Living with rattlesnakes: Chernobyl and Dounreay

After the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident in 1979, a local Pennsylvania resident told The New York Times 'You live with that plant over there for years and years and don't think much about it. But it's like living with a rattlesnake. Sooner or later it's going to bite you. You just don't know when.' As we enter the twenty-first century, many communities find themselves living with rattlesnakes--one at least of which has already bitten. This article considers the official responses to Chernobyl in the first decade after the accident and compares them to the statements surrounding the sudden 1998 decision to decommission the nuclear reprocessing plant at Dounreay in Scotland.