Review Kirkus Reviews-An impassioned case against the use of nuclear power. 
In his debut, Earth Island Journal editor emeritus Smith gathers together several arguments against nuclear power into a concise yet detailed package. He forcefully asserts that nuclear power plants are not only unsafe―with severe accidents at nuclear plants in the United States, Russia and Japan serving to ‘illustrate the ultimate insanity of the nuclear option’―but also polluting, costly and inefficient. He gives several examples of nuclear-plant and government officials downplaying potentially serious risks to the public, and, in a compelling chapter, enumerates the failings of what he calls ‘five of the worst U.S. reactors.’ He examines a host of health and safety issues at plants all over the country, including the much-criticized Indian Point plant north of New York City. Smith concludes with several recommendations for alternatives, advocating for heightened energy efficiency and renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and geothermal power. The author comes at his subject from an environmentalist point of view, with an explicit desire to ‘pull the plug on this dangerous technology,’ and some readers may be skeptical of his concluding vision of a ‘sustainable compassion economy.’ Many of the arguments will also be familiar to veterans of the nuclear-power debate. Nonetheless, Smith lays out an impressively researched narrative, drawing on facts from a wide range of sources, and makes a strong case that will be hard for even nuclear-power advocates to dismiss out of hand. For casual readers, the book presents a well-written introduction to the anti-nuclear-power position. 
A penetrating argument against today's nuclear age.Choice- "Journalist Smith (editor emer., Earth Island Journal) has responded to the Fukushima disaster with an avalanche of condemnation of everything nuclear with zeal and sometimes enthusiastic overkill. Nuclear power advocates will be challenged and opponents will be encouraged by the documented hazards related to nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants. Many major oversights and bad decisions have contributed to health concerns and loss of life. Smith vividly demonstrates that nuclear power plants require NASA-type engineering and well-trained operators. He discusses how the military's use of uranium-235 left a legacy of high-level nuclear waste and a proliferation of plutonium for weapons. He also addresses the problems of nuclear waste storage … . Summing Up: Recommended. With reservations.""It will be an auspicious start to our new century if we can encourage a revitalized movement to stop all nuclear production and immediately close down every nuclear facility-military and civilian. Then we can dedicate our skills and resources to finding true solutions to the real challenges of our time: evolving a sustainable, energy-wise, and peaceful society."--from the foreword by Jerry Mander“Nuclear Roulette is an act of love and reason for Mother Earth. We’ve had five decades of poisonous decision making in the face of millennia of life. Now is the time to safeguard our generations yet to come. Gar Smith’s powerful writing tells the stories that inform our good work.”--Winona LaDuke, indigenous rights activist and author of All Our Relations and Recovering the Sacred “Nuclear Roulette by Gar Smith is a timely and necessary book. Nuclear energy is  unaffordable by every measure―by the measure of financial costs, of safety, and of the destruction of democracy. We are witnessing this in India where the US-India nuclear agreement is imposing a ‘nuclear renaissance’ by creating a police state in Koodankulam and in Jaitapur. Nuclear Roulette should be in the hands of everyone who cares for life and freedom.”--Dr. Vandana Shiva, founder of Navdanya Research Foundation for Science Technology & Ecology"This powerful solartopian screed leaves no doubt that the experiment with atomic energy is the most dangerous and expensive technological failure in human history. Gar Smith writes with extraordinary power and clarity on an industry whose failure threatens the future of our species―ecologically, economically, and in terms of biological survival. Nuclear Roulette is a strong signpost pointing straight to a green-powered world, where we get our energy cheaper, safer, cleaner, community-owned, and quicker. Take this book with you next time you’re out shutting a nuke or opening a wind farm."--Harvey Wasserman, author of SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, and editor of www.nukefree.org.“A thoroughly brilliant work. Extraordinary! Gar Smith cuts through the lies of the nuclear promoters to document the deadliness of atomic power.”--Karl Grossman, professor of journalism, State University of New York College at Old Westbury, and author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know about Nuclear Power"If ever there was a book that people need to read at this moment in the history of the world it is Nuclear Roulette. Comprehensively referenced, it is not only an encyclopedia of the nuclear age related specifically to nuclear power, it is a potent warning of the almost incomprehensible dangers that lie ahead, as well as the damage that has already contaminated portions of our beloved planet beyond repair. I highly recommend this wonderful book to all who care about our children, future generations, and the thirty million other species that cohabit this earth with us."--Dr. Helen Caldicott, pediatrician, founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and author of Nuclear Madness and Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer Read more About the Author Gar Smith is editor emeritus of Earth Island Journal, a Project Censored award-winning investigative journalist, and cofounder of Environmentalists Against War. He has covered revolutions in Central America and has engaged in environmental campaigns on three continents. He lives a low-impact, solar-assisted lifestyle in Berkeley, California. Read more
H**R
half truths
The list of nuclear reactor disasters is informative and apparently not exaggerated, but Smith gives the impression that all reactors are subject to them. Literature on LFTRs (liquid flouride thorium reactors) indicates otherwise. Nor does Smith give equal attention to equal or worse disasters from other energy sources. "Most Dangerous Energy Source" is a comparative term. Where are the comparisons? Facts about lung and heart disease, oil spills, coal mine disasters, and so on? Should fossil fuels put carbon and methane past the tipping point, we haven't see anything yet. All told, a useful book taken in a context it doesn't itself supply.
