SCIENCE
Generating fear
STEPHEN WALKER gives a nervous welcome to a history of nuclear power, which focuses on the accidents and the disasters that have plagued the sector
Atoms and Ashes:
From Bikini Atoll to Fukushima by Serhii Plokhy Allen Lane, 368 pages, £25
Unless most life as we know it has been wiped off the face of the planet by the time this review comes out, I’d urge you to pick up this book – and, as its author warns in his stark preface, be terrified. Serhii Plokhy is one of those historians whose finger seems to be unerringly on the pulse of current events. Just a year ago, he gave us Nuclear Folly, a dramatic retelling of when the world came close to nuclear Armageddon during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Now in Atoms and Ashes, he takes a truly chilling look at nuclear weaponry’s twin – nuclear power.