Books in Brief: Common Sense in Nuclear Energy

Common Sense in Nuclear Energy, by Fred Hoyle and Geoffrey Hoyle (Freeman, 85 pp., $5.50, paper). Because the recent cutbacks in demand for energy have led to oil-price rollbacks by OPEC, anti-nuclear activists are gleefully declaring the death of nuclear energy, which, according to them, is no longer needed. The noted British scientists Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle set out to show that such reasoning is illusory and that nuclear energy is actually our only hope for the future. The environmentalists, as the anti-nuclear activists call themselves, advocate the use of coal, hydro power, natural gas, and solar power. In their zeal to save mankind from nuclear power, they ignore the 140 coal miners killed in the United States each year. They fail to notice that the dams that provide hydroelectric power have killed thousands of people over the years, from the 2,200-plus killed by the Johnstown flood in 1889 to the 250 killed by the collapse of the dam on Rapid Creek in South Dakota in 1972. And nuclear reactors cannot explode, whereas natural-gas explosions have accounted for thousands of deaths. Nuclear energy is not without its problems: Such matters as radioactive emissions, nuclear proliferation, radioactive waste, and reactor accidents are examined and put into perspective. The safety record of coal, hydro power, and natural gas is contrasted with that of nuclear energy, to which no deaths have ever been directly attributed. Yet, in 1979 Time allotted 25 lines to the collapse of a dam that killed two thousand people in Gujarat, West India, whereas a large portion of one issue of that magazine was devoted to the Three Mile Island accident, in which nobody was killed or even injured. To the Hoyles the truth matters: Without nuclear power, the citizens of the developed countries will be unable to maintain their present standard of living; the citizens of the underdeveloped countries will be forever condemned to an average income of $100 to $500 a year.

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Ronald Klueh

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Common Sense in Nuclear Energy, by Fred Hoyle and Geoffrey Hoyle (Freeman, 85 pp., $5.50, paper). Because the recent cutbacks in demand for energy have led to oil-price rollbacks by OPEC, anti-nuclear activists are gleefully declaring the death of nuclear energy, which, according to them, is no longer needed. The noted British scientists Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle set out to show that such reasoning is illusory and that nuclear energy is actually our only hope for the future. The environmentalists, as the anti-nuclear activists call themselves, advocate the use of coal, hydro power, natural gas, and solar power. In their zeal to save mankind from nuclear power, they ignore the 140 coal miners killed in the United States each year. They fail to notice that the dams that provide hydroelectric power have killed thousands of people over the years, from the 2,200-plus killed by the Johnstown flood in 1889 to the 250 killed by the collapse of the dam on Rapid Creek in South Dakota in 1972. And nuclear reactors cannot explode, whereas natural-gas explosions have accounted for thousands of deaths. Nuclear energy is not without its problems: Such matters as radioactive emissions, nuclear proliferation, radioactive waste, and reactor accidents are examined and put into perspective. The safety record of coal, hydro power, and natural gas is contrasted with that of nuclear energy, to which no deaths have ever been directly attributed. Yet, in 1979 Time allotted 25 lines to the collapse of a dam that killed two thousand people in Gujarat, West India, whereas a large portion of one issue of that magazine was devoted to the Three Mile Island accident, in which nobody was killed or even injured. To the Hoyles the truth matters: Without nuclear power, the citizens of the developed countries will be unable to maintain their present standard of living; the citizens of the underdeveloped countries will be forever condemned to an average income of $100 to $500 a year.