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Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy (Vintage)

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Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy (Vintage)

(56 customer reviews)

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An informed look at the myths and fears surrounding nuclear energy, and a practical, politically realistic solution to global warming and our energy needs. Faced by the world's oil shortages and curious about alternative energy sources, Gwyneth Cravens skeptically sets out to find the truth about nuclear energy. Her conclusion: it is a totally viable and practical solution to global warming. In the end, we see that if we are to care for subsequent generations, embracing nuclear energy is an ethical imperative.

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Product Details

Author:	Gwyneth Cravens
Paperback:	464 pages
Publisher:	Vintage
Publication Date:	October 14, 2008
Language:	English
ISBN:	0307385876
Product Length:	5.15 inches
Product Width:	0.9 inches
Product Height:	8.0 inches
Product Weight:	0.95 pounds
Package Length:	7.95 inches
Package Width:	5.2 inches
Package Height:	1.02 inches
Package Weight:	0.93 pounds
Average Customer Rating:	based on 56 reviews

Customer Reviews

Average Customer Review: 4.0

( 56 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

79 of 83 found the following review helpful:

A must read for anyone concerned about our planet Nov 07, 2007 By Juliet
Until I read Gwyneth Cravens' "Power to Save the World", I would have
described myself as an anti-nuke, pro-solar-and-windmills mom and
responsible inhabitant of this planet.
Now I, and all readers of her timely book, can benefit from Cravens'
friendship with Rip Anderson, of Sandia National Laboratories.
Ms. Cravens' writing style is as much a pleasure as it is
informative. In a personal tone, she invites the reader on her
journey and we can't help but recognize our own misconceptions and
outdated information about nuclear energy.
Cravens tracks the life cycle of uranium, tours nuclear facilities,
and asks important questions and presents them in what becomes a page
turner.
She explains in detail how efficient nuclear power is while she
dispels myths and clarifies science. While no industrial power source
is trouble-free, it's clear that carbon-free nuclear power is vastly
preferable to burning coal. I highly recommend this book to each
resident of planet earth.

40 of 40 found the following review helpful:

An eye opener to be read and re-read! Nov 07, 2007 By Kenneth W. Christian
I am quite sure that Gwyneth Cravens's highly readable book will be controversial. I can only hope that it will get the reading it deserves.

Before I read it, I was certain that I knew that nuclear energy was highly risky and a threat to all. I now understand that I actually knew very little. Despite every good intention, I had been pulled into a mindless groupthink about Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and by the very green movement I love. What I learned by reading Cravens, for example, is that as a species we evolved at a time of far greater radiation than now occurs and that one gets more radiation from eating a single banana, or crossing Grand Central Station once, than one gets living next door to a nuclear plant for a year. We are swimming in a sea of radiation, and always have been, but effectively none of it comes from the use of nuclear power plants constructed in the West. And interestingly, radiation turns out to be one of those things for which dosage is crucial. Radiation at certain low doses appears even to produce positive effects.

This book is a pleasure to read because it brims not with opinions, hyperbole or hysteria, but refreshingly, with scientific facts. There are no conspiracy theories and no bad guys (except maybe for coal producers). New, fresh, interesting information appears on every page. As Cravens points out, at one time not that long ago, people feared the dangers of bringing electricity into their homes. And they weren't completely wrong. Dangers accompany electricity, fire and other powerful yet beneficial forms of energy. The key to benefitting from them lies in overcoming fear and learning how to use the proper precautions with each.

I suppose that much of my own negative reaction to all things nuclear stems from my complete antipathy to nuclear weaponry. What is clear, however, is that if we want to provide electrical energy on the massive scale we consume, we already have the technology to do it cleanly. It turns out that to produce the kind of base load energy we need to have 24/7/365, we really have two choices: coal, on which we primarily rely, and nuclear energy. Cravens makes the irrefutable case that coal is by far the more dangerous, more polluting, more greenhouse-gas-producing choice. And its use is nearly unregulated.

Nuclear energy is THE green alternative for producing the quantities of electrical power we need now. No other current alternative produces abundant energy at low cost while producing NO greenhouse gases. The future we must move to if we want to save the planet, is available now. We can act to save the world if we overcome prejudice and fear.

Thank you, Gwyneth Cravens for producing such a timely, reasonable and well documented book!

67 of 71 found the following review helpful:

A Book to Clarify the Nuclear Power Debate Nov 19, 2007 By Theodore Rockwell
You'll be surprised what you can learn from this wonderful book. The fact that prize-winning nuclear chronicler Richard Rhodes, well-known as a stickler for historical accuracy, has endorsed it and written the Introduction, tells us we're on solid ground here. Although he is an authority on the nuclear enterprise, Rhodes says he leaned "something new on every page." The environmentalist, Stewart Brand, calls it simply, "The best introduction to the current realities and benefits of nuclear power." And popular story teller Tony Hillerman says, "I'd like to see this on every bookshelf in America and on student reading lists."

So, what makes it so special? First of all, the author herself. Her background makes clear that she is no shill for the nuclear industry. In fact, she was quite an aggressive anti-nuclear activist for many years. So she has a personal, battlefront familiarity with the questions and concerns that bother many people about the technology. Second, she is a highly skilled writer, author of five well-received novels, praised by her fellow writers, winner of many writing awards and fellowships, and Visiting Writer in the Graduate Program in Writing at UC Irvine. As a fiction editor at The New Yorker Magazine (1980-87) under the legendary William Shawn, she worked with such noted writers as Milan Kundera and Susan Sontag.

