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Bernhard Ludewig
The Nuclear Dream
The Hidden World of Atomic Energy
366 x 288 mm, 420 Seiten
460 Abbildungen, Hardcover
ISBN 978-3-86922-080-2 (English)
EUR 98.00 / CHF 116.60
March 2020. DOM publishers, Berlin

New from DOM publishers:

Bernhard Ludewig

The Nuclear Dream

The Hidden World of Atomic Energy

The peaceful use of atomic energy was the most momentous utopian technical undertaking in German post-war history and led to one of the country’s greatest social conflicts. Although iconic domes and cooling towers have become symbols of this technology, the rest of the nuclear world is practically invisible. Almost no one gets a chance to enter one of these structures. What do the monumental cooling towers or control rooms look like from inside? Which one of us can take a ride on a handling machine or in a crane cab over reactor cores, wander between enrichment centrifuges or pick up a uranium pellet?

Bernhard Ludewig was allowed to do all of these things. The former biochemist, who now works as a photographer, got permission to take pictures of places that are normally not readily accessible to outsiders. In La Hague, for example, he witnessed the unloading of a CASTOR - a container which is used for the storage and transport of radioactive material - and he also had the opportunity to initiate the emergency shutdown of a reactor in a training facility, enter the Chernobyl sarcophagus and even take pictures of an opened working reactor core. Over a period of seven years he created an enormous archive of the history of nuclear energy. This large-format title, which weighs in at more than four kilograms, shows the construction, operation and demolition of the various types of reactors that were built in Germany, looks at the nuclear research centres and their development, and traces the path of the uranium used within the reactors. Ludewig's images in The Nuclear Dream provide a unique glimpse behind the scenes: power plants and open reactors, cooling towers and control rooms, uranium centrifuges and repositories, research reactors and the blue glow of Cherenkov radiation. An initial summary on the history of atomic energy informs about the circumstances of this complex matter and inspires the reader to delve deeper into the subject at hand. This is followed by an introductory essay by the nuclear physicist and philosopher of economics Dirk Eidemüller. The illustrated chapters are enhanced through explanatory factual texts and personal impressions. An architectural analysis and construction diagrams round off the book.

The nuclear dream that once promised the dawn of a radiant future is now over - at least in Germany. In 2011 the German government decided to end the use of nuclear power; the structures will be shut down by 2022 and the waste material will be all that remains. The authors take us on this path from research to repositories and thus explain the light, but also the darkness of this once utopian idea. They describe the hopeful expectations, without holding back on criticism of the problematic aspects. The book does not want to take a side in the conflict surrounding nuclear energy, but rather wants to shine a light on all facets of the subject and what defines it - a tribute to an era that once promised an unlimited supply of energy, and whose blue glow mesmerised an entire generation.

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