Overview

Nuclear power is not clean, cheap or safe. 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 US however, powerful corporations and a compliant government still defend nuclear power, while promising billion-dollar bailouts to operators. Each new disaster demonstrates that the nucelar industry and governments lie to avoid panic and to preserve the myth of safe, clean nuclear power. 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 chronicles the problems of ageing reactors, uncovers the costly challenge of decommissioning, explores the industry's greatest seismic risks, and explains how solar flares could black our power grids, causing the world's 400-plus reactors to self-destruct. This powerful expose concludes with a roundup of proven and potential energy solutions that can replace nuclear technology with a 'Renewable Renaissance', combined with conservation programmes that can cleanse the air and cool the planet.

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9781603584777

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Reviews

This powerful solartopian screed leaves no doubt that the experiment with atomic energy is the most dangerous and expensive technological failure in human history. Gar Smith writes with extraordinary power and clarity on an industry whose failure threatens the future of our species-ecologically, economically, and in terms of biological survival. Nuclear Roulette is a strong signpost pointing straight to a green-powered world, where we get our energy cheaper, safer, cleaner, community-owned, and quicker. Take this book with you next time you're out shutting a nuke or opening a wind farm. --Harvey Wasserman, author of SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, and editor of www.nukefree.org.

Choice- Journalist Smith (editor emer., Earth Island Journal) has responded to the Fukushima disaster with an avalanche of condemnation of everything nuclear with zeal and sometimes enthusiastic overkill. Nuclear power advocates will be challenged and opponents will be encouraged by the documented hazards related to nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants. Many major oversights and bad decisions have contributed to health concerns and loss of life. Smith vividly demonstrates that nuclear power plants require NASA-type engineering and well-trained operators. He discusses how the military's use of uranium-235 left a legacy of high-level nuclear waste and a proliferation of plutonium for weapons. He also addresses the problems of nuclear waste storage . Summing Up: Recommended. With reservations.

If ever there was a book that people need to read at this moment in the history of the world it is Nuclear Roulette. Comprehensively referenced, it is not only an encyclopedia of the nuclear age related specifically to nuclear power, it is a potent warning of the almost incomprehensible dangers that lie ahead, as well as the damage that has already contaminated portions of our beloved planet beyond repair. I highly recommend this wonderful book to all who care about our children, future generations, and the thirty million other species that cohabit this earth with us. --Dr. Helen Caldicott, pediatrician, founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and author of Nuclear Madness and Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer

Author Information

Gar Smith is editor emeritus of Earth Island Journal, a Project Censored award-winning investigative journalist, and co-founder of Environmentalists Against War. He has covered revolutions in Central America and has engaged in environmental campaigns on three continents. He lives a low-impact, solar-assisted lifestyle in Berkeley, California.

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