We lived in Beaufort (pronounced locally as “bu-fert”), South Carolina from July 1969 to June 1971. I was in the U.S. Navy Reserve and serving two years at the Naval Hospital, Beaufort. Periodically, we would drive to Savannah, Georgia, almost an hour away, for some children’s activity or a dinner out or, two weeks before we moved back to New York, to pick up a new Oldsmobile.

Coming from Beaufort, you need to cross the Savannah River to get to the city of Savannah. The Savannah nuclear reactor was known to dump its wastewater into the river. Every now and then we heard stories from locals about giant alligators in the river or other strange animals on the adjacent land. When I discussed this with some of my hospital colleagues, they also had heard similar stories. One, who was from Savannah, swore the stories were true.

New York Times, October 30, 2025

Consequently, it was no surprise to me when I read in the August 2, 2025, issue of the New York Times about radioactive wasp nests being identified at the Savannah nuclear reactor site.

In what may be one of the great understatements, a biologist at the University of South Carolina, after reading the report from the Department of Energy, noted, “… much greater effort must be made to assess the possible risks and hazards of what appears to be a significant source of radioactive pollutants.”

Indeed, it is likely that there is unaccounted for radioactivity close to many, if not all, nuclear reactors throughout the world. We have seen painful proof of this reality close to those reactors where major problems have come to public attention such as Kyshtym (1957), Windscale (renamed Sellafield) (1957), Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986) and, most recently, Fukushima (2011). Other serious nuclear accidents have occurred, including on nuclear submarines.

These are the ones about which we have been informed.

There are more than 400 nuclear power plants in the world in 31 countries, including more than 50 in the United States. Approximately 70 are under construction and another 100 are in the planning stages.

The Luddites were part of a 19th century movement of English textile workers who rallied against the use of certain types of automated machinery because of their concerns about the impact of new technology on the quality of the work produced as well as the impact on their ability to earn a living. They often destroyed machines. Eventually, legal actions and military forces led to suppression of the movement. Since then, the term ‘luddite’ has been used for anyone opposed to new technologies. I try not to be one of those old dogs for whom new tricks may be challenging

The Leader of the Luddites, 1812 etching

and I still welcome change. It is one of my ongoing regrets that I am highly unlikely to live to see mankind reach Mars.  Far from being a Luddite, I have embraced countless new technologies. Among my medical colleagues, I have often been the most knowledgeable about computers, was one of the first to have a Newton message pad, a digital camera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera …

I have told myself that I understand some of the risks of nuclear reactors but have always felt that human beings can always solve scientific problems when necessary as well as when the benefits clearly outweigh the risks. Alas, my tendency to be naïve sometimes triumphs over good sense and a mountain of facts.

Tesla, age 34

The dangers of radiation have been documented since Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), for whom Tesla cars are named and who invented the induction motor with rotating magnetic field, sustained one of the first radiation injuries ever recorded when working with what would later be called “x-rays.” If you’ve seen the technician leave the room while you underwent an x-ray examination or had some part of your body shielded by a lead apron you can understand that Medicine has done reasonably well to avoid repeating the Tesla experience.

Recently, on August 6 and 9, 2025, we were reminded that it was the 80th anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, dates that should always serve as sobering reminders of the dangers of radiation, dangers which are woefully underestimated. The first atomic bomb, carried in the B-29 airplane, the Enola Gay, named after the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbetts, destroyed Hiroshima, then a thriving city, killing more than 170,000 men, women and children.

Atomic bomb explosion at Hiroshima, August 6, 1945

Hiroshima, after August 6, 1945

Hiroshima, a few buildings remain after August 6, 1945


Even after reading about the radioactive wasps at the Savannah River, and even after once again hearing about the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I might not have been fully engaged in thinking about nuclear energy and its terrifying and possibly imminent risks. Recently, however, I read Return to Fukushima by Thomas Bass* and now find myself wondering if there is a local chapter of the Luddite Society I can join, at least for the issue of nuclear energy.



After reading Return to Fukushima, I am now convinced that nuclear energy is a greater risk than I ever imagined and that our society, as well as that of other nations, is not prepared to control it.


Indeed, I almost hear the oft-quoted chant from The Fly (a film I never saw): “Be afraid, be very afraid.”


In 2023, Japan began releasing radioactive water from the Fukushima disaster site into the Pacific Ocean. This was 12 years after the catastrophic nuclear accident.
Return to Fukushima captures the aftermath of the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima. Bass brilliantly and meticulously chronicles the resilience of people navigating life amid radioactivity. From desolation to revitalization, Fukushima’s ‘Argonauts of the Anthropocene’ (a term developed by Bass to refer to those individuals struggling to survive the unique environmental challenges of living in a radioactive society) portray realities that may face us all in the coming decades.

Fukushima is an ongoing nuclear disaster. The four reactors that melted down and exploded in 2011 are still deadly, even for the robots that get burned up trying to explore them. Over a hundred thousand people remain displaced, their homes frozen in time, eerie ghost towns where slippers sit undisturbed at doorsteps and tables are set for never-t0-return guests. Wild animals have moved into some houses. Vines overgrow buildings surrendering to entropy.

