BROADCASTS.com

b'The catastrophic explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in April 1986 triggered the full-scale destruction of the reactor.\\xa0But now researchers with access to once-classified Soviet documents are challenging the official version of what happened both before and after the explosion. They say that the accident was worse than we thought and that a number of factors \\u2013 from paranoia to poor engineering \\u2013 made the mishap inevitable.\\xa0Others claim a much larger death toll from extended exposure to low levels of radiation.\\xa0But with nuclear energy being a possibly essential component of dealing with rising carbon dioxide emissions, how do we evaluate risk under the long shadow of Chernobyl?\\nGuests:\\n\\n\\nAdam Higginbotham\\xa0\\u2013\\xa0Author of \\u201cMidnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World\\u2019s Greatest Nuclear Disaster\\u201d\\n\\n\\nKate Brown\\xa0\\u2013 Historian of Environmental and Nuclear History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of \\u201cManual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide for the Future\\u201d\\n\\n\\n James Smith\\xa0\\u2013\\xa0Professor in the School of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Portsmouth, U.K. He was interviewed for and has written\\xa0a review of "Manual for Survival"\\n\\n\\n\\nTed Nordhaus\\xa0\\u2013\\xa0Founder and Executive Director of The Breakthrough Institute, Berkeley, California\\n\\n\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices'