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Book Review: Meltdown, The Collapse of the Nuclear Dream

01 January 1991

Book Review: Meltdown, The Collapse of the Nuclear Dream
artdoc August=1991

Aubrey Crispin, Collins & Brown, ¼6.99. ISBN 1 85585 017 6. The
nuclear industry unites military and energy policies - and the
construction and engineering industries - with the energy and
weapons industries. Its tentacles spread not just within
countries with a nuclear programme, but throughout the
international community. The problem with writing about the
nuclear industry is its complexity, from the scientific and
technical perspective as well as the political, military,
economic and environmental consequences. The temptation is to
provide too much technical information, causing most people's
eyes to glaze over, or so little it can be readily dismissed.
Crispin Aubrey has skilfully avoided these traps - if you want
to know about positive void co-efficients in reactor cores, find
another book.
Aubrey provides just enough background and technical
information to allow the reader to follow the plot of what at
times reads like a political thriller. He traces the development
of the nuclear industry and provides an excellent, albeit brief
guide to how the anti-nuclear and environmental movements slowly
exposed the industry's weaknesses, faults and problems which took
it to the edge of the cliff. The bulk of the book looks at how
it was both pushed and fell from the cliff's edge. This was
achieved when the privatisation of the UK electricity industry
by the Thatcher Government took away its last foothold - the
economic argument that it was cheaper than other form of energy
generation, in particular coal. One of the main scenes for this
tragedy was the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station public
inquiry which was running alongside privatisation and in which
Aubrey played a vital role on behalf of the objectors. This is
a book written by a campaigner, from a thoroughly human and non-
technical approach. If you want to find out something about the
nuclear industry this is a fine book to start with - it will make
you want to find out more.

Statewatch no 3 July/August 1991

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