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Science with a Skew: The Nuclear Power Industry After Chernobyl and Fukushima

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Gayle Greene
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One might expect that the nuclear disasters at Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011 would have fundamentally shifted conversations about the environmental safety and desirability of nuclear power; claims made in the immediate aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki about the harmless and peaceful atom would have had to evolve to account for the environmental and human devastation caused by these two events. Yet there has been a striking degree of consistency in the scientific arguments made by proponents of nuclear power, as Gayle Greene reveals in this essay. Greene takes aim at the science marshaled by advocates of nuclear power and at media coverage that she suggests has allowed misunderstandings about the safety of nuclear power to endure. Reading this essay alongside the newspaper articles it discusses will illuminate the contours of the scientific debate about the health effects of both nuclear disasters and the kind of low-dose, radiation exposure over time that comes from working in the industry, living close to a reactor, or coming into contact with winds, groundwater, or food contaminated by nuclear waste. Greene reminds us about the historical and contemporary disagreements about the dangers to the environment and people posed by nuclear power, and takes a side in this debate with her plea to appreciate fully the human costs at stake.

Type
Part III - Nuclear Power after Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 10 , Special Issue S2: Course Reader No. 2. Environmental History , January 2012 , pp. 183 - 199
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2012

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