French nuclear chemist Bertrand Goldschmidt never got over his bitterness at France’s rejection by the major Western powers after World War II, the nation having to start almost completely afresh as it clawed its way to nuclear energy and, in 1960, nuclear weapons. The term proliferation didn’t really gain currency until the early 1960s, yet here he is, in 1977, scathingly referring. . .
Another weird and wonderful slice of life from Alexander Borovoi, describing his witnessing of the attempt of a Soviet robot to examine the deep, highly radioactive innards of the wreck of Reactor No. 4. (One of the frustrating aspects of this book is the lack of specific details such as, in this case, how big the robot was. The image below is apparently from a Chernobyl robot museum but I have. . .
I’ve only recently stumbled across a Russian book written in 1996 but not translated (at least in easily available form) until 2017. A Moscow engineer at the famous Kurchatov Institute, Alexander Borovoi began commuting to Chernobyl soon after the 1986 calamity, part of the huge team struggling to contain the aftermath. My heart leapt when I bought it on Kindle but it turns out much of it. . .