Workers gather outside one of the reactors that melted down in the 2011 Fukushima disaster.Credit: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty

Atoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disasters Serhii Plokhy W. W. Norton (2022)

In February, soon after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, they reportedly dug trenches in the radioactive soil at Chernobyl and drove heavy vehicles in the area, kicking up contaminated dust. Thirty-six years after a reactor core exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, fallout from the world’s worst nuclear accident still permeates the environment. Amid all the atrocities committed by Russian troops during the war in Ukraine, ignorance of this history does not rank high. But it underscores the lasting, dangerous and frequently unforeseen consequences of nuclear disasters.