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  • Published: 12 June 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529941180
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download

Going Nuclear

How the Atom Will Save the World

  • Tim Gregory




A bold and groundbreaking call to harness the untapped potential of nuclear power to tackle our global climate and energy crises, from a leading chemist at the National Nuclear Laboratory

What if climate change isn't an environmental challenge, but an energy challenge?

In this visionary book, Dr Tim Gregory urges us to rethink the path to net zero. He argues that the solution to climate change lies not simply in replacing fossil fuels with renewables, but in fully embracing another energy source that emits zero carbon dioxide: nuclear power.

Gregory dismantles the conventional wisdom that renewables are completely ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’, and exposes the limitations of wind and solar power, highlighting their unreliability and hidden fossil fuel dependency. He debunks myths surrounding nuclear waste and radiation, demonstrating that nuclear power is not only efficient, safe, and potent, but the most environmentally responsible way to harvest energy.

Going Nuclear calls for decarbonisation to be the twenty-first century's Apollo programme. By interweaving scientific optimism, myth-busting data, and ambitious policy ideas, Gregory illustrates the boundless potential of the atom beyond just clean energy: from advanced medicine and forensics to atomic gardening and space exploration.

This is a bold case for an alternative, sustainable and prosperous future: a world in which abundant energy is available to all.

  • Published: 12 June 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529941180
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download

Praise for Going Nuclear

Energy is necessary for everything we value in life, and the world will need gargantuan amounts of safe and reliable power to eliminate poverty, decarbonise the economy, and feed entirely new demands like artificial intelligence. Going Nuclear shows where this energy will come from—and not as a last resort, but as the enabler of a new chapter in human progress. This is a thrilling book: vividly written, filled with fascinating facts, and inspiring in its vision for the future.

Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor, Harvard University, and the author of ENLIGHTENMENT NOW

You will struggle to find anyone who brings nuclear power to life quite like Tim Gregory. You can feel the enthusiasm jump from the page. There’s lots to debate, but I challenge you to read this book and not be excited about how we get on and power the world with sustainable energy for the next century.

Hannah Ritchie, author of NOT THE END OF THE WORLD

A passionate, accessible, and timely manifesto that reframes nuclear energy not as a necessary evil but as humanity's most promising tool for addressing climate change, energy poverty and a sustainable future

Kirsty Gogan, Founding Director of Terra Praxis

[A] bible ... Gregory’s case is that nuclear power is humanity’s only hope. Carbon dioxide emissions would vanish as an issue in a nuclear world ... His argument is powerful and it would be interesting to see a counter argument by somebody ... who writes and thinks as well as Gregory. But perhaps there is no such person.

Bryan Appleyard, Spectator

Gregory is an excellent popular science writer: clear as a bell and gently humorous.

Guardian, Dorian Lynskey

This book is a highly engaging and lucid primer on nuclear technology

Telegraph