Atoms and Ashes by Serhii Plokhy review – why another nuclear disaster is almost inevitable
The Guardian
A grim account of the downhill slide of atomic power since its heyday in the 1950s illustrates why it can never be the solution to global heating.
Once hailed as a source of electricity that would be too cheap to meter, atomic power has come a long way since the 1950s – mostly downhill. Far from being cost-free, nuclear-generated electricity is today more expensive than power produced by coal, gas, wind or solar plants while sites storing spent uranium and irradiated equipment litter the globe, a deadly radioactive legacy that will endure for hundreds of thousands of years. For good measure, most analysts now accept that the spread of atomic energy played a crucial role in driving nuclear weapon proliferation.
Then there are the disasters. Some of the world’s worst accidents have had nuclear origins and half a dozen especially egregious examples have been selected by Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy to support his thesis that atomic power is never going to be the energy saviour of our imperilled species. (...)
“Nuclear power is too costly and it takes too long to build a reactor and it is inherently unsafe not only for technological reasons but also because of the risk of human error.” (...)
[T]he nuclear industry has gone past its spring and summer years and should be allowed to reach a useful but limited autumn before it is quietly forgotten as a dark global experiment that should not be repeated.
‘Atoms and Ashes: From Bikini Atoll to Fukushima’ by Serhii Plokhy is published by Allen Lane
A digitally altered image of a US nuclear weapon test at Bikini Atoll, July 1946. Photograph: United States Department of Defense
Tags: #books #nuclear_power #atom #atomic_power #nuclear_disaster #nuclear_weapons #global_heating #global_warming #climate_change #climate_crisis #energy #nuclear_energy #nuclear_disasters #electricity #radiation #atomic_waste #nuclear_waste #Chernobyl #Three_Mile_Island #Fukushima #Windscale #Bikini_Atoll #hydrogen_bomb_test #radioactive_cloud #Pacific #Kyshtym #Urals #plutonium #radioactivity