Product Description

Customer Reviews (25)

Disturbing
This book is gruesome and disturbing. It's a collection of personal accounts of what happened after the disaster of Chernobyl. It's quite chilling and emotional at times but a fantastic read.

The other side of Chernobyl
This book tells the story of people of lived through consequences of the disaster. Consequences that people generallynot talk about. It is the other side from the the disaster. The book is not about technical facts but describes the worries and fears of the victims. Victims who had to leave, victims who lost loved ones etc.
Highly recommended to get more feeling with the impact of the Chernobyl disaster that was not in the media a lot.

Terrifying View of a Very Human Situation
'Voices from Chernobyl' is a very chilling view of an event that had wide spread human impacts.Before this most of my knowledge of Chernobyl was technical in nature, but after reading this volume you will see a great human tragedy.For example, a village that was supplied with some protective gear and iodine to distribute to the people, but didn't. Why? In a effort to not cause panic.It was curious to see the diversity of people Alexievich spoke with.Some supporting the party until the very end, some protesting the party the whole way, and some lost without their loved ones.

For those of us unfamiliar with soviet culture some traditions or words used in the text don't mean much, but this does not really take away from the main message of each monologue.Also, Alexievich also lists all names at the beginning of a multiple person monologue, separating each by a * making it difficult to follow.Towards the end several young children are talking and after each child told their story I had to flip back and see who was speaking next.Not a big thing, but just a small organizational thing that could be easily addressed.These are the only reasons this is a 4/5.

If you are looking for a read about how humans can react to disaster, and get probably the closest look at what actually happened in 'the zone' this is the book for you.You'll see scientists, physicists, and experts locked out in favor of political leaders after the accident and efforts of a failing system to keep face.

Best Personal Account Book I Have Read
This is hands down the best personal account book I have read. To hear from the people who actual lived through the evacuation, the residents, the liquidators, the children of Chernobyl, is incredibly moving. If you are looking for a book with stories from the people who had to leave their homes behind, from the people who cleaned up the wreckage, this is the book for you. I have actually read through this book 3 times now.

Outstanding first-person accounts but lacks elsewhere
This latter part of this book is a gut-wrenching, incredible oral history of the victims and survivors and family members of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in 1986, and the "author" deserves credit for a tremendous amount of work over three years gathering and recording these important personal stories for history.

However, the book needed some background about the disaster and some explanation of what actually occurred in the disaster to put all the stories into perspective. It also could benefit from some brief paragraphs explaining some of the things the survivors mention -- I was confused about times and dates and some of the terminology.

And the first few sections are very confusing because the dialog makes no sense. It would have been better paraphrased. I almost gave up reading this book but I'm glad I didn't because the second half stories are much more coherent and compelling.

I also would have appreciated having the ages of the narrators along with their names and affiliation before each story, not at the end.

... Read more

Product Description
This riveting eyewitness report—including dramatic photos—takes readers right to the scene of the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island.

March 28, 1979: It was 4 a.m. at the nuclear power plant on an island in
the middle of the Susquehanna River. Suddenly, an alarm shrieked. Something was wrong inside the plant. Within minutes, human error and technical failure triggered the worst nuclear power accident in the United States, and, within hours, the eyes of the world would be on Three Mile Island. Thirty-four years after the bombing of Hiroshima, the crisis at Three Mile Island re-awoke the world to the dangers of nuclear power, and now, in MELTDOWN, Wilborn Hampton tells the hour-by-hour story of covering the accident as a U.P.I. reporter. His riveting eyewitness account will compel readers to consider one of the most serious questions facing humankind: where can we find affordable, sustainable energy, and at what risk? ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Good Overview
Kyle Gunby
review-
As a 9th grader curious about the events at 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl, "Meltdown" was an easy to read, first-hand overview of the two events.Wilborn Hampton provided a nice summary of the terror and events at Three Mile Island, and while he was not extremely in depth he gave an easy to understand account of the proceedings.He went through the process of nuclear meltdowns and did a good job of parlaying the dire effects of an actual meltdown.This book shows a very interesting connection between the race for more efficient power and the amazingly devastating potential of that power.A great read that won't overwhelm you but give you a fairly thorough explanation while keeping it entertaining.

