Books in Brief: Our Radiant World

Our Radiant World, by David W. Lillie (Iowa State University, 226 pp., $19.95)

For some anti-nuclear activists, the accident at Chernobyl that killed 31 people and injured more than two hundred others was something of a disappointment. Helen Caldicott, for example, was quoted in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat as saying, “I think the accident should have happened here. I hate to say that as a physician, but unless there are thousands of American martyrs, nothing will be done.” Well, Dr. Caldicott can dream all she wants. But most scientists, as we know from surveys by Robert Lichter and from reports by prestigious scientific bodies, think the chances of an American Chernobyl are pretty small. Unfortunately, it is the Caldicotts of the world who get media attention and not people like David W. Lillie, who tries to put the risks of nuclear power in perspective in Our Radiant World. A scientist at the General Electric Research Center for 25 years and with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission for six years, Lillie details numerous sources of radioactivity, ranging from one’s own body to nuclear weapons. Readers may be swamped early on by the physics of it. But it’s worth the wade to get to Lillie’s comments on the risks and benefits of radioactivity— particularly as they relate to ongoing controversies over nuclear power. An exhaustive three-year study directed by MIT professor Norman Rasmussen concluded in 1975 that a worst-case nuclear accident might cause, over several decades, up to fifty thousand deaths, about the number of deaths that occur in automobile accidents every year. But, the report continued, such an accident would probably occur only once in a million years. At that, Lillie points out, subsequent studies have criticized the Rasmussen report’s casualty estimates as being too high. In some respects, says Lillie, pollution from coal-fired generating plants poses a greater hazard to human health than the “tiny, tiny” risks of nuclear power. (Such pollution causes up to ten thousand deaths every year, according to one study not cited in this book.) His point is not that we should abandon coal, but that it would be inconsistent to rule out cheap nuclear power for health reasons and then use coal. Lillie’s book suffers somewhat from the fact that the bulk of it was written

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Kenneth Smith

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Our Radiant World, by David W. Lillie (Iowa State University, 226 pp., $19.95)

For some anti-nuclear activists, the accident at Chernobyl that killed 31 people and injured more than two hundred others was something of a disappointment. Helen Caldicott, for example, was quoted in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat as saying, “I think the accident should have happened here. I hate to say that as a physician, but unless there are thousands of American martyrs, nothing will be done.” Well, Dr. Caldicott can dream all she wants. But most scientists, as we know from surveys by Robert Lichter and from reports by prestigious scientific bodies, think the chances of an American Chernobyl are pretty small. Unfortunately, it is the Caldicotts of the world who get media attention and not people like David W. Lillie, who tries to put the risks of nuclear power in perspective in Our Radiant World. A scientist at the General Electric Research Center for 25 years and with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission for six years, Lillie details numerous sources of radioactivity, ranging from one’s own body to nuclear weapons. Readers may be swamped early on by the physics of it. But it’s worth the wade to get to Lillie’s comments on the risks and benefits of radioactivity— particularly as they relate to ongoing controversies over nuclear power. An exhaustive three-year study directed by MIT professor Norman Rasmussen concluded in 1975 that a worst-case nuclear accident might cause, over several decades, up to fifty thousand deaths, about the number of deaths that occur in automobile accidents every year. But, the report continued, such an accident would probably occur only once in a million years. At that, Lillie points out, subsequent studies have criticized the Rasmussen report’s casualty estimates as being too high. In some respects, says Lillie, pollution from coal-fired generating plants poses a greater hazard to human health than the “tiny, tiny” risks of nuclear power. (Such pollution causes up to ten thousand deaths every year, according to one study not cited in this book.) His point is not that we should abandon coal, but that it would be inconsistent to rule out cheap nuclear power for health reasons and then use coal. Lillie’s book suffers somewhat from the fact that the bulk of it was written