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Red Alert: The Worldwide Dangers of Nuclear Power
What are the real dangers of nuclear power? Chernobyl graphically illustrated the potential for disaster hut what is the truth about the civil nuclear industry worldwide, especially in Britain where Peter Walker, the Energy Minister, described it in 1986 as The safest form of energy Judith Cook, award-winning journalist and author of The Price of Freedom and Who Killed Hilda Murrell?, focuses on the hazards of nuclear power. In her much-needed investigation, she looks at the industry worldwide, at the scarcely credible record of accidents, mishaps, mismanagement and political manipulation. Her account is written for the lay person who is not satisfied with bland government assurances and who wants to reach an informed opinion. Her conclusions are chilling. If you want to know the real hazards of nuclear power - what's gone wrong in the past, what could go wrong in the future - this books is essential reading.
331 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1986
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About the author
Judith Cook
52 books10 followersJudith Cook was a lecturer in theatre at the University of Exeter. She wrote several mysteries based on the casebooks of Dr Simon Forman, an Elizabethan doctor and astrologer.
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April 12, 2019
Book 14 of Nuclear Studies:
This book. This book is an anti-nuclear book. This book uses citations from other anti-nuclear activists. This book was unbelievably inaccurate.
Judith Cook was a journalist for the Guardian, so I expected a lot of her book. However, she is incredibly unobjective, blinded by perhaps her own fear of nuclear power or by the many misunderstandings peppering her discourse. Anti-nuclear activists tend to focus on the dangers of nuclear power. Unfortunately, this often devolves into fear-mongering rhetoric when it's a discussion we do need to have. This is the trap that Cook falls into and it only worsens as the book progresses.
For one, she begins the book with a lengthy block quote from one of Helen Caldicott's books (I have not yet read this one.). Caldicott, a self-proclaimed nuclear expert, speaks on the dangers of plutonium in this quote. It seems, though, that her understanding of plutonium seems misinformed. I tried to research whether scientists' knowledge about plutonium was limited in the time period during which this book was written, but I couldn't find anything specific. Caldicott says that less than a gram of plutonium inhaled is fatal - plutonium toxicity is debated but it seems to be consensus that if inhaled, it MAY lead to fatal cancer (Note that we don’t actually know HOW MUCH could be fatal because individual factors affect cancer development and death.). She says that plutonium primarily accumulates in the lungs (She conveniently leaves out that this is only the case if exposure is through inhalation). By citing Caldicott, Cook promotes her as an expert and immediately demonstrates that facts don't matter to her as much as her argument.
Cook then speaks on many different nuclear incidents that have occurred. Many of these I have never heard of. I spent my time Googling many of the power plants to verify her information. I thought that surely 30 years later, credible sources would contain even a mention of any of these. I had a hard time verifying her claims. But what made me more suspicious of Cook is that she doesn't cite everything. She includes a very short list of chapter citations in the back. Some of the incidents that I could find on the Internet were cited. Many of them had no citation and were unverified by the Internet.
Cook's book is also marred by misinformation. She has some of the facts about nuclear power correct, but falsehoods are particularly insidious when mixed with half-truths. While there are many examples of misinformation, I will only touch on one that truly bothered me. Cook unambiguously states that alpha rays are the most dangerous and that gamma rays are the least dangerous with absolutely no further details than those. Cook does not specify under what conditions each of those might be dangerous, as danger levels vary depending on the situational exposure (i.e. are you ingesting the alpha rays or not?). With this statement, she indicates that she is unwilling to explain scientific theory in a non-biased manner. And as for the citation for this bold statement? None exists.
Near the end of the book, Cook has a chapter dedicated to how civil liberties will be compromised by nuclear power. She talks about a special police force not under any authority in the U.K. and to boot, they are so secret that no one knows anything about them. However, she knows that this police force for the nuclear industry can shoot on suspicion and search without a warrant. Apparently they will usher in a police state and force people into work camps. I laughed out loud. She's a conspiracy theorist. A Google search told me that, yes, the U.K. had a nuclear police force (dissolved in 2005), but the powers she states are not mentioned. I would think that her information would be verified 30 years later by discovery and transparency but nothing exists to verify her. And, of course, there's not a citation. She discusses Silkwood and Murrell in the same vein, as a conspiracy theory that they were killed by the nuclear industry. While I don't know if this is true or not, in the last fifteen years, some guy came out and said that he was part of a group that murdered Murrell for her money. Maybe he's bluffing, but it's clear that other possibilities exist for these deaths.