summary-
Wilborn Hampton, a foreign news reporter for the U.P.I. was called into duty on March 30, 1979 to investigate an event in which he had no experience.Unit 2 of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant in Pennsylvania was blaring with warning sirens.In the days to come the world's eyes would watch as every second inched closer to nuclear catastrophe.President Carter tried to calm the nation but if the unit had melt down, that part of Pennsylvania wouldn't have been livable for decades.Although the crisis was averted in the U.S., the Soviets weren't very lucky.On April 26, 1986 a fire broke out at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in Ukraine.Firefighters were called in and mistakenly poured water over the reactor causing huge clouds of radioactive gas.Now the areas all around Chernobyl are not accessible and probably won't be for many more years.While these huge events were both potentially and in reality lethal, many people still support cheap nuclear energy. The users of this great power must be responsible with it so that citizens will not be harmed. With new innovation comes heightened responsibility.But it may be only a matter of time before something goes wrong.

The book served as a good brief summary.
I was looking for a book that would give me a simple, brief review of the events leading to, during, and after 3 Mile Island and thats exactly what it did. Much of the text read as a journal of the author's actions as a reporter covering the event, but it still was interesting reading since I knew nothing about the sequence of events of the disaster and this was well described by the author.

About Being A Reporter, Not About TMI.
This book was written by a man who, as he himself admits, knew virtually nothing about nuclear power.He provided almost no technical details of what happened or why.He honestly didn't even manage to convey the suspense surrounding the accident.

I would say that this is not a good book about TMI.However, it is a good book about being a reporter covering a major breaking news story.It copied a number of the newspapr stories the author wrote at the time, so it is a good study of how reporters spin events and condense a day's experience into a few column inches.

Bent on emotion, not facts
Anytime a book about TMI or even Chernobyl begins with a discussion about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I'd advise readers to run away.That's like telling the reader up front that oranges and hand grenades belong in the same fruit basket.

Mr. Hampton makes it clear up front that he was not qualified to investigate nor write about TMI and its technical details (he was a foreign news reporter who "flunked physics in college"), but does so anyway in a sensational and biased way.He spends less than a chapter actually writing about the accident, then gets many of the details wrong or discusses them at a level that would make one believe the keystone cops were at work that March 1979 morning.The rest of the book is primarily spent discussing the debates and feelings of a misinformed public and politicians who in many cases were more interested in headlining than information.

For a reader who really wants to understand what happened at TMI on March 28, 1979, I'd strongly suggest reading "The Warning" by Mike Gray and Ira Rosen.That book accurately guides the reader through the facts leading up to the TMI event, the state of a fledgling industry that did not know how to communicate to regulators, engineers, and stakeholders, the actual details of the accident and how it could have easily been avoided, and a level-headed view of the aftermath.

A very personal story about reporting
There is very little information in this book to aid a scientific evaluation of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant accident.In the case of Three Mile Island, what happened might be described as an accident more truly than in the case of Chernobyl, where stupidity became a more obvious factor in the series of events leading up to the accident.It should not be unusual, now, for Americans to have some opinions about mistakes that were made in the design and testing of Chernobyl Unit No. 4, particularly after seeing how much of the building surrounding it was destroyed on April 26, 1986, as shown in the picture on page 80 of this book, at the start of Chapter 11.Blowing the top off the reactor was the first clue the operators had that they needed to call some fire departments to help battle the blaze.Wilborn Hampton does not give a definite temperature for what happened at Chernobyl, or at Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945 (p. 3), or at Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945, or at Nagasaki three days later (p. 4), but "It was estimated that the temperature at the point the bomb exploded exceeded 10,000 degrees.Heat engulfed the city."(pp. 4-5).

