2011 Books – Idaho Falls

I bet if you asked most people what or when the first nuclear “disaster” took place in the United States, they would probably answer: Three Mile Island. Well, that answer would be wrong. The first nuclear accident happened in 1961 in a sleepy little town called Idaho Falls.

Being fascinated by nuclear accidents, and having read several books on Chernobyl and just as the tragic earthquake and tsunami hit Japan this past March, well… it seemed only natural that I continue reading on the subject. When I picked up William McKeown’s book Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America’s First Nuclear Accident, I expected much of what I had come across reading about Chernobyl—a lot of scientific stuff that I’d have to wade through and think about and figure out what it meant in layman’s terms.

What McKeown did instead was present the reader with a story. Two guys just looking to make a few bucks and climb the corporate ladder end up (along with a third who is only briefly mentioned) being the first three casualties of America’s nuclear reactor program.

You read about how Jack and Dick ended up at Idaho Falls. How both had tempers. How rumors spread about affairs with each others’ wives. How there was no plan in place in case of an accident. How little training one needed to work in these small reactors. And how this accident came about: was it an accident, was it murder, or was it a murder/suicide?

It was more like reading a good thriller… only this one really did happen. Of course, there is no proof about the supposed affairs, but McKeown presents the evidence he does have and leaves it up to the reader to decide. And he weaves the story around the accident, giving a layman an overview of what a nuclear reactor is, how it works, and the problems of the early reactors – and all of this in an easy to understand storytelling way.

You also find out how the first accident was handled and what had to be done to the three bodies in order to allow the families to give them a proper burial. Let’s just say there was a lot of lead, steel and concrete used around the graves and that they have been marked in such a way that no one should open them (if they could get to them) for at least 50,000 years or so.

As Egon Lamprecht, an initial firefighter responder to the alarm at the SL-1 reactor said, “We will never know for sure if it was a murder-suicide or whether it was an accident. I know it was man-caused. No one can deny that. That control rod got pulled out by a human being. Why was it pulled? We’ll never know. Dead men don’t talk.”

This short 250-page book is a can’t-put-it-down page-turner. Whether you’re fascinated by disasters, nuclear reactors or if you just love a good thriller, this book will keep you in it’s grip until the last page. Well worth the read.