Before it's Too Late: A Scientist's Case for Nuclear Energy

1. Problems in Public Understanding.- Reference Notes.- 2. How Dangerous is Radiation?.- Meet the Millirem.- Scientific Basis for Risk Estimates.- The Media and Radiation.- Genetic Effects of Radiation.- Other Health Effects of Radiation.- Public Insanity.- The Cancer Risk from Low-Level Radiation.- Genetic Diseases.- Genetic Effects of Radiation.- Some Calculations.- Reference Notes.- 3. The Fearsome Reactor Meltdown Accident.- Was Three Mile Island a Near Miss to Disaster?.- Roads to Meltdown.- How Secure Is the Containment?.- The Probabilities.- The Worst Possible Accident.- Land Contamination.- Why the Public Misunderstanding?.- Non-Safety Issues.- Pressurized Thermal Shock.- Stress Corrosion Cracking of Pipes.- Steam Generator Tube Leaks.- Fault Tree Analysis.- The Emergency Core Cooling System- Preventing Meltdown.- Protections against Containment Rupture.- Reference Notes.- 4. Understanding Risk.- A Catalog of Risks.- Risks of Nuclear Energy-In Perspective.- Acceptability of Nuclear Power Risks.- Risks from Air Pollution in Coal Burning.- Risks in Other Energy Technologies.- Spending Money to Reduce Risk.- Reference Notes.- 5. Hazards of High-Level Radioactive Waste: The Great Myth.- A First Perspective.- High-Level Radioactive Waste-Hazards and Protective Barriers.- Quantitative Risk Assessment for High-Level Waste.- Long-Term Waste Problems from Chemical Carcinogens.- Should We Add Up Effects over Millions of Years?.- Why the Public Fear?.- Probabilities for Entering the Human Body.- Radiation Reaching the Surface from Buried Waste.- Derivation of Figure 17.- Probability for an Atom in the Ground to Enter a Human Stomach.- Reference Notes.- 6. More on Radioactive Waste.- Radon Problems.- Routine Emissions of Radioactivity.- Low-Level Waste.- Transuranic Waste.- Summary of Results.- The Real Waste Problem.- West Valley-The Ultimate Waste Problem.- Leaking Waste Storage Tanks.- Waste Transport-When Radioactivity Encounters the Public.- A Radioactive Waste Accident in the Soviet Union.- Summary.- Reference Notes.- 7. Plutonium and Bombs.- Fuel of the Future.- Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.- Nonproliferation Politics.- A Tool for Terrorists?.- Plutonium Toxicity.- Fraction of Cost of Nuclear Power Due to Raw Fuel.- Cost of Gasoline versus Cost of Nuclear Fuel.- Radiation Dose to Lung from Plutonium and the Lung Cancer Risk.- Reference Notes.- 8. Costs of Nuclear Power: The Achilles' Heel.- Understanding Power Plant Construction Costs.- Regulatory Ratcheting.- Actual Costs of Nuclear Power Plants-Regulatory Turbulence.- Actual Costs.- The Situation in Other Countries.- The Political Battle Lost.- Cost per Kilowatt-Hour.- Coal versus Nuclear Costs.- Reference Notes.- 9. The Solar Dream.- Cost Problems.- Is It There When We Need It?.- Why Solar Electricity?.- Environmental Problems, the Media, and Politics And More Politics.- Reference Notes.- 10. What the Polls Tell Us.- Rothman-Lichter Polls.- Battelle and Media Institute Studies.- A Poll of Radiation Health Scientists.- Summary.- Reference Notes.- 11. Questions from the Audience.- Radioactivity and Radiation.- Trust and Faith.- Reactor Accidents and Safety.- Radioactive Waste.- Miscellaneous Topics.- 12. A Cry for Help.