Critical Masses: Opposition to Nuclear Power in California, 1958-1978

Rating:
Summary: A must for understanding nuclear opposition worldwide.
Review: Wellock has not left a page unscrutinized in this very readable, exhaustively thorough story of the origins and the rise of the anti-nuclear power movement in the U.S. and the colorful characters who pioneered it. Wellock's easy writing style surmounts the usual university pedantic requirement for more pages of footnotes than of analysis. It feels as though Wellock began with a nuclear engineer's distaste for the anti-nuclear activists but slowly came 'round to genuine respect for them. A fascinating account.

Rating:
Summary: Perfect analysis
Review: Wellock's book is a thoroughly readable book on the social history of nuclear power in California. His approach is to focus on the social critique of nuclear power instead of the usual managerial and economic post-mortems of nuclear power in the US. California is an extremely interesting case, because there was good reason for nuclear power in a state with breakneck growth and little coal reserves. The policies that grew out of California's anti-nuclear movement ended up changing the face of energy policy for the country as a whole (California keeps its status as a political bellwether for the rest of the US).

Amazing that a book about nuclear power can be so arresting - I read it while in the British Virgin Islands - surely a place with better things to do, right?