Through bibliometrics and text analysis, the paper investigates the general situation and historical characteristics of popular nuclear science books in mainland China from 1949 to 2017. The result shows that the three publishing upsurges during that period had contributed to the development of China's nuclear industry. The book publication status basically reflected the development level of China's nuclear science and technology and nuclear energy policy in that period, it also reflected the instability of nuclear science popularization and a relatively low level at which people recognized nuclear power in China. Based on the aforementioned analysis, two suggestions are put forward for the current and future nuclear science popularization.

nuclear science popularization  /  popular science books  /  science popularization history