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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Trashy disaster novels can be fun, but this one is just trash.,
This review is from: The Prometheus Crisis (Paperback)
This novel depicts an accident at a massive, newly-constructed nuclear power plant in California. Written in 1975, at a time when the energy crisis was in full swing, the novel takes aim at the booming nuclear power industry. Predating the Three Mile Island accident by several years, the book does have a prophetic feel to it which gives it some much-needed gravitas. Unfortunately, its fictional contrivances and paper-thin characters quickly undermine the story.
The book follows several characters, but centers on a nuclear engineer named Gregory Parks who is in charge of building the country's largest nuclear power plant. The story centers around the final days of the plant's construction before it is put on line. Unfortunately, the construction has not gone smoothly and their are a mounting series of accidents that point to future catastrophe. Parks wants to delay the opening, but his superiors insist on pushing the deadline forward. Predictably, a major accident occurs. The book is told through the use of congressional testimony after the accident, so there is no suspense about whether or not something will go wrong. The only reason to continue reading is to see just how badly things go wrong and who will take the blame. Along the way, we are treated to a completely meaningless sub-plot about stolen plutonium and a murder mystery involving the plant's part-time doctor. The characters are drawn in broad strokes, to put it kindly, and the female characters are particularly hollow. The romantic thread of the plot is so tacked on and poorly developed that you have to wonder why the authors chose to include it at all. The technical details are well researched, and it highlights some of the inner workings of a nuclear power plant quite well. It also takes great liberties with typical nuclear power plant design in order to achieve maximum disaster levels when things start to go wrong. Instead of one reactor, this plant has four. They also share the same containment building, which is patently ludicrous from the standpoint of sane engineering principles. To compound the silly design of the plant, a fuel reprocessing facility loaded with tons of spent fuel rods from other plants around the country has been added to the mix even before the plant, itself, has been put online. This adds up to a mighty big radioactive mess when things to kablooey, but strains credibility to the breaking point as well. Ultimately, as paperback thrillers go, this one doesn't rate highly. It aims for the sort of timely, fact-checked impact of "The Andromeda Strain" but ends up falling far short. Instead, it is a fact-filled but poorly written story with little real suspense and far too many contrivances for anyone familiar with nuclear engineering.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent read & frightening look at nuclear power,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Prometheus crisis (Hardcover)
The Promethesus Crisis, (written around 1975) deals with a nuclear power plant melting down....and goes into detail about how this happens and its aftermath. Written some years before the 3 Mile Island Accident, this book almost seems to be an omen, warning of the dangers of nuclear power and what can happen when that "1 in a million" chance of an accident happens. A very fightening and informative book, and extremely well written.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting,
By
This review is from: The Prometheus Crisis (Hardcover)
I found this book quite interesting as it was written before the Three Mile Island Accident but was about the very thing that was feared at the time the Three Mile Island Accident occurred. I was not far from Three Mile Island at the time of the accident and remember how the local media reacted to that crisis -- and the orders to remain indoors and wait for further developments. This would have been the advice given to locals of the same distance from this fictional nuclear accident -- with much worse results than Three Mile Island turned out to be. I recommend it if you can get your hands on a copy.
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