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In 1946, just after the first anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima, "The New Yorker" magazine's Aug. 31 issue published the complete text of John Hersey's portrait of the atom bomb and its effects on the Japanese city. At the end of the war, in 1945, Hersey was in Japan writing about the reconstruction of the devastated country when he happened across an account written by a Jesuit priest who had survived the Hiroshima destruction. It was he who introduced the reporter to other survivors. From these, Hersey chose six individuals: two doctors, a minister, a widowed seamstress, a young woman who worked in a factory, and the priest himself. These became the principal characters in an account that melded nonfiction reportage with the stylistic devices of the novel, all expressed through the plainest of styles.

In an era when the corporate media and the corporate politicians and the corporate military men gang up together and denounce and threaten other countries because of their nuclear related activities, they should spend much of that rhetorical energy by cross-examining themselves in a mirror. North Korea's latest nuclear test received much more attention than its earlier 'possible' test because of its greater power and the strategic message sent by its politically timed Taepodong II rocket launch. Iran has moved a little bit off the radar screen as its elections have proven more interesting than its nuclear 'threat' but it is under increasing scrutiny as it reaches weapons potential. When placed in relation to this "cautionary history", North Korea and Iran are acting only as all other nuclear powers have acted in the past, for the main theme behind In Mortal Hands is that of lies, deceit, deception, cover-ups, and secrecy to cover up the real issues with the nuclear industry. The real issue as reiterated constantly and perceptively by Stephanie Cooke is that of an industry whose central purpose is to create fissile material for weapons production regardless of and in spite of all other attempts to equate nuclear energy with peaceful purposes and with the 'greening' of the energy industry.

Giant loan guarantees could stick taxpayers with the bill At a time of deep partisan and ideological divi -sion in Washington, there aren't many issues that bring together forces from across traditional divides. So when scholars at conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and taxpayer groups such as the National Taxpayers Union agree with environmentalists on something, it's time to sit up and take notice. That's exactly what's happening on the issue of federal subsidies for new nuclear power plants. Fiscal conservatives know that nuclear subsidies are a potential multibillion dollar boondoggle, while environmentalists know that - even beyond the environmental and public safety threats posed by the reactors themselves - there are far better and much cheaper solutions to our energy and global warming challenges."

"The autobiography of a former director of British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) is likely to reignite fears about the safety of nuclear power, as Britain prepares for a new generation of reactors, by exposing the panic that rocked the industry two decades ago when a link was suggested between radiation and childhood leukaemia. At its height, workers at Sellafield were advised not to have children, while bosses at the Cumbrian nuclear complex even proposed establishing a sperm bank or calling for "radiation volunteers" from among older workers in order to reduce levels of exposure for workers of child-bearing age."

"While John D'Agata's About a Mountain is, in large part, about a mountain (Yucca, specifically), it attempts to gather in much, much more. The story of a young suicide victim named Levi; the politics of nuclear waste; the nature of Las Vegas; and, at a deeper level, language, uncertainty, time and the unknowability of things. Also, his mother."

"With the renewed interest in nuclear weapons I have been struck by how few people there still are who have seen one explode. There are a few survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and there are a small number who witnessed some of the above ground test explosions. But the last American above-ground test was in 1962 and the last above-ground test by any country was conducted by the Chinese in 1980. This means that the Indians, Pakistanis, Israelis-to say nothing of the Iranians and North Koreans-have never seen a nuclear explosion. In the main, this is a very good thing: the fallout from such a test is a real health hazard. But there is a downside. We have lost the experience of watching a nuclear explosion-perhaps the most powerful lesson about nuclear bombs there is."

U.S. reactors have generated about 65,000 metric tons of spent fuel, of which 75 percent is stored in pools, according to Nuclear Energy Institute data. Spent fuel rods give off about 1 million rems (10,00Sv) of radiation per hour at a distance of one foot - enough radiation to kill people in a matter of seconds. There are more than 30 million such rods in U.S. spent fuel pools. No other nation has generated this much radioactivity from either nuclear power or nuclear weapons production. Nearly 40 percent of the radioactivity in U.S. spent fuel is cesium-137 (4.5 billion curies) - roughly 20 times more than released from all atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. U.S. spent pools hold about 15-30 times more cesium-137 than the Chernobyl accident released. For instance, the pool at the Vermont Yankee reactor, a BWR Mark I, currently holds nearly three times the amount of spent fuel stored at Dai-Ichi's crippled Unit 4 reactor. The Vermont Yankee reactor also holds about seven percent more rad