Nuclear Roulette: The Truth About the Most Dangerous Energy Source on Earth (paperback, 280 pages) by Gar Smith demolishes the myths about the safety and efficiency of nuclear power.
Nuclear power is not clean, cheap, or safe and this book proves it. With Three Mile Island,
Chernobyl, and Fukushima, the nuclear industry's record of catastrophic
failures now averages one major disaster every decade. After three
US-designed plants exploded in Japan, many countries moved to abandon
reactors for renewables. In the United States, however, powerful
corporations and a compliant government still defend nuclear power while
promising billion-dollar bailouts to operators.
Each new disaster demonstrates that the nuclear industry and
governments lie to avoid panic, to preserve the myth of safe, clean
nuclear power, and to sustain government subsidies. Tokyo and Washington
both covered up Fukushima's radiation risks and when confronted with
damning evidence simply raised the levels of acceptable risk to match
the greater levels of exposure.
Nuclear Roulette dismantles the core arguments behind the
nuclear-industrial complex's Nuclear Renaissance. While some critiques
are familiar nuclear power is too costly, too dangerous, and too
unstable others are surprising: Nuclear Roulette exposes
historic links to nuclear weapons, impacts on indigenous lands and
lives, and the ways in which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission too often
takes its lead from industry, rewriting rules to keep failing plants in
compliance. Nuclear Roulette cites NRC records showing how
corporations routinely defer maintenance and lists resulting near-misses in the US, which average more than one per month.
Nuclear Roulette chronicles the problems of aging reactors,
uncovers the costly challenge of decommissioning, explores the
industry's greatest seismic risks (not on California's quake-prone coast
but in the Midwest and Southeast) and explains how solar flares could
black out power grids, causing the world's 400-plus reactors to
self-destruct. This powerful exposé concludes with a roundup of proven
and potential energy solutions that can replace nuclear technology with a Renewable Renaissance, combined with conservation programs that can
cleanse the air, and cool the planet. Foreword by Ernest Callenbach and Jerry Mander |