B**5
This Book Is Full Of Facts
I like how this book was full of facts and history of these different nuclear plants. It does not try to hide what nuclear power really is, BAD! I own many geiger counters and have been doing self studies on radiation and everything nuclear for over two years now. Big surprise Fukushima was my eye opener and this book only helps to support the information I already knew and more. If you have an open mind and want to know more about this topic, this is a GREAT book!
T**N
a flawed, very good anti-nuke beginning
If you want a book that presents a thorough, up to the Fukushima minute argument against nuclear proliferation Gar Smith's is an excellent book. If you're new to the encyclopedic subject of all things nuclear this is an excellent introduction, unashamedly one-sided but not unfairly so for we are living the other side--as the critics are quick to remind us, "And see, we are still alive!" And it's sort of true, Smith's book won't be in support of a proven case until we're all dead. Some of his arguments, as noted in other reviews, are not good, some are so weird I'm not sure what he was trying to do. A better editor and/or fact checker would have helped; every writer needs them in any serious work. These flaws are minute within a soundly overwhelming fact slide in support of the case that nuclear problems far outweigh nuclear benefits, that gambling against the extremely low probabilities for nuclear accidents doesn't prevent the improbable. When the improbable occurs it is into an accumulation of past improbables that don't much go away. Accumulate enough and the once improbable demise of the biosphere starts looking pretty probable.If you're new to this subject Smith's book is good, too, because Gar Smith is resolutely friendly as befits, I guess, an Earth Island Institute person. He's not out to offend, on the contrary, feels his case can be convincingly presented with very little offense given or taken. That's nice but generates problems because he's making the case that our behavior in matters of energy are brazenly stupid. This can give the impression everyone is to blame, we're all stupid, especially in the huge but shrinking consumer pool in the world's grossest per capita energy glutton. This, as per usual, leads to the hopeless pining for a voluntary, determined, humbled, worldwide shift in human consciousness away from compliance with and allegiance to wealth and power hoarding and into lives that cherish, and share lovingly, Earth and its miraculous engendering of the sources of life. When Bertrand Russell, Einstein, Arendt, Jaspers, Mills, etc put forth similar arguments it was with a sense of urgency, of last minute necessity. That minute came and went. We're in deep s*** and one small reason for it might be this friendly approach that spreads the who-dun-it across the endangered biosphere.Thus, if you are new to this subject and want something nearer, much nearer, to a full account of the anti-nuclear arguments this book will not suffice; I don't know of one that will and it'd probably be too intimidating a monster anyway. So, I would like to suggest a companion volume, also a very good book, not even 200 pages, on an equally difficult subject. And, rare in this branch of study, you might be very glad you did, especially if Smith leaves you feeling you've further imperiled the world cause ya left the damned light on or drove to the store instead of walked.I recommend Barry Sander's The Green Zone, the environmental costs of militarism. As seen in the other reviews posted here and as is almost always the case, arguments promoting or justifying nuclear energy uses rarely make mention of the military, and neither does Gar Smith. In fact, when and if ever the entire military input into nuclear problems is allowed into the anti-nuclear rhetoric, the pronuclear rhetoric enters regions psychotic, mutated and already burning like the end of the world, like Hanford. The Pentagon is not the elephant in the room; it is the human monster with a parasitic grasp on the planet's biosphere. If things nuclear are to be fairly understood or truly addressed, there's no better and perhaps no other place to start than the Pentagon. This was understood by many not too long ago: the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, several pacifist anti-nuke groups like SANE, etc. The patriotic militarism of the cold war stifled genuine anti-nuke actions then, and now I suppose it's the comply-or-else terrorist war that makes perfectly obvious statements borderline or flat out illegal because they describe the US military. Still, if you want to know the present status of things nuclear, you have to look the big ugly in the face; it's not enough to be nice and if you have any offspring, I'm not sure why you'd want to be.
R**5
Five Stars
Very happy.
L**D
this would be a good pick.
if you wish to read only one book on nuclear, this would be a good pick.
R**S
Disappointed
I had hoped that this would be a balanced treatment of the pros and cons of nuclear power plants but was disappointed to find it to be a very biased and one-sided attack of the problems with nuclear energy. Instead of focusing on real problems needing solutions (such as what to do about the spent fuel from reactors), the author spends an inordinate amount of space trying to convice us that the existing nucelar plants are likely to explode and kill millions of people in the near future due to the ineptitude of the NRC and the greed of the large power corporations. He would have all nuclear plants shut down ASAP and force a massive shift to local green energy such as solar and wind. In the last few chapters, he advocates dismantling the power grid, drastically reducing our energy use and relying on small green energy sources for our modest needs during the day when the sun is shining or when the wind is blowing. I, for one, am not buying it.
L**X
discovered little known characteristics about nuclear energy: from day ...
discovered little known characteristics about nuclear energy: from day one in the fifties it needed heavy financial support from the government or would collapse. Clearly shows the absence of future for fission energy.
C**S
Frightening and eye opening
Everyone should read this and realize what the huge costs and risks of nuclear power are and the unsolved problem of what to do with the waste products generated which are toxic virtually forever. We are endangering our future generations for our energy needs, although we too may end up paying a horrible price.
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