I’ve been reading Midnight in Chernobyl, by Adam Higginbotham. The subtitle is The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster.
I’m not sure what Russians think of it, but it certainly is a detailed foray based on available documentation and eyewitness accounts. Words like secrecy, propaganda, and myth are used to describe the aftermath. It’s an enlightening yet depressing read so far and I’m sure it’s only going to be more of those things as I go deeper.
Soviet subterfuge aside (the disaster unfolded in 1986), we live less than five miles, as the crow flies, from a nuclear power plant, and I look at the towers in a different way since starting to read this book. I hope and pray that the people who work there are at the top of their game, day in and day out, because they’re working with forces that can turn on us and make life absolutely horrifying and miserable.
In the absence of expertise and constant vigilance—and because of shoddy workmanship and unrealistic construction schedules and pressure from upper management along the way—a nuclear power plant can be a monumentally tragic accident waiting to happen. You can’t half-ass anything. You’re harnessing the power of nuclear fission. There’s no room for mismanagement or incompetence, no room for letting up or coasting or getting comfortable with your job. You keep your eyes on the ball all the time.
Those who advocate for nuclear power as a piece of the ongoing answer to our energy needs must surely recognize the ongoing risk. There is no room for complacency or a cavalier attitude. Nuclear power may contribute smaller amounts of greenhouse gases, but it’s always a calculated risk, playing with fire, in some ways a gigantic concession we make just so we can power our commerce and charge our playthings.
To speak of it as clean energy is at the very least misleading. OK, an outright lie. Any proponent has to acknowledge the attached Brobdingnagian strings, and ask if there aren’t safer ways to keep the lights on.
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