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Critical Masses: Opposition to Nuclear Power in California, 1958–1978 Hardcover – June 1, 1998

by Thomas R. Wellock (Author)

2.3 4 ratings

The nuclear industry was selling the “peaceful atom,” but people in California weren’t buying. Using vivid detail and first hand testimony, Critical Masses tells how the citizens of California—from the tiny town of Wasco in the Central Valley to the vast suburbs of Los Angeles—challenged the threat of nuclear power, transformed the antinuclear movement, and helped changed the face of U.S. politics.
Popular misconceptions of the antinuclear movement attribute its success to economic and institutional powers. But Thomas Raymond Wellock, drawing upon interviews, activist papers, and state and federal documents, shows that it was local grassroots activism that actually brought about great change, bringing to bear a powerful array of new social values. Post–World War II affluence and education created public demands for a scenic, safe, clean environment and greater personal freedom. Wellock reveals how these values energized the antinuclear movement, revised the terms of scientific and public debate, and brought environmental and democratic ideals to state regulation. Appealing both to progressive environmentalists and to populists who responded to the movement’s anti–federal rhetoric, the antinuclear movement spread as the authority of public officials declined.

“One of the best researched books I have ever seen. Geographically, Wellock is on the scene—whether it is Bodega Bay, the Central Valley, or Frank Fat’s opulent dining room across from the capitol building in Sacramento. Politically, he seems equally at home in the archives of the Sierra Club, interviewing New Left activists and interpreting memos buried deep in the bowels of the California state bureaucracy. . . . His ability to capture complicated technical, bureaucratic, and cultural developments in easily grasped images and stories punctuated by humorous detail should win him a broad audience.”—Brian Balogh, University of Virginia, author of Chain Reaction: Expert Debate and Public Participation in American Commercial Nuclear Power

Wellock's finely documented study of the antinuclear movement will complement history courses on California, the environment, and twentieth-century politics.

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date

June 1, 1998
Dimensions

6 x 1 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0299158500
ISBN-13

978-0299158507
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Editorial Reviews

Review

In Thomas Raymond Wellock's hands, the failed attempts to site nuclear power facilities in California during the 1960s and 1970s provide new and important sources for understanding why this technology went into a terminal decline.... With admirable skill, he transcends the case study format and ranges over a landscape of individuals, clubs and social groups, industries, politicians and parties, communities, and political jurisdictions.... The author's commentary on social values and their place in the growth of antinuclear strength is unfailingly interesting and informative.... In summary, among the thousands of articles and hundreds of books that have addressed the rise and fall of nuclear power, Wellock's book joins the top rank of efforts to account for the curious and dramatic history of this technology. This is a fine effort and an important book. -- Environment, April 1999

About the Author

Thomas Raymond Wellock is assistant professor of history at Central Washington University. He was formerly a nuclear engineer for civilian and navy nuclear reactors before earning a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley, and teaching at San Francisco State University.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Wisconsin Press; 1st edition (June 1, 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0299158500
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0299158507
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.7 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #10,469,906 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,045 in Nuclear Weapons & Warfare History (Books)
- #10,196 in General Elections & Political Process
- #134,828 in Economics (Books)

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William P. Gloege

Clean, Safe Nuclear Power Could Save Us From Global Warming

Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2017

When scientists started to see a link between cancer and smoking, Big Tobacco got busy to find others to oppose this finding with their own "research" (funded by Big Tobacco) that showed no such link.

Big Oil started worrying about nuclear power from the beginning of President Eisenhower's program to use atom power for good, instead of bombs. Big Oil saw nuclear power could displace them, as happened in France which is 80% powered by clean, safe nuclear power. Big Oil found their authors, and non-profits to spread fear about nuclear power. Movies were made, magazine articles were written and books were written. I don't know if Wellock was connected to this anti-nuclear campaign, but he is doing a good job with this book.

Someone should tell the U. S. Navy how "dangerous" nuclear is because they have opted for 100% of their major ships to now run on clean, safe, non-polluting nuclear power. They are still waiting for that first accident predicted by brain washed environmentalists back in the early 1950's. Those rallies did not work because they had no basis or evidence for the fear they were trying to use to kill the U. S. Nuclear Navy program. The Nautilus atomic submarine was launched in 1955 without a hitch and sailed successfully and safely for many years.

In 2012 Time Magazine caught the vaunted Sierra Club red handed "secretly" taking $26 million in cash from Chesapeake Energy, a fossil fuel company. The Sierra Club campaigns tirelessly against nuclear power, trying to shut clean reactors and get power plants back on fossil fuel. Californians for Green Nuclear Power, a mid coast California group supporting Diablo Canyon and nuclear power asked the Club to speak at a Chapter, or write in the Sierra Club Newsletter, giving another view of nuclear power written by our PhD nuclear physicists. The Sierra Club gave us a flat and loud "NO!" Outside views of nuclear were unwelcome, no matter the credentials of the speakers or writers.

