Book on Yucca Mountain Earns Local Author Several Awards

FALLON--Fallon resident and former Western Nevada College English professor Michon Mackedon has received some impressive recognition for her new book, “Bombast: Spinning Atoms in the Desert.”

The book, which is about the manipulative language the Nevada atomic industry uses to appear safe Nevadans and the Nation, has recently won the National Indie Excellence Book Award in Regional Non-Fiction. Other awards include a silver medal from the 2011 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the Best Regional Non-Fiction category, and a second place award from the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards for Current Events/Social Change. Her book was also named a finalist in Foreword’s Book-of-the-Year Award.

“I was just astounded,” said Mackedon. “When I got the first notice, I was going, ‘Oh my god, oh my god,’ and then about two weeks later, I got another one and I thought, ‘I can’t believe this.’ It’s very exciting.”

Mackedon started writing the book more than 20 years ago after being assigned to the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects. At first, according to Mackedon, Nevadans were thought to be gamblers, prostitutes, miners and saloon keepers. Typical housewives and politicians were never asked what they thought of when the press first gathered Nevadans’ opinions on nuclear testing.

“Nevada is still one of those states that has a reputation of both free and open and tarnished without a lot of middle ground for us,” said Mackedon. “And so you think what that does what that does when you produce a set of images that color a stereotyped truth about a place. Then you pave a way for what that place can be used for. And that’s what my whole thesis in ‘Bombast’ is. That kind of press and that kind of production of imagery really helped solidify the idea that Nevada is suitable. It’s suitable for blowing up bombs. It’s suitable for burying nuclear waste. It’s suitable for dumping low-level waste.”

“There is no such thing as a good place to bury nuclear waste. You create a good place,” she said. “Yucca Mountain obviously is fractured and you can’t have water next to nuclear waste. Everybody understands that who studies the issue, and yet we keep talking about reopening Yucca Mountain when the evidence really says, ‘no.’” Since she’s published her book, Mackedon now enjoys giving lectures and listening to people’s responses to her book, “Really, a rewarding aftermath of writing a book is to hear people read it and what they think about it,” she said. “That’s the stage I’m in right now, is enjoying any kind of feedback that I get from ‘Bombast.”

Mackedon is content with where she is today, not yet thinking about writing another book. “These awards are proof that if you stick to it and believe in something, that maybe good things will happen,” she said.