Nuclear Road Trip: Onward to Destruction by Barbara Billig, Michelle McKeeth

One of the oldest nuclear power plants in the US has a major radiation leak. The power plant company does not want to reveal the severity of the accident. A cover-up is devised which shuts the plant down, but the inspectors, headed by John Rockford, are not to arrive for two weeks. The news has been reporting that nothing major has happened. 
The aged Morristown Nuclear Power Plant is the same type of plant as the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in Japan; it, too, had a boiling water reactor. While they tour the plant, they discover the plant is fraught with malfunctions and gross deterioration from an utter lack of proper maintenance.
Theirs is a saga of cover-ups, intrigue, espionage, sabotage and terrorism; theirs is the future of what will happen should terrorists attack a Nuclear Reactor Power Plant, and how individuals are torn asunder and pulled back together.  


 The book starts out on a road trip as John and Aadhil are slowly making their way to the nuclear power plant and exploring sites and discovering food along route 66 among others. Along their way they begin meeting up with others who are also on their way to the plant to begin their work on investigating the plants malfunctions. 

There are a handful of characters in this story. Four of the inspectors arrive together at the end of their road trip. Aadhil has a companion in his  dog Bear- Lee-a-Dog which never leaves his side and also trained to help with the plants inspections. In a way Bear is a character of his own and plays his own role in the story just as much as the other characters. Once they read the plant there are more characters that come into play and more as the story continues. 

You can tell that there was a lot of research that went into this story and parallels between the recent Fukushima disaster and what they are seeing at the Morristown plant. The majority of the story is told through dialogue between the characters. Each character is distinct and fully developed in their roles in this story line. 

4 stars