'Going Nuclear' and 'Atomic Dreams': Fission's Big Comeback (Book Reviews)

"Seventy years ago, at the dawn of the nuclear age, atomic energy was viewed as the next great hope of modern civilization. Lewis Strauss, then the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, infamously said it could be the key to making energy “too cheap to meter” and a catalyst for an age of enduring peace. Today, a similar optimism animates the pursuit of nuclear energy. This time, however, the framing is that the peaceful atom is too important to ignore because of its potential to free us of fossil fuels.

In “Going Nuclear: How Atomic Energy Will Save the World,” Tim Gregory sees nuclear energy as the “only hope” for “mitigating” climate change because it eliminates “emissions released as a by-product of burning fossil fuels.” Similarly, in “Atomic Dreams: The New Nuclear Evangelists and the Fight for the Future of Energy,” Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow believes “nuclear advocacy and climate alarm … go hand in hand.” These books join dozens of other pro-nuke books published in the past few years."