEA's Technical Working Group on Fast Reactors (TWG-FR) and member of the Publication Committee. He received his degree in Nuclear Engineering at University of Bologna in 1982. He. For over 30 years he has been working on several national and international projects and programmes on advanced nuclear systems, leading a number of international research groups. As Director of Research at ENEA, he was Head of Nuclear Fission Division, President of SIET, and scientific coordinator of the R&D programme on nuclear fission.
He served in a number of national and international nuclear committees, among which: the INFN Board of Directors, the Steering Committee and the NDC Committee of the OECD-NEA, the IAEA TWG-FR, the Sustainable Nuclear Energy Technology Platform, the European Sustainable Nuclear Industrial Initiative and the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) on Nuclear Materials.

Provides the physics basis to lead the reader into a detailed presentation of nuclear fission and the relevant topics in nuclear energy

Discusses nuclear energy issues of great scientific importance and also of great public interest

Written in a clear and easy to follow style

Offers many solved problems strategically placed throughout the text and also useful collections of problems at the end of the chapters

Presents the technical/scientific aspects as well as the medical and policy aspects

Written by a prominent expert in nuclear physics and an influencial nuclear engineer

Includes supplementary material: [...]

Part I. Nuclear Physics and Radioactivity.- 1. The Building Blocks of Matter.- 2. Radioactivity and Penetrating Power of Nuclear Radiation.- 3. Nuclear Reactions and Fission.- Part II. Nuclear Energy from Nuclear Fission.- 4. Nuclear Reactors.- 5. Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection.- 6. Management of Radioactive Waste.- Glossary.