Midni
ght in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster
By Adam Higginbotham
Illustrated. 538 pages.
F
rom the New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/201
9/02/06/books/review-midnight-chernobyl-adam-higginbotham.html:
"I
n his chilling new book, “Midnight in Chernobyl,” the journalist Adam Higgi
nbotham shows how an almost fanatical compulsion for secrecy among the Sovi
et Union’s governing elite was part of what made the accident not just cata
clysmic but so likely in the first place. Interviewing eyewitnesses and con
sulting declassified archives — an official record that was frustratingly m
eager when it came to certain details and, Higginbotham says, couldn’t alwa
ys be trusted — he reconstructs the disaster from the ground up, recounting
the prelude to it as well as its aftermath. The result is superb, enthrall
ing and necessarily terrifying.
The
accident also decimated international confidence in nuclear power, and a nu
mber of countries halted their own programs — for a time, that is. Global w
arming has made the awesome potential of the atom a source of hope again an
d,
according to some adv
ocates, an urgent necessity; besides, as Higginbotham points out, nucle
ar power, from a statistical standpoint, is safer than the competing altern
atives, including wind."
…
We you hope you will be able t
o join us even if you have not been able to read or finish the book. We are
all familiar to varying degrees with the horrific, catastrophic Chernobyl
nuclear accident and there is still plenty to discuss.