In a world seeking climate stability and freedom from Russian oil and gas, they can look attractive. Reactors emit very little carbon dioxide and can provide significant amounts of electricity – once they are up and running. Yet politicians keep coming back to the nuclear industry, most recently as a solution to global heating and our current energy crisis. The world has about 440 reactors in operation and another Fukushima-like blast at one of these is almost inevitable, probably before the middle of the next decade. Nor are we likely to have experienced our last nuclear disaster, adds Plokhy in this grim but expertly concise account of what happens when atom plants go bad. “I thought, ‘Oh, dear, now we are in a pickle,’” he recalled. Some operators reacted with panic as reactors caught fire and alarm blared through their control rooms, though a great many were calm, if baffled, as fresh catastrophes continued to unfold, with the prize for cool-headedness going to Windscale operator Arthur Wilson, who realised the plant’s Number 1 reactor was on fire and ready to explode. President Jimmy Carter was quick to visit Three Mile Island to provide reassurance that the site was no longer a danger to America, contrasting with Mikhail Gorbachev, who waited three years before he popped over to see how things were going at Chernobyl. National leaders reacted in different ways. In the case of the Kyshtym accident, a huge tract of irradiated land was declared uninhabitable, and remains that way 65 years after the disaster, while the clean-up bill for Fukushima is now estimated at $187bn (£150bn).

Dozens died trying to limit the effects of these disasters and thousands of citizens were exposed to radiation that will have triggered tumours and premature death. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The GuardianĪll were caused – in varying degrees – by poor design, technological mistakes, hubris and operator error.

Chernobyl by Serhii Plokhy