The efficiencies of producing electrical power from heat and steam seem to improve as temperatures rise above what a plant burning coal would produce, but the danger that human beings will misunderstand what is happening in such situations is one of the most frightening aspects of dangerous situations that people do not know how to control.The first of the problems reported at Three Mile Island were some unusual radiation leaks.Page 18 shows a March 30 story by Richard D. Lyons (Special to the New York Times) that described "large amounts of water containing small amounts of radioactivity" released by "the almost new generating plant."The element of human error involved in the situation might be due to that:

"Because of the radioactive water and gas within the containment building, no one was able to go back inside Unit No. 2 to make an assessment of the damage.All they had to go on was information transmitted from instruments that might have been damaged by the accident.When Miller ordered readings taken on the amount of heat and the level of radiation that were building up inside the reactor, the results were so high--one showed that the temperature in the top of the reactor was over 4,000 degrees--that he thought the equipment was simply malfunctioning and so he discounted them."(p. 25)

It was hot, and a large hydrogen gas bubble at the top of the reactor's core suddenly became the major technical fact that most of the drama from page 30 on makes people start to worry about a meltdown.Conflicting stories in the press about the possibility of a hydrogen explosion kept Harold Denton, Joseph M. Hendrie, Roger Mattson, and Victor Stello arguing until there was a press conference after midnight that announced President Jimmy Carter would visit Three Mile Island the next day.(p. 61).Even Rosalynn was on the old yellow bus that took them to the island.The major scientific revelation is the description of the argument that was going on at the same time:

"The radiolysis was not producing new oxygen that might trigger the hydrogen bubble.Some of the water in the reactor was indeed separating into hydrogen and oxygen molecules, but because there was so much extra hydrogen, the oxygen was constantly combining with it to form back into water.The bubble was, in effect, a built-in self-defense against an explosion."(p. 66).

After the bubble shrank from 1,000 cubic feet to about fifty cubic feet, a radiation level of 30,000 rems an hour inside the containment building was announced, lethal enough to make shutting it down an expensive problem.The UPI article by Wilborn Hampton shown on page 72 reports the comments of George Boyer, the 76-year-old owner of a general store "just across the street from the bridge that leads to Three Mile Island and its crippled nuclear plant. . . .During the years of building the nuclear plant, Boyer's store was a hangout for the hundreds of construction workers. . . . `I remember everything went real smooth on No. 1 -- no problems at all,' he said.`But No. 2 (the reactor that malfunctioned), there were always problems.' "

Sometimes things work, and sometimes there ought to be a way to go back to the beginning and do it right, but that never happens.There are a few reports of human error in this book and problems with valves that didn't seem quite as important as that general sense that when things weren't going right, at least someone was willing to describe the system as stable. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An excellent quick read
This short book is a great introduction to the awesome disaster of Chernobyl. The story is still unfolding, with new revelations and radiation-caused deaths and illnesses continuing unabated. The compounding of errors, from the reactor design, to the top-down Moscow policies, to the actual sequence of decsions by inexperienced staff, is an amazing saga. ... Read more

Product Description
When asked to name the world's first major nuclear accident, most people cite the Three Mile Island incident or the Chernobyl disaster. Revealed in this book is one of American history's best-kept secrets: the world's first nuclear reactor accident to claim fatalities happened on United States soil. Chronicled here for the first time is the strange tale of SL-1, a military test reactor located in Idaho's Lost River Desert that exploded on the night of January 3, 1961, killing the three-man maintenance crew on duty. Through details uncovered in official documents, firsthand accounts from rescue workers and nuclear industry insiders, and exclusive interviews with the victims' families and friends, this book probes intriguing questions about the devastating blast that have remained unanswered for more than 40 years. From reports of a faulty reactor design and mismanagement of the reactor's facilities to rumors of incompetent personnel and a failed love affair that prompted deliberate sabotage of the plant, these plausible explanations for the explosion raise questions about whether the truth was deliberately suppressed to protect the nuclear energy industry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

Sloppily done and biased.
My father, William Gammill, was the first health physicist on site.He was one of the ones to actually go into the reactor building in an effort to save the operators; an action for which he and four others received a Carnegie Heroes Medal.To portray them as McKeown did was insulting and false,anyone that called him "nerdy" or worse clearly didn't know anything about him.They performed with heroism that few of us will ever match.He and William Rausch were still alive during the period that the book was written yet was not even mentioned and neither were interviewed. Very sloppy indeed.

