In 1986 I was a senior in high school, and I still remember hearing the news of the horrific explosion of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. One of the most disastrous nuclear accidents in history, it is one of only two nuclear energy accidents classified as a maximum Level 7 event (the other being the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011).

Moldovan scientist Michael Kiriac lived only 300 miles away from the explosion. Motivated by the cancer-related deaths of ...