Cook ends the book with an afterword about Chernobyl, and it is here that her fear-mongering reaches the ultimate high. Of course, she speaks about Chernobyl based on the limited knowledge that people had at that time, but she brushes away the theories that don't support fear. She says the accident could happen in Western plants, that they are as safe as ours, and that if the Soviet Union promised safe nuclear power and couldn't deliver, surely we Westerners are going to be misled, too. There could be a good point here, only we know now that the RBMK reactors were notoriously dangerous, operating with a positive void-coefficient (not present in Western reactors), operating without containment, and operating with untrained operators who were following orders of people who didn't know what they were doing either.
Cook is wrong again. This book is factually inaccurate and full of wild speculations and conspiracies. I would be interested in reading an anti-nuclear book that is balanced, but this is not that book. Read with a heaping spoon of salt, if you dare.
This book. This book is an anti-nuclear book. This book uses citations from other anti-nuclear activists. This book was unbelievably inaccurate.
Judith Cook was a journalist for the Guardian, so I expected a lot of her book. However, she is incredibly unobjective, blinded by perhaps her own fear of nuclear power or by the many misunderstandings peppering her discourse. Anti-nuclear activists tend to focus on the dangers of nuclear power. Unfortunately, this often devolves into fear-mongering rhetoric when it's a discussion we do need to have. This is the trap that Cook falls into and it only worsens as the book progresses.
For one, she begins the book with a lengthy block quote from one of Helen Caldicott's books (I have not yet read this one.). Caldicott, a self-proclaimed nuclear expert, speaks on the dangers of plutonium in this quote. It seems, though, that her understanding of plutonium seems misinformed. I tried to research whether scientists' knowledge about plutonium was limited in the time period during which this book was written, but I couldn't find anything specific. Caldicott says that less than a gram of plutonium inhaled is fatal - plutonium toxicity is debated but it seems to be consensus that if inhaled, it MAY lead to fatal cancer (Note that we don’t actually know HOW MUCH could be fatal because individual factors affect cancer development and death.). She says that plutonium primarily accumulates in the lungs (She conveniently leaves out that this is only the case if exposure is through inhalation). By citing Caldicott, Cook promotes her as an expert and immediately demonstrates that facts don't matter to her as much as her argument.
Cook then speaks on many different nuclear incidents that have occurred. Many of these I have never heard of. I spent my time Googling many of the power plants to verify her information. I thought that surely 30 years later, credible sources would contain even a mention of any of these. I had a hard time verifying her claims. But what made me more suspicious of Cook is that she doesn't cite everything. She includes a very short list of chapter citations in the back. Some of the incidents that I could find on the Internet were cited. Many of them had no citation and were unverified by the Internet.
Cook's book is also marred by misinformation. She has some of the facts about nuclear power correct, but falsehoods are particularly insidious when mixed with half-truths. While there are many examples of misinformation, I will only touch on one that truly bothered me. Cook unambiguously states that alpha rays are the most dangerous and that gamma rays are the least dangerous with absolutely no further details than those. Cook does not specify under what conditions each of those might be dangerous, as danger levels vary depending on the situational exposure (i.e. are you ingesting the alpha rays or not?). With this statement, she indicates that she is unwilling to explain scientific theory in a non-biased manner. And as for the citation for this bold statement? None exists.
Near the end of the book, Cook has a chapter dedicated to how civil liberties will be compromised by nuclear power. She talks about a special police force not under any authority in the U.K. and to boot, they are so secret that no one knows anything about them. However, she knows that this police force for the nuclear industry can shoot on suspicion and search without a warrant. Apparently they will usher in a police state and force people into work camps. I laughed out loud. She's a conspiracy theorist. A Google search told me that, yes, the U.K. had a nuclear police force (dissolved in 2005), but the powers she states are not mentioned. I would think that her information would be verified 30 years later by discovery and transparency but nothing exists to verify her. And, of course, there's not a citation. She discusses Silkwood and Murrell in the same vein, as a conspiracy theory that they were killed by the nuclear industry. While I don't know if this is true or not, in the last fifteen years, some guy came out and said that he was part of a group that murdered Murrell for her money. Maybe he's bluffing, but it's clear that other possibilities exist for these deaths.
Cook ends the book with an afterword about Chernobyl, and it is here that her fear-mongering reaches the ultimate high. Of course, she speaks about Chernobyl based on the limited knowledge that people had at that time, but she brushes away the theories that don't support fear. She says the accident could happen in Western plants, that they are as safe as ours, and that if the Soviet Union promised safe nuclear power and couldn't deliver, surely we Westerners are going to be misled, too. There could be a good point here, only we know now that the RBMK reactors were notoriously dangerous, operating with a positive void-coefficient (not present in Western reactors), operating without containment, and operating with untrained operators who were following orders of people who didn't know what they were doing either.
Cook is wrong again. This book is factually inaccurate and full of wild speculations and conspiracies. I would be interested in reading an anti-nuclear book that is balanced, but this is not that book. Read with a heaping spoon of salt, if you dare.
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