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Meltdown: Collapse of the Nuclear Dream

01 July 1991

Aubrey Crispin, Collins & Brown, £6.99. 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.