Nuclear Witnesses: Insiders Speak Out

by Leslie J. Freeman

Book Overview

The nuclear workers and scientists who tell their stories in this book testify to the lie that has been sold to the American people. Nuclear energy is not safe, not clean, not cheap.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393300331
• ISBN13: 9780393300338
• Release Date: February 1982
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 364 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

This book is important in 2002.

As a student at Carleton College in the 70's, I took a seminar called Science and Society co-led by professors from the chemistry and religion departments. That class informed my entire life on the ethical dilemmas posed by "technological advances". Reading Nuclear Witnesses revives my commitment to questioning the wisdom of modern scientific advances. This twenty year old book is especially vital to the realization that 20/20 hindsight is not a luxury humanity can afford when it comes to nuclear power. As mankind continues to put material wealth and power over environmental health and spiritual values, it is even more important that we baby boomers and those coming of age study the recent past and maintain perspective on the promotion of the next panacea that will permit the persistence of the Western civilization's excess. New threats to our environment are extant with Bush II's repudiation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and his cavalier attitude to the environment (Kyoto Protocols, and Alaskan drilling) What is so compelling about Nuclear Witnesses is the first person account of those close to the nuclear industry--the Navaho who mined uranium, the U.S. Army serviceman who witnessed atmospheric atomic tests, the carpenter and millwright who built defective nuclear plants and the scientists who were pressured and sometimes physically threatened to falsify their findings. These real time first person accounts are even more frightening read in retrospect as we have lived through more peacetime nuclear scares since Three Mile Island and witnessed the arrogant accumulation of nuclear arms in non signatory nations (and non-nations, -Al Qaeda?) in under-developed parts of the world. Read this 1982 book with 2002 eyes against the backdrop of military exercises conducted by two Third World nations with nuclear capability-India and Pakistan. Read it and weep.