Swimming on the Hot Side: Investigating the Dangerous World of Nuclear Diving

I first heard about nuclear diving while I was getting my hair cut in downtown Manhattan. My stylist seemed out of place in an East Village salon, so I asked her where she lived. Brooklyn? Queens? Uptown? "Upstate," she answered. "I commute two hours each way a few times a week." I asked her why, and she stopped cutting. "Well, my husband has kind of a weird job," she said. "He'd rather not live around other people." I sat up in the chair. "What does he do?" "He's a nuclear diver."