This David and Goliath story chronicles and analyzes how a small, under-funded public interest group Durham Nuclear Awareness of Oshawa, Ontario mobilized opposition to the December 1994 re-licensing of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. Michael D. Mehta explores the struggle between Durham Nuclear Awareness and Canada's nuclear establishment to illustrate how the concept of risk can be used to understand contemporary political conflicts. As concerns mount in Canada about the regulation of nuclear power, Risky Business provides important scholarly attention to nuclear risk assessment...

Nanotechnology - technology at the molecular level - is held out by many as the Holy Grail for creating a trillion dollar economy and solving problems from curing cancer to reprocessing waste into products and building superfast computers. Yet, as with GMOs, many view nanotech as a high risk genie in a bottle that once uncorked has the potential to cause unpredictable, perhaps irreversible, environmental and public health disasters. With the race to bring products to market, there is pressing need to take stock of the situation and to have a full public debate about this new technological...