Big "environmental groups" like Natural Resources Defense Council and Friends of the Earth have endowments containing investments in fossil fuel companies, or renewable energy companies (wind, solar). They have a money stake in closing nuclear plants because they will profit from closure. I've never seen one of them say a word about the millions of tons of carbon that go into earth's atmosphere upon closure of a carbon-free nuclear plant - not one peep. How's that for protecting the environment?

Scientists like James Hansen strongly support nuclear power to fight global warming. So does the eminent earth scientist James Lovelock who solved the ozone hole crisis by himself. He vehemently urges we get onto a powerful, carbon free electricity generator like nuclear power plants. Many more scientists join these two.
So be very careful about sources campaigning against nuclear power like this book "Critical Masses." In fact, Hansen's studies have found when a nuclear plant displaces fossil fuel plants it has resulted in and average of 1.8 million human lives saved that would otherwise perish from pollutants like soot, smoke, ozone given off from burning fossil fuels. America and the world could go nuclear and just might survive rapidly advancing global destruction from fossil fuels. Electric cars and trucks would mean no more gasoline cars and trucks. Cooking with electric heat would bring convenience to billions of poor throughout the world who would not need charcoal to cook. This charcoal trade cuts trees and endangers animals like Mountain Gorillas. Speak out to your government representatives demanding support for clean nuclear power. Tell them your vote depends on what they do, or don't do.

2 people found this helpful

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Serj Berelson

The worst kind of literary conundrum: great info and terrible writing

Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2011

Why did I give a book that is arguably the first of its kind to recount the grassroots movement against nuclear power in California only 2 stars? The subject matter of this book is critical to understanding the development and decline of nuclear power in California, and the United States, and it is full of obviously well-researched information that must have taken countless hours of interviews and archival excavation to unearth. However, it is also full of spelling and grammatical errors of the most pedestrian variety; mistakes so simple yet so rife within the text that at times it is difficult to decipher the author's meaning. Lest you think I have some vendetta against the author, here is one of several examples I found on pages 194-195: "McCarthey and Varanini knew it was crucial and deadly amendment for Sundesert." Sounds like caveman talk; shouldn't it be "a crucial"? And therein lies the problem: this book, in terms of its illumination of the incredibly complex, multifaceted antinuclear movement taking place at all levels, both on the ground and in the government, in California from the late-1950s through the 1970s, is fantastic. But the regular (and I do mean regular) mistakes in both spelling and grammatical terms take away from the aim of the book by bogging down the reader in trying to glean what, exactly, the author is trying to convey. This may very well be the editor's fault, but if I was an author and I saw my work go to press with a frankly grade-school level of errors, I would be absolutely furious. The occasionally disjointed progression of the story also detracts from the overall feeling, though perhaps the author intends to use this organizational sprawl as a literary device to symbolize the disjointed progression of the antinuclear movement itself. I certainly hope that is the case.

This book does successfully chart the path of the antinuclear movement in California, but the spelling errors and awkward flow detract from what is otherwise an undoubtedly informative piece of literature. I would love to see a second edition with these sub-par mistakes ironed out, as I believe this would create a work that would reach a considerably wider audience and would be a truly worthwhile read. As it stands, though, it is the kind of quandary that any book-lover will detest: a truly relevant book with a great plot and great characters that is at times so difficult to read as to put the reader off. On my third and final try I managed to at long last successfully finish this book, and while I feel I better understand the antinuclear movement I have gone through far too many red marking pens.

4 people found this helpful

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Lee

Perfect analysis

Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2004

Wellock's book is a thoroughly readable book on the social history of nuclear power in California. His approach is to focus on the social critique of nuclear power instead of the usual managerial and economic post-mortems of nuclear power in the US. California is an extremely interesting case, because there was good reason for nuclear power in a state with breakneck growth and little coal reserves. The policies that grew out of California's anti-nuclear movement ended up changing the face of energy policy for the country as a whole (California keeps its status as a political bellwether for the rest of the US).

Amazing that a book about nuclear power can be so arresting - I read it while in the British Virgin Islands - surely a place with better things to do, right?

2 people found this helpful

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dep@harborside.com

A must for understanding nuclear opposition worldwide.

Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 1998

Wellock has not left a page unscrutinized in this very readable, exhaustively thorough story of the origins and the rise of the anti-nuclear power movement in the U.S. and the colorful characters who pioneered it. Wellock's easy writing style surmounts the usual university pedantic requirement for more pages of footnotes than of analysis. It feels as though Wellock began with a nuclear engineer's distaste for the anti-nuclear activists but slowly came 'round to genuine respect for them. A fascinating account.

6 people found this helpful

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