This reviewer is the son of William P. Gammill and remembers well the night that his dad went rushing out into the night not knowing whether he was going to be returning.I also discussed the book with him before his death in October of 2008.Shame on McKeown.

Idaho Falls
The author does a good job with the Accident victims autobiographies, psychology, injuries, and burial preparations.
However his account of the Accident victim's rescue is insulting of the Rescue Team and inaccurate.

The insults include "nerdy engineers"(p.99), "bourbon and water downing bosses"(p.95) and individuals who were"forced to conduct a rescue operation even though they were unprepared"(p.95). In fact they were some of the most courageous, intelligent, experienced, innovative and caring individuals I have ever known. The 4-man rescue team was composed of the following individuals:

Paul Duckworth, the SL-1 Operations Supervisor, who may have been a WWII South-Pacific Campaign ship commander at age 19 and owned the powerful Model 88 Oldsmobile used to race the Rescue Team to the Accident site.

Sidney Cohen, the SL-1 Test supervisor, a WWII, 2nd-wave Normandy Invasion infantryman at age 17 and a "Life Master" bridge player.

William Rausch, the 28-year old SL-1 Assistant Operations Supervisor who had been a Merchant Marine ship engineer with experience in recovery of a fatal shipboard boiler room explosion.

Ed Vallario, the 33-year old SL-1 Health Physicist who was the first team member to be notifed of the post-Accident lethal radioctive conditions and missing operators because he was the designated technical contact for concerns of the SL-1 plant operators and NRTS security and firemen that evening.

William Gammill, the 32-year old, on-duty, AEC Site Survey Chief and a certified Health Physicist who volunteered to assist the rescue team

In 1962 all five men received medals and national recognition for "heriosm in saving human life" from the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission.

The author doesn't even include either Mr. Rausch or Mr. Gammill as Rescue Team members and only provides a complimentary autobiography for Mr. Vallario. Mr. Rausch may have received the greatest radiation dose because his assignment was to confirm the immobile victim, who was closest to the destroyed reactor vessel, was deceased and the only Rescue Team member to see a "bundle of rags" hanging from the reactor room ceiling which was determined by the next reactor room entry group to be the 3rd victim. The author credits Mr. Vallario with making "the recommendation to the other rescue team members to go into the reactor room to find the men regardless of the potentially lethal radiation conditions"(p.100) which doesn't make sense because he was not the senior member of the rescue team and there was no time for a group conference.In addition the author didn't interview the only surviving Rescue Team member, Mr. Rausch.

The Rescue Team members unflinchingly took on an unprecedented and impossible task which they voluntarily executed skillfully without hesitation in about an amazing 60 minutes.The rescue may have been more appropriately accomplished by a full complement of on-duty NRTS firemen, security men, and health physicists or the off-site military officers.

Some of the rescue event accounts in the story are inaccurate but of minor consequence compared to the Rescue Team insults.

This reviewer is a retired (1995) nuclear fuel projects manager with AEC, ERDA & DOE prime contractors including a junior engineer position at the SL-1 plant at the time of the Accident.

Witty and shocking, this book is a must read
You wouldn't think a book about a nuclear excursion could be witty and snappy, yet scientific -- but this book is. It is also well-researched.

I tore through this book in a couple of nights -- I could not put it down. The author was able to mix science with dramatic, true-crime style writing which made the pages fly by.

I had never heard of this disaster, and I am surprised more people don't know about it. This book is worth the money, if only to educate yourself about how the government could run a reactor that is falling apart and is controlled by ONE control rod. Hellloooo??

At the end of the book, the choice is yours about what to believe happened -- I liked it that the author left it up to the reader. Good, old-fashioned solid writing with a little bit of "flash" (no pun intended).

