Nuclear power is a child of war, birthed in the world’s first artificial self-sustaining nuclear reaction inside a stack of graphite and uranium bricks in Chicago, Illinois, in December 1942. It is also useful context for today’s discussions about whether nuclear energy deserves a major role in the push to decarbonize the global economy. The result is a revealing tour of some of the most terrifying experiences involving nuclear power. In Atoms and Ashes, he places that disaster in a broader, more global history of six nuclear accidents - from explosions at plutonium production plants to meltdowns at nuclear power stations. One of the leading chroniclers of this nuclear legacy is Serhii Plokhy, a historian of Ukraine and author of Chernobyl (2018), a definitive account of that fateful day in April 1986. But it underscores the lasting, dangerous and frequently unforeseen consequences of nuclear disasters. Amid all the atrocities committed by Russian troops during the war in Ukraine, ignorance of this history does not rank high. Thirty-six years after a reactor core exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, fallout from the world’s worst nuclear accident still permeates the environment. In February, soon after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, they reportedly dug trenches in the radioactive soil at Chernobyl and drove heavy vehicles in the area, kicking up contaminated dust. Credit: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/GettyĪtoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disasters Serhii Plokhy W. Workers gather outside one of the reactors that melted down in the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
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