With the constant threat of oil shortages facing us and wanting to educate herself about possible alternatives, Gwyneth Cravens skeptically sets out to find for herself the truth about nuclear energy. Her conclusion: It is a totally viable and practical solution to global warming. She enlists the help of Rip Anderson, a leading scientist in the field of risk assessment, and with his tutelage, she travels the country, visiting uranium mines, enrichment centers, reactors, and waste sites.

Along the way we learn a lot of science, review the history of nuclear energy, relive the battles over it, see how successfully it has been applied all over the world, examine the misconceptions, and compare nuclear power to other energy sources, with their risks and benefits. Cravens is not out to deliver a polemic, however. Coming from a childhood spent building fallout shelters, Cravens viscerally understands the terror the word "nuclear" evokes. She gives us a vocabulary for practical risk assessment while investigating the psychology of nuclear fears, starting with the secrecy of the Manhattan Project and the legacy of government cover-ups both here and in the USSR. One by one, she dismantles the arguments against nuclear energy.