I recently finished Midnight in Chernobyl, by Adam Higginbottom, and had enough to say about it to give it a singular post separate from my book posts. As soon as I heard about the book, I put it on hold at the library.

I watched Chernobyl, of course, and years ago read Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl. My guess as to the sudden patter of media about Chernobyl is the combination of 30th anniversary (2016) and Fukushima being relatively recent. I was most curious, before starting this, about how nuclear power itself would be portrayed (mainly because of people I know expressing concern over potential fear-mongering and this New Yorker article, which discusses Germany’s switch to building up coal and forgoing nuclear, which has led to thousands of more deaths in the long run…but while Germany’s abandonment of nuclear power does seem to be fear-based, the fear is based on the Chernobyl and Fukushima incidents themselves – not any media surrounding them). I came away from the Chernobyl miniseries feeling that it emphatically demonstrated the incredible danger at the intersection of secrecy, bureaucracy, and oppression. Yes, of course the images of what radiation does to a person are visceral and terrifying, but…that’s what happens. The jacket copy for the book tends toward the more alarmist, but jacket copy and blurbs are going to err toward the dramatic no matter what.

That said…perhaps the book is doing some of what nuclear-power advocates fear it could, in that I am becoming increasingly convinced that humans can’t be trusted to wield nuclear power. But I’m not yet sure that that’s more pronounced with nuclear power rather than just more visible/more acute, while human recklessness with coal and other fossil fuels will kill many thousands more even in the short term. But my GOD the human fallibility – not just at Chernobyl but in incidents in Siberia and London before that…all of which showcase humans attempting to meet quotas/make money, cover their tracks, and keep things secret, to the detriment of everyone around them.

I guess the question is – are human recklessness and bureaucratic obfuscation going to be less deadly to us when applied to coal power than to nuclear? And I’d guess the answer is no. But it’s hard to read about civilians who would have escaped Pripyat virtually unscathed if they had only shut their windows, avoided produce, and kept their kids inside, or men who received enormous doses of radiation in part because no one told them to take off their irradiated uniforms when they left the reactor site. Wanting to avoid mass panic isn’t a trivial concern, but so much could have been mitigated (then again, when I think about LED and incandescent lightbulbs versus CFLS – which draw a fairly neat parallel to fossil fuels (safer seeming, less volatile, but ultimately worse for the environment (and for fossil fuels, worse for humans) and nuclear power (cleaner when used correctly but with higher potential for extreme consequences if something goes wrong) – I recall our broken lightbulbs and my frustration at trying to follow “best practices” for cleaning them up. The best practices for CFL cleanup were akin to the leaders in Chernobyl providing as much information as necessary to the citizens of the region – they gave me every possible chance to reduce the potential for harm. Yet I was frustrated by them anyway, because they caused me to panic (and to switch to LED bulbs). So…is that hypocritical, if I’m finding myself on the side of advocating for both nuclear power and transparency? Maybe.

Higginbottom doesn’t ignore any of this; his epilogue directly addresses Germany’s recent changes and the detriment to the environment that will occur if the world continues to rely on fossil fuels for the majority of its power. Yes, of course wind and solar power carry neither the long-term devastating effects of coal nor the threat of sudden nuclear disaster, but until then…nuclear power seems increasingly worth the risk. Unfortunately, the best ways to prevent nuclear disaster and mitigate the potential effects of the power plants are preparedness, lack of hubris, transparency, and caution, which are some of the things humans – in collective, especially in the form of governments – fall shortest of.

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