With growing interest around the globe in expanding the role of nuclear power, Bloomsbury has announced plans to publish a book that’s already considered the definitive account on this hotly contested energy source. Release of the English translation of the book by Marco Visscher, a leading environmental journalist from the Netherlands, will be in early 2025 by Bloomsbury’s Sigma imprint.
Full of storytelling and lively reporting, We Need to Talk About Nuclear Power: Facts, Fears & Fantasy deals with the rise, fall and return of nuclear energy. In an engaging and accessible style, Visscher explores the deep roots of our unease with the atom as well as the enormous potential of what could be a revolutionary technology.
Upon publication in the Netherlands by Park Uitgevers, reviewers called the book ‘thrilling’, ‘a stimulating read’ (Het Financieele Dagblad), and ‘highly entertaining’ (New Scientist). In a 50-minute interview with Visscher, the Titans of Nuclear podcast host described it as ‘a fascinating read’.
The international edition has gained advance praise from established environmental writers such as Mark Lynas (‘Essential reading … reads like a thriller’) and bestselling author Michael Shellenberger (‘Must-read … full of moving stories’). Public intellectual Steven Pinker says that the book ‘engagingly and effectively shows us how we should think about the greatest challenge of this century’.
Marco Visscher, an award-winning environmental journalist, is excited to see that scientists and politicians are increasingly accepting nuclear power as a source of zero-carbon energy. Experts predict many more nuclear plants will be built. Yet, unlike any other technology, the expansion of nuclear energy raises safety concerns as well as moral objections. ‘It’s not just time to decide what we should do with nuclear’, Visscher says. ‘It’s also time to understand what nuclear is doing with us.’
In a gripping narrative, Visscher takes readers into the pilot’s seat in the B-29 that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima; to the deathbed of 25-year-old Leonid Toptunov, who caused the reactor in Chernobyl to explode by following the orders of his grumpy superior; to the hole in the ground in Finland where highly radioactive waste will be entombed; and to the cobblestones outside Sweden’s Parliament in Stockholm, where a determined schoolgirl succeeded extraordinarily well in raising awareness for climate change.
In the past 25 years, Visscher has written extensively on sustainability, climate policy and clean technology. He has served as editor of a San Francisco-based international green magazine, written numerous feature articles for major publications in the Netherlands and Belgium, and published popular books on environmentalism and renewable energy. He’s been recognised by Alexander Kaufman, senior climate reporter for HuffPost, as ‘one of the foremost experts on nuclear power’.
For inquiries, please contact Orli Naamani, Foreign Rights Manager, Park Uitgevers: orli.naamani@lannoomeulenhoff.nl.
