The Age of Radiance

by Craig Nelson

  “The world has never known”: Drain.

  “You might say that I”: Teller.

  “all the alarms went off”: Palfreman.

  14. There Fell a Great Star from Heaven, Burning as It Were a Lamp

  “The weather was so wonderful”: Alexievich.

  “fundamentally faulty, having a built-in”: Rhodes, “Matter.”

  “In the program there are instructions”: Hoffman.

  “At the moment when the turbine”; “like a volcanic eruption”: Staff, “Word for Word.”

  “since all Soviet nuclear facilities were designed”; “a white pillar several hundred”: Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly.

  “Flames, sparks, and chunks of”: Rhodes, “Matter.”

  “I can still see the bright”; “Do you know how pleasantly”: Alexievich.

  “Suddenly we saw [a man]”; “There was a loud thud”: Staff, “Word for Word.”

  “We didn’t know it was”: Sahota.

  “One night I heard a noise”: Alexievich.

  “By May 4 the pilots”: Staff, “Word for Word.”

  “The water table will start”: Justin Elliott.

  “It was a real war”; “There was a Ukrainian woman”; “One collective farm chairman”; “The soldiers knocked”; “The police were yelling”; “They come around here”; “If we kill a wild boar”: Alexievich.

  “We are the great guinea pigs”; “My teeth are falling out”; “These people are sick”; “It’s not too much to say”; “If I knew it would be”: Specter.

  “the population remains largely unsure”: Mettler.

  “Radiation is good for you”; “Life itself is dangerous”; “it’s safe where we are”; “Northern Ukraine is the cleanest”: Shukman.

  “Chernobyl represents a huge mystery”: Grady, “Countering Radiation Fears with Just the Facts.”

  15. Hitting a Bullet with a Bullet

  “[Cheating death] made me feel”; “horrified”: Paul Lettow, Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (New York: Random House, 2005).

  “Both our countries know from”: Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (New York: HarperCollins, 1993).

  “I have never forgotten the sorrow”: Sykes.

  “It’s powerfully done, all $7 mil.”: Reagan diary, October 10, 1983.

  “It finally settled my internal debate”: Zaitchik.

  “In several ways, the sequence”: Reagan diary, November 18, 1983.

  “a concrete program, calculated for”: Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Report 3, no. 11 (January 16, 1986).

  “a hell of a good idea”: Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly.

  “We’d be hard put to”: Reagan diary, January 15, 1986.

  “So let me precisely, firmly”; “Excuse me, Mr. President, but”: Archives, Gorbachev Foundation.

  “Let me ask, do we mean”; “We can do that”; “Let’s do it”; “If we agree that by”: Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly.

  “hitting a bullet with a bullet”; “What country is suicidal enough”: Smith and Ratnam.

  “Do not be so naive”: “Nuclear Proliferation.”

  “A dictator or oligarch bent”: Mueller.

  “smelt . . . you know, like hair”: Miklós.

  “all organs and tissues of”: Glanz.

  “Spengler may have been right”: Gopnik.

  “No country without an atom bomb”: Mueller.

  “technology has become a useful tool”: Langewiesche.

  “Does anyone really think that”: Zakaria.

  16. On the Shores of Fortunate Island

  “With the stones that you boys”: Fackler, “Fukushima’s Long Link to a Dark Nuclear Past.”

  “The Japanese are pathologically sensitive”; “it’s unthinkable that I could”: Osnos, “Aftershocks.”

  “The Atomic Energy Commission was”: Palfreman.

  “Do you remember our sleeves”; “the tsunami hit Tagajo”: O’Brien and Palfreman.

  “I still remember it”; “I saw the tsunami coming”: Pillitteri.

  “the fire that you can’t”: George Johnson.

  “They aren’t being heated by”: Chris Wilson.

  “After the second shock wave”; “If [Tokyo Electric Power Company] and”: Adelstein and McNeill.

  “I went straight to the harbor”: Edge.

  “He would like to think”: Osnos, “Aftershocks.”

  “They sent people out in”: O’Brien and Palfreman.

  “We don’t know exactly how”; “It’ll be like somebody dropped”: Mirsky.

  “At Chernobyl, you know, the workers”: Osnos, “Fallout.”

  “I thought this country was finished”: Yokota and Yamada.

  “The hydrogen is being vented”; “It’s worse than a meltdown”: Mirsky.

  “Just as we were to get”: Edge.

  “Everything in their system is”: Sanger, Wald, and Tabuchi.

  “Number Four is currently burning”: Tabuchi, “A Confused Nuclear Cleanup.”

  “more sense of crisis”; “heartfelt hope that the people”: Osnos, “Aftershocks.”

  “the popcorn scenario”; “One will pop and then another”: Osnos, “Fallout.”

  “We cannot hold on to”; “If they withdrew”; “We can still hold on”; “I always wondered why you”: Powell and Takayama.

  “They are ready to die”: Iyer.

  “When a man has to”: Adelstein, Yakuza.

  “In the year 2002, the”: Ariel Schwartz.

  “My town is gone”; “There were so many ideas”: Belson, “Panic.”

  “In the control room, people”: Edge.

  “What the hell are you”; “I thought about changing jobs”: Yokota and Yamada.

  “We can’t get inside to check”: Sanger, Wald, and Tabruchi.

  “If you can’t make accurate”: Hall and Makinen.

  “The most likely effects would”: Staff, “Radiation in Japan Seas.”

  “When I heard that the operation”: Samuels.

  “Unfortunately, the water contains a”: Tabuchi, “Japan Releases.”

  “formula every day without any”: Tabuchi, “Japanese Tests.”

  “We are all amateurs”; “They tell us decontamination would”: Tabuchi, “Confused Nuclear.”

  “It’s too dangerous”; “They called several days ago”: Fackler, “Japan Split.”

  “Nuclear energy shouldn’t be in”: Adelstein, Yakuza.

  “a collapse of the nation’s ability”: Fackler, “Japan’s Former Leader.”

  “This is a historic experience”: Tabuchi, “Citizens’ Testing.”

  “a state of cold shutdown”: Fackler, Devastation.

  “The coolant water is keeping”: Powell and Takayama.

  “Americans have never met a hydrocarbon”: Kolbert, “Burning Love.”

  “The sole fatal nuclear power”: Saletan, “Nuclear Overreactors.”

  “perhaps the real cause”; “By 1987, the year following Chernobyl”: Mark Joseph Stern.

  “His dream in life was”: Silverstein.

  “Know what?”; “The explosions in the backyard”: Clynes.

  “The sum of exposures”: Rhodes, “Matter.”

  “the risk of cancer is quite low”; “Of those fifty thousand people”: Grady, “Radiation Is Everywhere.”

  “radiation biology lessons”: Broad, “Drumbeat.”

  17. Under the Thrall of a Two-Faced God

  “almost one million people have already”: Caldicott, “Unsafe.”

  “People have come not only”: Falk.

  “far more people die each year”: Mahaffey.

  “Hundreds of billions were spent”: Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly.

  “Fifty years of telling ourselves”: Gareth Cook.

  “has got into its hands”: Winston S. Churchill, Amid These Storms: Thoughts and Adventures (New York: Scribner’s, 1932).

  “history of science and technology has”: Cronin.

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