Author: Sally DeBolt Ketchum

Publisher:

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13:

With wit and thoughtful compassion, Richard Meehan presents one of the mostperplexing of contemporary moral predicaments, one that arises in every attempt to assesspotentially hazardous technologies. He focuses on the longrunning controversy over suspectedearthquake faults near the nation's first corporately owned nuclear test reactor at Vallecitos,California, and uses this account of "the politics of expertise" to probe the nature of scientifictruth and its relationship to the determination of public safety.At Vallecitos, Meehan points out,the opinions of the "experts" were radically divided. Where one group saw clear and ominous evidenceof an earthquake fault in trenches dug at this showpiece site, others saw only the mark of anancient landslide. How did these experts arrive at their opinions? Were they simply representingcorporate, as opposed to environmentalist, points of view? And how are the public regulatoryagencies charged with deciding such issues supposed to balance these seemingly irreconcilableopinions?The Atom and the Fault explores these crucial questions as the issue of the earthquakesafety of nuclear power plants continues to grow into a struggle encompassing government regulatorybodies, public utilities, private industry, engineers, geologists, and citizen activists. It paintscandid portraits of the principal expert players, clarifies the difficult and often delicateinterplay of honesty and loyalties among them, and lucidly explains the technical issues andviewpoints involved.As a professional participant in several environmental controversies in whichso-called scientific facts were represented by opposing points of view, Meehan is uniquely qualifiedto tell this tale. He is a consultant to industry, government agencies, and law firms specializingin forecasting and damage assessment related to earthquakes and land failures, and an adjunctprofessor in the Values, Technology, Science, and Society program at Stanford University. His firstbook, Getting Sued and Other Tales of the Engineering Life was published by The MIT Press in1981.