Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl
by Mary Mycio
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Book Summary Information
Author: Mary MycioEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-09-09
ISBN: 0309094305
Number of pages: 276
Publisher: Joseph Henry Press
Book Reviews of Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl
Book Review: A Hopeful Cautionary Tale
Summary: 5 Stars
I have put off reading "Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl" in part because with all the other bad news we are subjected to, I wanted to avoid a real downer. However once I started reading the book I could not put it down. Mary Mycio has captured both the despair (of which I was afraid) and the hope (in which I had difficulty believing) of the Chernobyl disaster. The name "Wormwood Forest" comes from the close relative of true wormwood that is one of the characteristic plants of the Chernobyl forest.
Certainly the horror of the melted power plant core and the pockets of high radiation levels present still hangs over the human inhabitants of "the Zone," as the area within a 30 km circle of the reactor is known, is palpable enough. This is especially so given the huge amount of human suffering engendered by the explosion, both in direct death by radiation for the firefighters to the increase of thyroid cancer in children. Still, as Mycio points out so eloquently, the worst predictions did not materialize and the Zone has become a wildlife (admittedly radioactive wildlife!) bonanza. Certainly selection for resistance to radiation took a terrible toll among the local mammals, birds, plants, and others. Sill the existence and even flourishing of the local biota is a surprising and hopeful development. Mycio has, in my opinion, done a very good job of describing this ambiguous result. Her style of writing is in fact very powerful in telling the story of Chernobyl.
It is obvious that no one (other than perhaps James Lovelock) would want to recreate "the Zone" in other localities on the planet and that the failure of the reactor is in every sense a cautionary tale. Until we can find some way to deal with the health effects to Uranium miners, the possibilities and consequences of failure in reactors, and the difficulties of dealing with radioactive waste, we have to look at nuclear power as a two-edged sword. On the other hand such countries as France have managed to handle the reactor construction and operation with few problems. However, they still have not addressed the first and last problems. Another problem in an age of terrorism is the security of the nuclear materials present. In my view nuclear power is only a short term solution at best.
The flourishing of wildlife around the reactor, especially mammals and birds- which are thought to be more susceptible to radiation damage- was surprising. However, it was already known that some lower organisms not killed immediately by the fireball, extreme radiation and shock wave of a nuclear explosion could rebound to higher numbers than before. Darkling beetles did so after explosions of bombs at the Nuclear Test Site in Nevada. In the process of describing the results of the Chernobyl explosion Mycio has shown us that in reality humans are more dangerous to other life forms, especially vertebrates, than is radiation!
Read this book! It clears away the fog and lets us confront both the real and imagined hazards of nuclear power.
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