A comprehensive historical record of nuclear accidents and radiation incidents worldwide, including waste disposal messes, lost nuclear subs, and leaky reactors. “A book about accidents and risk, the nature of chance and the oppressive weight of secrecy, about official lies and the true cost of atomic energy, it incorporates technical information, history, and politics into a searing document.”
Daniel Ford, former executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, explains what happened at Three Mile Island, including the development of the plant, the causes of the accident and how it was handled, who and what is to blame, and what Three Mile Island means to the future of nuclear power.
An illustrated book about the history of nuclear power, along with explanations of how nuclear power works. Written in 1961 by the wife of nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi, the book itself is a piece of history.
The story of nuclear testing in Nevada in the 1950s and 1960s, and the subsequent health effects on the unsuspecting people downwind in Nevada, Utah and Arizona. The book is framed around the 1982 trial by cancer victims and their survivors, which the author, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, attended.
Historian Todd Tucker investigates the story of the only fatal nuclear meltdown in US history, which took place at a testing station in rural Idaho in 1961. “A shocking tale of negligence and subterfuge... the Army and its contractors had deliberately obscured the true cases of this terrible accident, the result of poor engineering as much as uncontrolled passions.”
In order to learn about the health effects of plutonium, the Manhattan Project’s medical doctors secretly injected eighteen patients across the country with plutonium. This was covered up, even from the patients themselves, for over fifty years
The story of the Atomic Energy Commission's atomic bomb testing in Southwestern Utah and Eastern Nevada in the early 1950s. Most of the bombs were more powerful than Hiroshima, yet the government assured the local population that they were safe, and denied responsibility for their ensuing illness.
The true story of the thousands of women who worked on the Manhattan Project in the secret city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee during World War II. Nine women are highlighted in this book: janitors, chemists, secretaries, even factory workers who unknowingly separated uranium.
Recommended by Fairewinds board member Les Kanat, “We Almost Lost Detroit” details the history of Fermi 1, America’s first commercial breeder reactor, with particular emphasis on the partial meltdown that occurred in 1966 and ultimately closed the plant. This partial meltdown could have left the Detroit region virtually uninhabitable. This history book is particularly relevant today, as Detroit Edison attempts to open another reactor on the Fermi site.
“What kind of person puts a successful career at risk in order to warn the public of a dangerous or illegal situation? What are the consequences of such an action, and how do these people and their families deal with the pressure? What laws protect them, and where can they turn for support? The often surprising answers are in this book, the first large-scale, long-term study of sixty-four courageous ethical resisters and their spouses.”
Haunting and fascinating photos of Chernobyl today, with text by the photographer. “In the first years after the accident our motto was- ‘Lets Save Chernobyl!’ Now, everyone just says ‘Let the grass grow through it...’ ”
We linked to the free online edition of this book, but it is also available on Amazon, too.
Personal accounts of the Chernobyl tragedy by those who experienced it, from everyday citizens to firefighters to the clean up crew. Comprised of interviews in monologue form.
“The idea for a book about the secret lives of people exposed in one way or another to radioactivity-- the victims, the whistleblowers, the protesters, the speculators, the gangsters and terrorists-- came to me on a visit to Frenchman Flats in the summer of 1994 as I was standing at the edge of the Sedan crater and gazing into the void...”
Author(s): Lorraine Rekmans, Keith Lewis and Anabel Dwyer (2003)
Present day testimonies and history about the effects of the nuclear industry on an indigenous group in North America.
Author: Helen Caldicott (1997)
A memoir by Australian physician Dr. Helen Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, “which did perhaps more than any other group to thrust the nuclear issue under the public eye.”
Recommended by Fairewinds board member Chiho Kaneko, “Refuge” is the powerful true story of a family in Utah who are experiencing the health effects of atomic bomb testing. Williams, a naturalist and writer, parallels the story of her mother dying of radiation-induced cancer with the environmental changes occurring simultaneously, as the Great Salt Lake rises to record heights and threatens local wildlife.
Flenniken grew up in a community of Hanford workers in Washington state at the height of the Cold War, where "every father I knew disappeared to fuel the bomb." The author herself worked as an engineer at Hanford for three years. After the release of declassified documents contradicting the safe world she knew as a child, and the radiation-induced illnesses of family friends, Flenniken makes sense of life at Hanford in this much lauded collection of poems.
Kelly McMasters grew up loving her blue-collar hometown of Shirley. A service-town to the glittering Hamptons on the east end of Long Island, the place, though hardscrabble, was full of strong, hard-working families and an abundance of natural beauty. Comforted by the rhythms of small-town life, Kelly and her neighbors were lulled into a sense of safety. But while they were going to work and school, setting off fireworks at Fourth of July barbecues, or jumping through sprinklers in summertime, a deadly combination of working class shame and the environmental catastrophe of a nearby leaking nuclear laboratory began to boil over...
A collection of photos and interviews from residents who experienced the Three Mile Island nuclear accident first-hand. Mr. Del Tredici and his photographs appear in epidemiologist Dr. Steve Wing's presentation about cancer rates increasing after the TMI accident (Part 1) and Part 2 here.
Author(s): National Research Council Board on Radiation Effects Research (2003)
“The committee believes that the CDC-NCI (Center for Disease Control- National Cancer Institute) working group performed a very competent feasibility assessment of the geographic distribution of probable doses to the population, the projected risks associated with those does, and a potential communication plan. However, the committee has identified some weaknesses in the feasibility study and the draft report and has a number of suggestions for improvements.”
Fairewinds Energy Education is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to furthering public understanding of nuclear power and nuclear safety related issues.
