During the 1980s, science journalist and novelist Gwyneth Cravens was busy protesting the Shoreham nuclear power plant in Long Island, N.Y., where she lives. The plant closed after only a short test run, but in subsequent years, Cravens’ perception of nuclear energy has changed radically. She details this changed view in a new book, “Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy.”

Cravens began to change her mind about nuclear energy when she met Dr. Richard “Rip” Anderson, a nuclear safety expert at Sandia National Laboratories in her hometown of Albuquerque, N.M. Wanting to learn more, Cravens spent several years traveling with Anderson to facilities at all stages of the nuclear energy fuel cycle, from uranium mills and mines, to nuclear plants, to the proposed used fuel disposal facility at Yucca Mountain, Nev. They also visited a coal-fired power plant.

“As I learned more, I became persuaded that the safety culture that prevails at U.S. nuclear plants and the laws of physics make them a safe and important tool for addressing global warming,” Cravens says. “Clearly many of my beliefs had originated in misinformation and fear-mongering.”

Cravens brings readers along on her journey from anti-nuclear activist to nuclear energy advocate. She was especially persuaded by the vast difference in the size of the environmental footprints of coal and nuclear power plants.

“If you got all of your electricity for your lifetime solely from nuclear power, your share of the waste would fit in a single soda can,” Cravens explains. “If you got all your electricity from coal, your share…would fit into six rail cars,” not including 77 tons of carbon dioxide.

“When I began my research eight years ago, I’d assumed that we had many choices in the way we made electricity. But we don’t,” she says. “Nuclear power is the only large-scale, environmentally benign, time-tested technology currently available to provide clean electricity.”

For more information about “Power to Save the World,” visit www.randomhouse.com/knopf/.