But, most important for this book, is that in addition to having a novelist's easy, graceful writing style, she brings many years' experience as a reporter for some of the world's top publications: The New Yorker, The New York Times (magazine, book review and Op-Ed page), The Washington Post, The Nation, Harpers, The Village Voice and others.

Power to Save the World is her first non-fiction book-length opus. The unique way she carried out the eight-year chore of creating it makes it particularly easy to follow, both for nuclear specialists and for those wholly new to the subject (as she was). She used to make off-hand anti-nuclear comments to her friend, Dr. D. Richard ("Rip") Anderson, chemist, oceanographer, and environmental health and nuclear safety analyst, now retired from Sandia National Laboratories. Rip would patiently explain in each case that her concern was based on misinformation. It finally reached the point where he said, "Would you really like to get the facts on this subject?" and she realized that she would. So they started "at the beginning," visiting and learning about uranium mines, milling, and fuel fabrication, and step by step, branching off from time to time to cover it all, finally ending with waste handling and storage. This is certainly the best way for a newcomer to develop an understanding of the subject. The reader learns as the author learned. As each concern is explored and dealt with, the reader comes up with the next question: "Yes, but what about...?" And that is the very moment that the author has already asked the question, and we are listening to the answer as she did. This gives readers who are new to the subject a basis for keeping the overall context continually in view and having a feeling as to where they are at any moment.

Nuclear technology is a large, complex enterprise. Its various parts were severely compartmentalized during the War. As a result, very few of us, even the earliest pioneers, are informed as to all the parts. Thus, Cravens' approach, so appropriate for newbies, is also an excellent process for even the most knowledgeable. Although the language is intelligible to lay persons, it is scientifically accurate. Yet at no time does any reader feel condescended to. This is a major accomplishment, and Cravens' great gift to us all.

In his Introduction to the book, Richard Rhodes refers to Cravens' text as a Pilgrimage, in the tradition of John Bunyan's seventeenth century classic, Pilgrim's Progress. And that is appropriate. But I am more impressed with the fact that she applied to the task her well-honed skills as investigative reporter. In a constant swirl of rumors, she was determined to learn first-hand what the real facts were. And when she gets a firm grasp on the facts, and a lucid description of them on the page, there is really no room for the unsupported rumor to survive. Without being dogmatic or simplistic, she shows over and over again that many of the "controversial issues" our field is plagued with are not complicated or controversial at all, once the facts are made clear and the fears dispersed.

She exposes the sham that supports the notion that low-dose radiation can be harmful. That, in turn, eliminates the possibility of thousands of deaths resulting from a core meltdown. She throws factual light on other supposed nuclear hazards. As each new fear is examined in light of what is physically possible, the dreaded what ifs are shown to be classical bogey men, spooks composed of nothing but fear itself. She shows that nuclear energy is not a Faustian bargain too powerful and mysterious to trust to human hands. Instead, it is providential gift to humankind, born out of our growing understanding of the laws that govern all technology. A gift given just as all other gifts are proving inadequate for our future needs.

We can all learn from this book about how controversial and scary subjects can be explained, simply and clearly. You have to wonder why it took us so long to find this out. But you don't have to wonder what to get your friends and colleagues (and adversaries) for Christmas this year. Ms. Cravens has given us the answer to that question too, and just in time.

21 of 21 found the following review helpful:

THE issue for our time Nov 18, 2007 By John L. Pope
There is no more urgent environmental or geopolitical issue in the world today than clean energy production. While energy sources like wind and solar are appealing, they generate only a small percentage of the power needed to replace CO2 emitting energy sources. Enter (or re-enter) nuclear. France, e.g., a country with few natural energy resources (a condition all countries will be in, sooner or later), adopted an energy policy based on nuclear power in the early seventies; today, nuclear power generates 75% of their electricity, and has turned them into a energy exporter. Many Americans, though, myself included, have had the same reservations about nuclear power as the author says she held before she started her book: skepticism of nuclear plant safety, worry about nuclear waste and about the possibility of terrorist attacks.

Cravens makes a very convincing case that these worries are not well founded. The many facts she presents are the result of her careful sifting - over a period of eight years - of the evidence on both sides, as she addresses her original doubts one by one. It is a bonus that the book is so well written, and has literary value in the way it shows a firmly-held opinion slowly changing to its opposite as the facts are confronted. But it is the urgency of the message that really matters, and that is what the book delivers: a passionate, extremely well-researched wakeup call. The more people on both sides of the nuclear debate read this book and assimilate its implications, the better.

22 of 23 found the following review helpful:

Balanced and Informative, but Too Long! Dec 22, 2007 By Loyd E. Eskildson "Pragmatist"
All of one's electricity for a lifetime generated from nuclear power would create 2 lbs. of waste, vs. 68.5 tons if generated from coal. Making electricity generates 40% of the world's CO2, and usage is expected to double by 2030.

The book's major value is in credibly dissecting the multiple hysteria associated with nuclear power. Those resisting nuclear energy and the hope it offers vs. global warming should look at its track record. Our nuclear navy has used reactors over 50 years without harmful radioactivity release, and there have been no deaths attributable to nuclear power in the U.S. in over 40 years. Chernobyl failed because of poor design (no containment building) and poor management (safety systems were disconnected during a test).

Alternative non-carbon power sources have limited potential. A 1,000 MW nuclear plants takes .3 square miles, an equivalent wind farm requires 200, while a solar array 50.

Finally, Cravens points out that existing power sources are far from totally safety. Coal-fired plants create 24,000 premature American deaths/year, while those in China create 400,000 Chinese deaths. Failed dam structures have led to 1,000 American deaths in the last century.

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