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Fallout by Fred Pearce
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Fallout

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Fallout by Fred Pearce
Ebook
May 22, 2018 | ISBN 9780807092507

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  • May 22, 2018 | ISBN 9780807092507

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Product Details

Praise

“Pearce insightfully dissects the profound psychological and political impact nuclear technology has had on humankind and unflinchingly questions whether it might be time to acknowledge that its promises for both energy and defense have been largely unfulfilled.”
Booklist

“In Fallout, Mr. Pearce, a veteran science journalist, travels the world to pin down what he calls ‘the radioactive legacies of the nuclear age.’ He moves between weaponry and energy, cataloguing mistakes, dishonesty and irrational fears. The result is a panorama of atomic grotesquerie that is at once troubling, surprising and ruthlessly entertaining.”
The Economist

“For any reader who craves a clear-headed examination of the tangled relationship between a powerful technology and human politics, foibles, fears, and arrogance, Fallout is the definitive look at humanity’s nuclear adventure.”
Midwest Book Review

“This tour de force by Fred Pearce takes the reader on a riveting journey through nuclear installations and radioactive landscapes around the world. A blend of firsthand reporting and historical research, Pearce’s prose reads easily while simultaneously asking the hard questions. The author’s penetrating political eye and sober scientific gaze combine to reveal the many reasons, including toxic legacies of fear and deception, that it’s time to call an end to the nuclear age. Read this book as if the future depended on it.”
—Betsy Hartmann, author of The America Syndrome: Apocalypse, War and Our Call to Greatness

Table Of Contents

A Note on Units

INTRODUCTION
Anthropocene Journey

PART ONE: THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS

CHAPTER 1
Hiroshima: An Invisible Scar

CHAPTER 2
Critical Mass: MAUD in the Nuclear Garden

CHAPTER 3
Las Vegas: Every Mushroom Cloud Has a Silver Lining

CHAPTER 4
Pacific Tests: Godzilla and the Lucky Dragon

CHAPTER 5
Semipalatinsk: Secrets of the Steppe

CHAPTER 6
Plutonium Mountain: Proliferation Paradise

PART TWO: COLD WAR AND HOT PARTICLES

CHAPTER 7
Mayak: “Pressed for Time” Behind the Urals

CHAPTER 8
Metlino: Even the Samovars Were Radioactive

CHAPTER 9
Rocky Flats: Plutonium in the Snake Pit

CHAPTER 10
Colorado Silos: Uncle Sam’s Nuclear Heartland

CHAPTER 11
Broken Arrows: Dr. Strangelove and the Radioactive Rabbits

CHAPTER 12
Windscale Fire: “A Cover Op, Plain and Simple”

PART THREE: ATOMS FOR PEACE

CHAPTER 13
Three Mile Island: How Not to Run a Power Plant

CHAPTER 14
Chernobyl: A “Beautiful” Disaster

CHAPTER 15
Chernobyl: Vodka and Fallot

CHAPTER 16
Chernobyl: Hunting in Packs

CHAPTER 17
Fukushima: A Scorpion’s Discovery

CHAPTER 18
Fukushima: Baba’s Homecoming

CHAPTER 19
Radiophobia: The Ghost at Fukushima

CHAPTER 20
Millisieverts: A Dose of Reason

PART FOUR: CLEANING UP

CHAPTER 21
Sizewell: The Nuclear Laundryman

CHAPTER 22
Sellafield: Stone Circles and Nuclear Legacies

CHAPTER 23
Hanford: Decommissioning an Industry

CHAPTER 24
Gorleben: Passport to a Non-Nuclear Future?

CHAPTER 25
Waste: Out of Harm’s Way

CONCLUSION
Making Peace in Nagasaki

Glossary
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

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