America's first nuclear accident
Egon Lampbrect is a personal friend and he encouraged me to read the book.
Very interesting how the early nuclear industry was just flying by the seat of their pants into unknown teritory.
Being here in eastern Idaho, we all have relatives that have worked at the Site, and we for the most part support the nuclear industry.
My father back in the 60's bought a surplus International truck from the site which would have been there at the time. I still have as a suvenior, a pair of ViseGrips marked AEC.
I had an uncle that helped develop the chassis for the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki while working at the Navel Ordance Plant in Pocatello.All done in top secret, he told his family many years after the fact.
The book is "a must read" for anyone interested in the early nuclear industry.

Fascinating telling of a little known piece of American History
"Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America's First Nuclear Accident" by Willam McKeown is a fascinating story of Americas first nuclear reactor accident and the story surrounding it. McKeown tells weaves a story put together from official reports and first hand accounting of the events of January 3rd, 1961 in a manner that flows and is easy to read.

The part about the book that came as a shock to me was how much of the story involved events after the accident (rescue, clean-up, investigation) than the actual accident itself. The technology of the time and the immaturity of the equipment used to handle the accident was honestly frightening! At one point in the book, a commanding officer needs to assess how much water is left in the reactor and asks an officer on the rescue team to throw a rock into the exposed reactor core when entering the room during rescue efforts and listen for a splash! That's just the beginning of the almost dark comedy that was the combination of the technology and procedures at the time at Idaho Falls.

Make no mistake, if you are squeamish this might not be the best book. McKeown, tastefully, leaves no detail out when it comes to the effects of the accident on the soldiers that were involved. From their immediate condition following the explosion, their autopsy and preparation of the bodies to be returned to their families. Honestly, I have added respect for the military and the lengths they went through to return the bodies of those involved in the accident to their families. They could have just as easily declared them a biological danger and disposed of them with other nuclear waste.

I feel the book tapered off in the end and gave up it's flow of a factual based telling of an event and succumbed to "conspiracy theory" type hear-say. Granted, the information is not framed as fact and is presented in manner that although doesn't direct the reader that the information is true, it doesn't exactly say it's false either. It's left up to the reader and I wasn't sure how I felt about it. I suppose it's all part of the complete story so it belonged here as well.

In the end, "Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America's First Nuclear Accident" is a great, quick read that had me hooked through the entire story.

Highly recommended! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Good Information, But Very Overpriced
Although I agree with the previous reviewer, I have to say that for the size of the book and the fact that it is juvenile literature, it is extremely overpriced.I probably shouldn't judge price on size, but it's hard not to with this book.It is a skinny little thing and I really expected a little more meat for the price.Informative.

Very informative
In 2001, the United States came under its first-ever serious biological attack, when envelopes containing anthrax began to be received by government officials and media people. Beginning then, many serious people began to worry about the possibility of terrorists using nuclear, biological and/or chemical weapons in their attacks. This 2006 book tells you how to prepare for such an attack, what to do during the attack, and what to do after it.

Overall, I found this to be a very informative book. Even though it is placed in the "young adults" category, do not take this book lightly. In fact, this book is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to consider the possibility of a terrorist attack by a weapon of mass destruction (WMD). The text is written in a clear and easy-to-understand manner, and there are numerous informative sidebars that contain important step-by-step instructions.

So, if you do want to consider what you would do in the case of a WMD attack, then you should get this book. It is an excellent book on the subject, one that I highly recommend. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Destruction and Chaos, organized in a focusing event dynamic
This book was good overall.I would recommend this as reading only for those studying policy with regard to disasters.This reading was on my syllabus for my policy process class.

The good parts of this book are conveniently organizing natural and man-made disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, oil spills and nuclear power accidents) into sections and framing his discussion around a group of policy makers and policy communities.

