Book Review: The Nuclear Age by Serhii Plokhy (2025)

The Nuclear Age, Copyright 2025 by Serhii Plokhy

Reviewed by Sharon and Ace Hoffman

"The Nuclear Age" by Serhii Plokhy presents a fresh look at the history of how we got where we are today, and with seemingly perfect timing, the analysis Plokhy applies is chillingly relevant to current world events (March, 2026).*

Less than a hundred years ago, with the horrors of the first global conflict still in many people's memories -- and as another World War was fomenting -- scientists became aware of the fundamental forces in nature that make an atomic bomb possible (underlying forces that hold sub-atomic particles together -- and that can break them apart).

Political and scientific discussions regarding the theoretical possibility of making atomic bombs began in Germany, Japan (a little) and in the Soviet Union, as well as among Allied "Western" countries. Once the Western Allies (specifically the US, UK and Canada) began collaborating, along with refugee scientists from several other countries, the winner of the "race" to develop The Bomb was already won.

How long it would take, how big a task it would be, how big an explosion it would be (and whether it would be successful at all) were questions still left unanswered, but international collaboration was the winning ticket. (Russia eventually solved its own bomb development problems by stealing the results of the Allies' work.)

President Roosevelt's 1939 decision to provide $6,000 in initial research funding (equal to about $140,000 in 2026) was based on a letter written to him by Albert Einstein at the request of Leo Szilard. As Plokhy explains, despite Einstein's eminence and the potential gravity of his words, it nevertheless would take more than two years (until November 1941), as well as lots of research, and both scientific and political negotiations, before Roosevelt provided significant funding to start what became known as the Manhattan Project.

The ball was rolling...

Plokhy shows how *all* subsequent nuclear ambitions around the world were/are the inevitable result of how it started: Forged in the desperation of war, nuclear weapons and their necessary companions (i.e., nuclear reactors and other components of the nuclear fuel cycle) never really left the military world to become entirely — or even partially — "civilian." They cannot be separated: The support system is vital to having nuclear weapons, is politically too powerful, economically too large, and most importantly: Too vulnerable.**

The historical content of the book covers many aspects of nuclear weapons proliferation and control, including:

• Why some countries continue to insist that they need nuclear weapons.
• Why and how some countries, such as Ukraine and South Africa, have been persuaded to give up their nuclear weapons (and how it's worked out for those countries).
• How everything -- from domestic and international priorities, to personal relationships between world leaders, to activism at home and abroad — influences nuclear proliferation and arms negotiations.
• How nuclear weapons nations (including the United States) got their weapons, and...
• How various nations claimed their nuclear reactors were only being built for civilian purposes but in fact were a cover for a nuclear bomb program.

Plokhy discusses both horizontal (across countries) and vertical (within a country) proliferation of nuclear weapons. Vertical proliferation includes delivery mechanisms such as missiles, aircraft, and submarines as well as numbers of nuclear weapons.

Plokhy considers what we might be able to learn from all the non-proliferation negotiations since 1945, and points out that the planet is in the midst of yet another nuclear arms race, but this time without ANY active nuclear arms agreements.

In the early years of the nuclear age, Soviet negotiators were strongly in favor of international control of nuclear technology, but once the Soviet Union sufficiently built up their nuclear arsenal, they lost any interest in reducing their stockpiles below the point of Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.). Similarly, China advocated international controls until they built their first nuclear bomb in 1964.

Britain and France both built their first atomic bombs because their politicians feared their countries would be relegated to second-class status if they purchased bombs from America. Scientists from both countries had made many of the discoveries that contributed to the U.S. bomb program.

Similar concerns led India and North Korea to develop their own nuclear weapons programs by leveraging "civilian" nuclear reactor technology and expertise provided by the existing nuclear powers. Other countries (notably Ukraine) gave up their nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees.

The Nuclear Age shows that previous nuclear arms agreements never actually provided any safety because even a single rogue group can initiate worldwide disaster. Defense against small groups of terrorists armed with nuclear weapons is extremely difficult, if not impossible.

In the epilogue, Plokhy explains that Russia's seizures of nuclear plants in Ukraine should make the idea of nuclear power plants as dirty bombs (which has been known since the first nuclear reactors were built) impossible to ignore. He concludes with the frightening idea that the only common factor in nuclear negotiations is "fear of nuclear annihilation."

The Nuclear Age is highly recommended for its up-to-date information and its broad perspective on nuclear proliferation. All too often, the nuclear arms race has been discussed from a nationalistic vantage point. Plokhy makes it clear that the problem impacts all nations and is far more complex than "merely" technical or military considerations: it is intertwined with politics, financial considerations, government secrecy, false hopes, and wild promises.

Anybody who wants to understand the current dangers needs to consider the broader historical worldwide context of nuclear proliferation, and the many failed attempts to regulate nuclear technology. Plokhy's look back at the history of the nuclear problem and his analysis of past and current dangers is a good place to start. Sharon and Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA

* On January 27, 2026 the Union of Concerned Scientist's famous "Doomsday Clock" was set at 85 seconds to midnight -- closer than ever before, even during the Cold War. (In 1949 the clock was first officially set, to 3 minutes to midnight in response to the first Soviet bomb.)

And things continue to worsen: On February 28, 2026 the world woke up to a conflict involving two known/assumed nuclear powers (the United States and Israel) in a war with Iran, a country that has often been accused (without indisputable proof) of nuclear ambitions. As we write this, the risk of expansion of the conflict is very high. Nobody can ignore the possibility that this war may become nuclear -- either directly through the use of nuclear weapons or through widespread radioactive contamination resulting from the destruction of nuclear facilities anywhere in the region: Nuclear carriers, nuclear reactors, nuclear reprocessing facilities... and maybe who-knows-what.

** See Zaporazhzhia, or Chernobyl, or any reactor that is potentially in a war zone (which is all of them).

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Contact information for the author of this newsletter:

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Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Email: ace [at] acehoffman.org
Founder & Owner, The Animated Software Company

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