From Publishers Weekly
Few Americans are aware that the world's largest commercial producer of plutonium is Great Britain, which also, according to the author, leads the world in environmental pollution. For 35 years, the British government has manufactured and reprocessed plutonium at Sellafield (formerly called Windscale) on the northwest coast of England. The plant accepts radioactive wastes from other countries, extracting usable materials and flushing the remainder into the Irish Sea or venting it through smokestacks into the air. As Windscale, the plant was the site of the most serious nuclear accident (1957) before Chernobyl. Reports of other accidents, a high incidence locally of childhood leukemia and contaminated area beaches have been closely monitored or denied by the government. In her pursuit of this story, Robinson ( Housekeeping ) becomes an incendiary: How, she asks, can a country ostensibly devoted to human welfare show such wanton disregard for the lives of its people. To answer the question, she delves into British economic and social history, examining the Poor Laws, Karl Marx, the Fabians and the welfare state. She draws a parallel between those who operate Sellafield and the industrialists, colonizers and slave traders of past centuries: their chief interest, she concludes in this convincing, explosive expose, is profit.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Robinson, whose first novel was the critically acclaimed Housekeeping ( LJ 12/1/80), here writes a nonfictional account of Sellafield, a governnment-owned plant in Northern England that, for 40 years, has been dumping radioactive residue into the Irish Sea, causing a major source of ground and water contamination and high cancer rates in the surrounding area. Robinson discovered this problem while on sabbatical in England a few years ago. She devotes half of her book to a discussion of Britain's industrial history--from the Poor Laws of the 14th century to the Official Secrets Act of the 20th--that shows a continual protection of this sort of conduct from close scrutiny. Robinson's loathing for British attitudes toward the powerless is consummate, and no American reading her book will ever feel the same about the mother country.-- Daniel La Rossa, Connetquot P.L., Bohemia, N.Y. Reviewers wanted for reference and pop ular books in medicine, science, and tech nology. Hot topics: childcare, aging, envi ronmentalism, radiation, popular use of microcomputers, and more. Those interest ed in writing critical, comparative reviews are invited to send a sample review to Judy Quinn, The Book Review.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
