Idaho Falls: The untold story of America’s first nuclear accident by William McKeown, ECW Press, $16.95, ISBN 1550225626 Reviewed by Jonathan Beard
ON A bitterly cold night in 1961, a small nuclear reactor in the Idaho desert exploded, killing the three young soldiers who were working on it. Despite William McKeown’s subtitle, the “nuclear excursion” of SL-1 does not appear to have been an accident: the combination of poor design, shoddy maintenance, one bad marriage and two hot tempers probably led to a unique suicide. One man pulled out the main control rod, and angry neutrons did the rest.
Idaho…
