The Blast is Back

Like everyone else lately, I’ve been thinking about radiation, ever since the calamitous earthquake and tsunami struck Japan in March, killing thousands and unrepairingly damaging its Fukushima nuclear plant. Actually, I’ve been thinking about radiation again, because its horrors inspired an essay I wrote years ago, a kind of meditation, if you will, about a great childhood fear that affected me in ways the adults seemed oblivious to. Are we adults today, I wondered, failing our children by not understanding the fear that they may have about nuclear power. Then I read Hanna Beech’s article in Time (April 4, 2011), about why it took a nuclear crisis to energize many of Japan’s young people as a catalyst for changing Japan’s ossified establishment. Although my essay has nothing directly to with the young of Japan, maybe it does. Maybe will resonate.

Read this essay here