Since the dawn of the Atomic Age, nuclear experts have labored to imagine the unimaginable and prevent it. They confronted a deceptively simple question: When is a reactor “safe enough” to adequately protect the public from catastrophe? Some experts sought a deceptively simple answer: an estimate that the odds of a major accident were, literally, a million to one. Far from simple, this search to quantify accident risk proved to be a tremendously complex and controversial endeavor, one that altered the very notion of safety in nuclear power and beyond.
Safe Enough? is the first history to trace these contentious efforts, following the Atomic Energy Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as their experts experimented with tools to quantify accident risk for use in regulation and to persuade the public of nuclear power’s safety. The intense conflict over the value of risk assessment offers a window on the history of the nuclear safety debate and the beliefs of its advocates and opponents. Across seven decades and the accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, the quantification of risk has transformed both society’s understanding of the hazards posed by complex technologies and what it takes to make them safe enough.
Thomas R. Wellock is the historian of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“The focus on safety is a brilliant narrative choice that allows the text to quickly jump to the heart of many of the most contentious issues in nuclear power regulation and politics over the past fifty years.”—Robert Lifset, author of Power on the Hudson: Storm King Mountain and the Emergence of Modern American Environmentalism
“I know of no other book that so authoritatively recounts how the very notion of safety was forged in the US nuclear industry over the decades.”—Sonja D. Schmid, author of Producing Power: The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry
“An authoritative insider account of the different technical approaches taken to assess the risks of nuclear power accidents. It also examines the disputes over the reliability and relevance of these approaches, and whether they could be implemented in the field by the industry."—John Krige, Regents Professor Emeritus, Georgia Institute of Technology
376 pp.6 x 9
9780520381155$49.95|£42.00Hardcover
Mar 2021