ATOMS AND ASHES

Gripping accounts of the six biggest nuclear disasters.

In his latest authoritative history, Plokhy, professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard, spreads the blame widely. Readers will be surprised to learn that, for a decade after Hiroshima, governments proclaimed that nuclear radiation was inconsequential. This changed in 1954 after America’s “Castle Bravo” test, in which an early nuclear weapon turned out to be unexpectedly powerful. The explosion dumped radioactive fallout over observers and affected islands almost 100 miles away. Government efforts could not completely reassure the public, and the anti-nuclear movement was born. The most famous American nuclear accident was also the least harmful. In 1979, a cooling failure at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island reactor produced a partial meltdown and some release of radiation. No employee was badly exposed, and studies showed no increase in cancer rates. However, the initial confusion and media coverage “delivered a major blow to the nuclear industry.” As Plokhy shows, the plutonium factory in Hanford, Washington, remains America’s largest environmental cleanup project, but the Soviet counterpart in the Urals is worse: The immense 1957 explosion of a neglected waste tank produced damage and disease comparable to Chernobyl. The explosions at Chernobyl in 1986 released at least 1 million times more radiation than those at Three Mile Island, killed thousands, and poisoned an immense area. Those responsible had ignored safety rules, and a proper containment building, long required in the West, would have confined the explosions. When the 2011 tsunami struck, Japan’s Fukushima reactors escaped harm, but waves knocked out the cooling system. Explosions released perhaps 10% of Chernobyl’s radiation levels and forced far fewer evacuations, but few experts take comfort in that. Plokhy concludes that these accidents produced only a temporary glitch in the spread of nuclear power, which can never be accident-free, and few outside the industry consider it a safe option for the future. Shelve this excellent account next to James Mahaffey’s Atomic Accidents and Kate Brown’s Plutopia.

Hair-raising, instructive, and irresistible reading.