Bass tells us the world is dotted with similar nuclear exclusion zones. Atolls blown to smithereens. Test sites in the Mojave Desert. Disasters at Soviet bomb-making factories. The Red Forest around Chernobyl. These zones are growing in number and could, in the worst imaginable narrative, meld one into another. What if our future demands that we all learn how to live in nuclear exclusion zones?

He continues by suggesting this future is most evident in Fukushima, where the Japanese government is pushing people to resettle in towns that are supposedly decontaminated. These attempts have largely failed. What has not failed are the grassroots efforts at reviving Fukushima, propelled by the ingenuity of local farmers and entrepreneurs, citizen scientists, artists, and immigrants from around the world who are challenged enough to start new lives in the red zone.

In 2018 and again four and a half years later, Thomas Bass travelled to Fukushima. The difference, he recounts, was dramatic. The place had been cleaned up and reopened, not fully, but little-by-little. People are learning to live with radioactivity, decontaminate their fields, monitor their food, and prepare for some future tsunami set to wash over this seismically precarious part of the world. Seven years of research, including travels to Chernobyl as well as Fukushima, led to his alarming story of the realities of living with nuclear reactors.


Return to Fukushima is engrossing, enlightening and terrifying. Principally focused on the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima, Japan nuclear plant this book is a primer on nuclear power, in general, and the dangers of nuclear reactors, in particular. The eloquent and detailed discussions of the physics of nuclear energy provide fact after fact, while being highly readable and powerfully persuasive. The pages devoted to the sequential explosions of three of the four nuclear reactors are as chilling as any page-turner thriller. This is not a book that will be easily forgotten after the last page is read. Indeed, it is a haunting call for concern about the dangers inherent in the “peaceful” use of atomic power as the United States and other nations continue to create new reactors. The deliberate obfuscation by Japan’s leaders of the continuing danger at Fukushima is carefully documented both in citing official documents and, most alarming, in the words of common citizens. Similar official denials are likely in every country dependent on nuclear power. This book should be read by politicians, scientists, environmentalists and everyone concerned with the health and well-being of the human race.

The October 29, 2025, issue of The New York Times reports on a plan to build several new nuclear power plants. The reactors selected for construction previously had problems “so severe” in a previous construction that the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2017 because of the astronomic, unplanned for costs. More than 35 billion dollars were spent. This would be alarming enough but the concern is geometrically compounded by the fact that the current administration does not understand the importance of regulations, particularly if a friend of the White House stands to profit. It is likely not an accident that this story was in the business section of the newspaper. Part of the impetus for this project is to provide energy to meet the demands of AI. This discussion has concentrated on the risks of nuclear energy. What about the risks of a government made up of uneducated and stupid people overseeing both nuclear reactor construction and the implementation of artificial intelligence. I wish I could think of a joke comparing artificial intelligence to the lack of intelligence in the Oval Office, but there is nothing funny about any of this.

New York Times, October 29, 2025

Most recently, as if this were not enough, Donald NCETBP (not capable enough to be President), has announced that the United States will resume testing nuclear weapons. This follows the announcement by Putin that Russia will be testing delivery systems. The only logical conclusion is that Donald, Hegseth, Noem and the others do not understand the difference between testing delivery systems and testing actual nuclear weapons.

The world is now so much scarier than it has been since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. A huge difference between then and now is that, in 1962, we had a President. President John F. Kennedy, one of the best informed and thoughtful of all the presidents, had highly knowledgeable and sensible presidential advisers (Robert F. Kennedy, Sr;, Robert McNamara, Adlai Stevenson, others). President Kennedy called former Presidents Truman and Eisenhower for advice (can anyone of sound mind imagine Donald NCETBP calling for advice from Presidents Obama or Biden?). We were even better off because Russia also had a relatively knowledgeable and periodically sensible leader, Nikita Khrushchev, who was advised by Soviet Foreign Minister Anatoly Dobrynin and others. 

Is it time to again practice diving under our desks, as if that would protect us from radiation? Or should we open the best bottles of wine we can find and sit in a corner, chanting, “Be afraid, be very afraid.”

Or should we do whatever we can to make sure the mid-term elections defang and declaw the current administration until we find someone with knowledge and intelligence to occupy the Oval Office?

 

 

 

 

Thomas Bass and friend

*Thomas Bass is our nephew. He has written for The New Yorker, Wired, Smithsonian, the Wall Street Journal, American Scholar, the Bulletin of the American Scientists, and other publications. He is the author of eight nonfiction books on subjects ranging from beating roulette with toe-operated computers (The Eudaemonic Pie) to using chaos theory to predict the world financial markets (The Predictors). His other books include The Spy Who Loved Us, about a Vietnamese general who served both sides in that disastrous war, Vietnamerica, about the women impregnated by American soldiers in the Vietnam War and their children, Camping with the Prince, about an African trip with the now King Charles of Great Britain, Reinventing the Future, recounting interviews with some of the great physicists and philosophers of the 20th century, Censorship in Vietnam: Brave New World, about the often humorous challenge of publishing The Spy Who Loved Us in today’s Vietnam, and Return to Fukushima. Cited by the Overseas Press Club for his foreign reporting, he is a professor of English and journalism at the State University of New York in Albany. Our relationship does not alter the fact that Return to Fukushima is an excellent, highly readable and important book.