After a series of nuclear accidents, large and small, the impression has been growing among Americans that the nuclear industry is all but dead. No one, however, has convinced the industry, and in fact nothing at this time could be further from the truth. This book for the first time explains why the industry is alive and kicking, lays bare its intricate financial structure, and investigates the group of men behind it, that intimate brotherhood of corporate and government leaders who, convinced of their own best intentions, are proceeding to sell the earth’s tomorrow for today’s dollar.

Mark Hertsgaard spent three years conducting his research in the halls of the industry itself, gaining access to private corporate libraries and once-secret papers, and speaking with industry financial analysts and consultants. Most important and surprising, he conducted interviews with scores of Washington sources and key top-level nuclear corporate executives, who speak here about their goals, tactics, rationales, and strategies for the future, though many have never before spoken on the record. Their frankness and revelations are often startling.

Presenting all the facts and weighing all the arguments, both pro and con, pointing out where each is misguided, contradictory, founded in misinformation, a desire for self-aggrandizement or lies, Hertsgaard leads us cooly to an understanding of the business of nuclear power that allows us at least to make our independent and informed judgments about it.

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