Dave's book review for Atoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disasters
Author: Serhii Plokhy
Pages: 368
Finished reading: 2026-07-11
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My Review
I finally saw HBO’s "Chernobyl" on Blu-Ray recently and it reignited my (morbid?) fascination with nuclear power. So when I saw this on the shelves at my local library, I picked it up.
I’m going to write some notes about the individual disasters and then my thoughts about nuclear power at the end. But before that, what did I think of the book?
I liked it. I learned a ton. My only real gripe was that Plokhy didn’t stick to a strict timeline when telling some of the stories. I often had to piece together dates or times in order to figure out when certain thing had happened. I assume this was done in the service of a particular narrative objective, but I found it to be genuinely confusing in several places. As in, "I thought that already happened? Wait, this is from before?" I’ve read plenty of other books that skip around in time and generally don’t get confused, so something about the way it was done didn’t work for me.
Atoms and Ashes covers 5 disasters, 4 of which are reactor-related (or storage related, in the case of Kyshtym).
I had certainly heard of the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test, but didn’t know anything about the secrecy and fallout. That was pretty eye-opening and I think it’s fair to label it a "disaster" despite the test otherwise working as intended.
The next two were new to me. I’m sure they were both mentioned in The Making of the Atomic Bomb (which I’m due to re-read), but I’d completely forgotten about them.
Kyshtym was not a reactor meltdown, but the problem and solution were very similar! It turns out, storing radioactive waste is a really challenging problem. And making a mistake is incredibly dangerous. Who knew?
Windscale exemplifies how seat-of-the-pants the early reactors were built and run. It has a largely happy ending (compared to what could have happened), but the whole thing was a white-knuckle ride:
I knew of Three Mile Island, but I didn’t have any of the details. Learning about Jimmy Carter’s extensive experience with nuclear reactors and his leadership was super interesting. I look forward to reading more about that some day in my US President Biography Reading Project.
Again, the whole thing seems so seat-of-the-pants.
Then the big one, of course, Chernobyl. Like I said, I just watched the HBO miniseries, so I recognized the names! The real events are a bit different, which is understandable, so it’s worth reading the real history.
And lastly, Fukushima. I remember when this one happened and it seems my memory of the broad strokes was largely accurate. But there were lots of details I didn’t know. It’s absolutely nuts how even the three offline reactors blew up.
I have to say, I used to be pretty bullish about nuclear power, believing it is a technology that can be harnessed safely.
I’ve changed my mind.
It’s not that you can’t run a nuclear reactor safely. Obviously most of the existing reactors around the world have not had major disasters. And newer designs probably are much, much safer.
But the problem is, humans can’t be trusted with this stuff. Governments suck at it and companies suck at it.
Even with decent safety systems and backups and workers willing to sacrifice themselves to protect the populace, radiation is so dangerous and the way things work at extreme temperatures and extreme amounts of radiation is so counter-intuitive that when mistakes happen, they get out of hand super fast.
I think Fukushima is the one that really convinced me that we just can’t have these things.
In the final chapter, Plokhy weighs the dangers of nuclear reactors to our need to provide power in the face of climate change. From what I’ve gathered, solar cells have made such huge leaps and bounds in the last couple years, that the equation may have completely changed. I don’t know if my impression is correct, but I hope so.