A comprehensive exploration of the six worst nuclear disasters in history—or really the worst accidents, because the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not included here, but the disastrous “Castle Bravo” test in the Bikini Atoll in 1954 is. Plokhy expertly analyzes disasters in England, the U.S., Ukraine, and Japan, and concludes that human venality and the inevitability of accidents in this complex technology make nuclear power the most dangerous 10% of our international energy mix. Accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima are of course the worst, resulting in releases of radioactivity that still have global effects today; both left the surrounding land uninhabitable and also polluted air and water. Each resulted in serious antinuclear movements that slowly faded from memory. Fukushima may have longer effects, however. The author cites as an example Germany’s commitment to decommission its nuclear power plants by 2022. “If a Fukushima-type disaster could happen in a technologically developed and…highly organized society like Japan, then it could happen in Germany as well,” German officials believed (274). It remains to be seen how the Russian invasion of Ukraine affects the nuclear landscape; as I write this, Russians have occupied the largest European nuclear facility in Zaporizhzhia and are operating from it as a frontline military base.