The author worked on the TV series of the year, Chernobyl, produced by HBO.
A perfect combination between a historical, technical and political reconstruction, and a human story.

A fascinating new and comprehensive account of the world’s worst nuclear disaster. Contains over 45 photographs.

Full English original version available – over 30,000 copies sold

At 01:23:40 on 26th April 1986, Alexander Akimov pressed the emergency shutdown button at Chernobyl’s fourth nuclear reactor. It was an act that forced the permanent evacuation of a city, killed thousands and crippled the Soviet Union. The event spawned decades of conflicting, exaggerated and inaccurate stories. This book, the result of five years’ research, presents an accessible but comprehensive account of what really happened. From the desperate fight to prevent a burning reactor core from irradiating eastern Europe, to the self-sacrifice of the heroic men who entered fields of radiation so strong that machines wouldn’t work, to the surprising truth about the legendary ‘Chernobyl divers’, all the way through to the USSR’s final show-trial. The historical narrative is interwoven with the story of the author’s own spontaneous journey to Ukraine’s still-abandoned city of Pripyat and the wider Chernobyl Zone. Complete with over 45 photographs of modern-day Pripyat and technical diagrams of the power station, Chernobyl 01:23:40 is an enthralling story of an event, described at the compelling pace of
a novel.

On March 11th 2011, a 15-metre tsunami annihilated long stretches of Japanese coastline, killing almost 16,000 people. In what became the most expensive industrial accident of all time, flooded cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant failed as hundreds of isolated men and women battled to save three reactors from destruction, with the fate of the entire country balanced on a knife-edge. Few people understand what took place there, despite its large-scale ramifications. Even fewer know why it happened, nor how a cutting-edge country — equally famous for its earthquakes as its world-leading technologies — could be so unprepared for a tsunami. Ten years later, enough information has finally emerged to answer the question.

Melting Sun is the first book to explain the Fukushima disaster via the complete troubled history of nuclear power in Japan, retelling little-known events spanning over 150 years to describe the formation and expansion of Japan’s monopolistic power industry and how the island nation evolved from the first victim of atomic energy in World War II to its most ardent supporter. This complete history has never been written outside Japan, and existing non-academic books have done a poor job of explaining the Fukushima disaster. None present the broader historical context: that Japan has had more severe nuclear accidents than every other nation.

It is a story of innovation and determination, but also of political and industry collusion, deception, overconfidence, failure and, ultimately, death. With each scandal, with each lie, each accident and cover-up, a clique of politicians, lobbyists, academics and media organisations fought to prevent serious reform. From a nuclear ship stranded at sea after leaking radiation on its maiden voyage to the unimaginable final days of two men treated for extreme over-exposure, to Fukushima itself — the only accident comparable with the infamous Chernobyl disaster.