Where this book wasn't so good was his use of repetition.He could have condensed this book down to 50 pages or so and still got the point across.He repeats what he says too often in order to either increase the page count or to get his point across.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Has plenty of pictures:farmer drinks fresh milk (p. 31)
Eighteen years have passed since the incident at Chernobyl, and fifty years since the optimistic speech given by Lewis L. Strauss, Chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission quoted at the top of page 14 in this book, CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR DISASTER by Nichol Bryan (World Almanac Library, 2004).The book attempts to provide individual insights on the issues which remain, which have often become political arguments about problems that remain to be solved.The technology involved showed tremendous advances since basic subatomic particles started to be identified after the discovery of the neutron in 1932, but simply providing electricity to an advanced infrastructure for modern societies required unprecedented dependability that was keeping people up at all hours when most people will be better off sleeping.

"No wonder so many countries invested heavily in nuclear power -- the United States alone built more than one hundred plants between 1944 and 1985.The amount of U.S. electricity provided by nuclear power grew to 20 percent.In countries such as France, with fewer coal supplies, almost three-quarters of all electricity was generated by nuclear power plants by the mid-1980s."(pp. 14-15).

"People became concerned about how to dispose of the used atomic fuel rods, which remained dangerously radioactive for thousands of years.Plutonium, one of the elements in these `spent' fuel rods, is also one of the deadliest substances known.And, plutonium can be used to make atomic bombs.Many worried that the spread of nuclear power plants could lead to more countries having nuclear weapons."(p. 15).

Chapter 2 describes the safety test run on the Unit 4 reactor at Chernobyl in April, 1986.In the event of other electrical failures, the electricity provided by the turbine for that reactor core might not be enough to shut down the operation of the reactor."Because the same water that cooled the reactor also ran the turbines, the process that controlled the reactor started to seesaw.As the turbines turned faster, the water flowed more quickly in the reactor and cooled it down.Consequently, as the heat in the reactor dropped, it produced less steam to power the turbines, so the turbine slowed down.Plant operators made constant adjustments to the speed of the turbines and the placement of the control rods in a frantic attempt to control the reactor."(p. 19).The neutrons in the core of the reactor were able to produce a chain reaction much faster than anyone could insert control rods to slow down the neutrons that generated heat by splitting atoms when "At 1:23 A.M., the operators at Chernobyl lost the battle.Power output in the reactor suddenly jumped to one hundred times the normal amount.The radioactive fuel in the reactor core started to burst apart.The steam in the reactor core exploded.Seconds later, another explosion ripped through the reactor.The twin explosions destroyed the core of Unit 4 and blew off the reactor's 1,100-ton (1,000-tonne) roof."(p. 20).

"By late afternoon, many of the smaller fires around the plant had been put out.Then a new blaze erupted.The graphite used in the reactor core began to burn.Graphite is a form of carbon, similar to coal.It burns with an intense heat.Firefighters couldn't put out the graphite fire with water.It burned for ten days, sending more radioactive smoke into the air."(p. 21).One of the firefighters' wives said, "It was strictly forbidden to talk about this.`Your husbands got poisoned with gases,' the families of the firefighters were told."(p. 23).

This book identifies the person responsible for informing the world that a catastrophe was taking place:

"On April 28, Cliff Robinson, an engineer at Forsmark Nuclear Plant 50 miles (80 km) northeast of Uppsala, Sweden, walked through a radiation detector to get to his office.He was startled to hear the alarm go off.When Robinson measured the radioactivity of his shoes, he found levels never seen around the plant before.`My first thought was that a war had broken out and that somebody had blown up a nuclear bomb,' Robinson recalled."(pp. 27-29).Some people's feelings were hurt by the announcements which followed, and President Ronald Reagan's press secretary Larry Speakes carefully defended the position of the United States by declaring:

"The United States Government at no point encouraged inaccurate reporting on the accident.If some reports carried in the mass media were in fact inaccurate, this was an inevitable result of the extreme secrecy with which the Soviet authorities dealt with the accident in the days immediately following it."(p. 32).

