Almost 145 000 Americans fled their homes in and around Harrisburg Pennsylvania in late March
1979 hoping to save themselves from an invisible enemy: radiation. The reactor at the nearby
Three Mile Island nuclear power plant had gone into partial meltdown and scientists feared an
explosion that could spread radiation throughout the eastern United States. Thankfully the
explosion never took place-but the accident left deep scars in the American psyche all but
ending the nation's love affair with nuclear power. In Atoms and Ashes Serhii Plokhy recounts
the dramatic history of Three Mile Island and five more accidents that that have dogged the
nuclear industry in its military and civil incarnations: the disastrous fallout caused by the
testing of the hydrogen bomb in the Bikini Atoll in 1954 the Kyshtym nuclear disaster in the
USSR which polluted a good part of the Urals the Windscale fire the worst nuclear accident
in the UK's history back to the USSR with Chernobyl the result of a flawed reactor design
leading to the exodus of 350 000 people and most recently Fukushima in Japan triggered by
an earthquake and a tsunami a disaster on a par with Chernobyl and whose clean-up will not
take place in our lifetime. Through the stories of these six terrifying incidents Plokhy
explores the risks of nuclear power both for military and peaceful purposes while offering a
vivid account of how individuals and governments make decisions under extraordinary
circumstances. Today there are 440 nuclear reactors operating throughout the world with
nuclear power providing 10 percent of global electricity. Yet as the world seeks to reduce
carbon emissions to combat climate change the question arises: Just how safe is nuclear
energy?
