No Breathing Room: The Aftermath of Chernobyl

Medvedev, who presented a shocking eyewitness account of the 1986 nuclear plant disaster in The Truth About Chernobyl , here describes his efforts during the 1970s and '80s to publicize nuclear hazards. A nuclear engineer in the former Soviet Union who was treated for radiation sickness in 1971, he fought the censors, mostly in vain, to publish articles about official cover-ups of nuclear accidents, radioactive contamination of large areas of land and the increasing contamination of air, food and water. Medvedev describes his battle against bureaucracy and censorship in often tedious detail. A stinging indictment of the secrecy, corruption and incompetence that led to the Chernobyl meltdown, this book includes an extensive introduction in which Marples ( The Social Impact of the Chernobyl Disaster ) warns of the dangers of nuclear energy in the post-Soviet world. (Apr.)