Are you ready to think small?
Wild Thing: Going Nuclear
So while it’s impossible to pick a favorite season of Wild Thing, Season Three holds a pretty special place in my heart. This is a story not just about a topic I find truly fascinating (nuclear energy), but it’s a story about my hometown. I grew up just down the road from where the deadliest nuclear reactor accident in US history once took place—and I never knew anything about it until I was an adult.
You’d be forgiven if you’ve never heard the story of the meltdown of the SL-1 nuclear reactor at a federal research facility in Idaho. Rumors about love triangles, emotional instability and insubordination made the rounds but the details about what actually happened that night remain a mystery. All we know is that an explosion killed three men, contaminated and sickened rescue personnel, and then exposed thousands of citizens in the nearby towns to a cloud of radioactive gasses.
This took place in the rugged high desert of Idaho, just forty-five minutes outside my hometown of Idaho Falls. Sixty years later, my same town was on the brink of becoming the latest test case for nuclear energy and I wondered what had changed.
Wild Thing: Going Nuclear uses science, history and culture to probe the realities of atomic energy today, while analyzing our own fascination— and ambivalence—with all things atomic. What are the true risks? And what is the actual potential? The technology is better than it was sixty years ago… but are we? Given our nature, are we humans even responsible enough to harness the power of the universe—and should we?