The biggest disagreement has been in the number of people who are dying as a result, and the miraculous survival of all the people who are not dead yet.The media recently have shown a real interest in reporting the precise numbers of people who died due to any particular incident, however daily such incidents might have become.There aren't any wild numbers in this book, like a global 500,000 or the 100,000 abortions sought by women who had been exposed to radiation and did not want to risk giving birth to a monster."Ukrainian nuclear experts estimate that more than two thousand five hundred deaths were caused by the disaster.But other scientists, noting that half a million people got higher radiation doses from Chernobyl, estimate the death toll at closer to five thousand."(p. 36).Farms were the primary recipients of radioactive material."And, randomly scattered `hotspots' of fallout from Chernobyl will produce radioactive crops for at least another three hundred years."(p. 37)."The government of Belarus also estimated that Chernobyl would eventually cause $235-billion worth of lost production in that country."(p. 37).Pictures on page 37 show the deactivation of Reactor Number 3 on December 15, 2000, the last of Chernobyl's reactors. ... Read more

Product Description
THIS EDITION IS INTENDED FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. ... Read more

Product Description
Discusses risks involved in state-of-the-art technology and what we can do to make the risks less and prevent disasters such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Bhopal. ... Read more

Product Description
The purpose of this report is to give the reader, whether a member of the public or of the profession, an easily understood assessment of the likely effect on the built environment of nuclear disasters arising either from a nuclear accident or a nuclear attack. Matters related to nuclear developments, whether for civil or military use, are inevitably controversial and the necessity of maintaining objectivity in the preparation of the report has been accepted as being of paramount importance. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fascinating story of ecological research
This book presents a very plausible explanation ofevents surrounding a documented explosion at a Soviet nuclear plant in the southern Ural Mountains during the winter of 1959-60.

The author is an ecologist, manyof whose university colleagues disappeared from the ecological literaturefor a period of about six years, then suddenly began to publish data onradiological damage to a 400-sq.-mi. area between Sverdlovsk andChelyabinsk in the southern Urals. A series of chapters looks at differentparts of the ecosystem; one deals with large ungulates, one with fieldrodents, another with fish populations, etc.

The author believes thatthe only explanation for the type of radiological contamination studied isa non-nuclear explosion of stored radioactive waste.Water leaching intothe area where leaky barrels of waste was heated by the radioactiveisotopes, causing a steam explosion which spread the waste material over avery large area.His theory is corroborated by residents of the area wholater emigrated from the Soviet Union to the West and told theirstory.

This book is a fascinating read, even for someone with limitedbackground in the science of ecology. ... Read more

Product Description
Although the Cold War is over, the world is awash with nuclear weapons and materials. There is a high probability for a nuclear disaster involving nuclear reactors, nuclear waste, weapons and weapons grade materials. This book discusses in layman's language the problems families face during disasters. Its premise is that if a family is prepared for any type of nuclear disaster, it will be prepared for other kinds of disasters - which are increasing in number and intensity each year. Nuclear disasters can take many courses: the accidental detonation of a nuclear weapon, a reactor explosion and core meltdown, nuclear waste explosion, terrorist use of nuclear materials, nuclear spills - each could result in a major disaster. The book explains in detail how to prepare for such extreme emergencies, from removing radionuclides from drinking water, storing emergency food and medicines, to treating those suffering from acute radiation sickness. The physical effects of nuclear explosions are explained as well as how to protect oneself and family from direct nuclear radiation, radioactive fallout, remove radioactive contamination from air, water and food.It also includes information on protecting electronic circuitry from EMP (Electromagnetic Pulses). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very informative
This book is a great book to use as a resource when prepariang for a disaster. Don't let the title fool you into thinking that it can only be used for a nuclear disaster, although that is the book's main focus. Many of the guidelines (such as what types of food to store or how to build a homemade water purifier) can be used for other types of calamities. The book is easy to understand and follow. It is written in simple, layman's terms. In other words, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to follow the directions. ... Read more

Product Description
Follows the heroic actions of a Soviet firefighter as he describes the disastrous nuclear plant accident at Chernobyl. ... Read more