The Apocalypse Factory Plutonium And The Making Of The Atomic Age

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The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age

Author : Steve Olson
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393634981
Total Pages : 331 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (936 download)

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Book Synopsis The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age by : Steve Olson

Download or read book The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age written by Steve Olson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thrilling narrative of scientific triumph, decades of secrecy, and the unimaginable destruction wrought by the creation of the atomic bomb. It began with plutonium, the first element ever manufactured in quantity by humans. Fearing that the Germans would be the first to weaponize the atom, the United States marshaled brilliant minds and seemingly inexhaustible bodies to find a way to create a nuclear chain reaction of inconceivable explosive power. In a matter of months, the Hanford nuclear facility was built to produce and weaponize the enigmatic and deadly new material that would fuel atomic bombs. In the desert of eastern Washington State, far from prying eyes, scientists Glenn Seaborg, Enrico Fermi, and many thousands of others—the physicists, engineers, laborers, and support staff at the facility—manufactured plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, and for the bombs in the current American nuclear arsenal, enabling the construction of weapons with the potential to end human civilization. With his characteristic blend of scientific clarity and storytelling, Steve Olson asks why Hanford has been largely overlooked in histories of the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Olson, who grew up just twenty miles from Hanford’s B Reactor, recounts how a small Washington town played host to some of the most influential scientists and engineers in American history as they sought to create the substance at the core of the most destructive weapons ever created. The Apocalypse Factory offers a new generation this dramatic story of human achievement and, ultimately, of lethal hubris.

The Apocalypse Factory

Author : Steve Olson
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 0393634973
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (936 download)

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Book Synopsis The Apocalypse Factory by : Steve Olson

Download or read book The Apocalypse Factory written by Steve Olson and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thrilling narrative of scientific triumph, decades of secrecy, and the unimaginable destruction wrought by the creation of the atomic bomb. It began with plutonium, the first element ever manufactured in quantity by humans. Fearing that the Germans would be the first to weaponize the atom, the United States marshaled brilliant minds and seemingly inexhaustible bodies to find a way to create a nuclear chain reaction of inconceivable explosive power. In a matter of months, the Hanford nuclear facility was built to produce and weaponize the enigmatic and deadly new material that would fuel atomic bombs. In the desert of eastern Washington State, far from prying eyes, scientists Glenn Seaborg, Enrico Fermi, and many thousands of others—the physicists, engineers, laborers, and support staff at the facility—manufactured plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, and for the bombs in the current American nuclear arsenal, enabling the construction of weapons with the potential to end human civilization. With his characteristic blend of scientific clarity and storytelling, Steve Olson asks why Hanford has been largely overlooked in histories of the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Olson, who grew up just twenty miles from Hanford’s B Reactor, recounts how a small Washington town played host to some of the most influential scientists and engineers in American history as they sought to create the substance at the core of the most destructive weapons ever created. The Apocalypse Factory offers a new generation this dramatic story of human achievement and, ultimately, of lethal hubris.

Working on the Bomb

Author : S. L. Sanger
Publisher : Continuing Education Press
ISBN 13 : 9780876781159
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (811 download)

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Book Synopsis Working on the Bomb by : S. L. Sanger

Download or read book Working on the Bomb written by S. L. Sanger and published by Continuing Education Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the Hanford Engineering Works, a site in eastern Washington that produced and separated plutonium for the Manhattan Project.

Made in Hanford

Author : Hill Williams
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (31 download)

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Book Synopsis Made in Hanford by : Hill Williams

Download or read book Made in Hanford written by Hill Williams and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At an isolated location along the Columbia River in 1944, the world's first plutonium factory became operational, producing fuel for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, during World War II. Former Seattle Times science writer Hill Williams traces the amazing, tragic story--from the dawn of nuclear science to Cold War testing in the Marshall Islands.

Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens

Author : Steve Olson
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393242803
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (932 download)

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Book Synopsis Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens by : Steve Olson

Download or read book Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens written by Steve Olson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-03-07 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting history of the Mount St. Helens eruption that will "long stand as a classic of descriptive narrative" (Simon Winchester). For months in early 1980, scientists, journalists, sightseers, and nearby residents listened anxiously to rumblings in Mount St. Helens, part of the chain of western volcanoes fueled by the 700-mile-long Cascadia fault. Still, no one was prepared when an immense eruption took the top off of the mountain and laid waste to hundreds of square miles of verdant forests in southwestern Washington State. The eruption was one of the largest in human history, deposited ash in eleven U.S. states and five Canadian providences, and caused more than one billion dollars in damage. It killed fifty-seven people, some as far as thirteen miles away from the volcano’s summit. Shedding new light on the cataclysm, author Steve Olson interweaves the history and science behind this event with page-turning accounts of what happened to those who lived and those who died. Powerful economic and historical forces influenced the fates of those around the volcano that sunny Sunday morning, including the construction of the nation’s railroads, the harvest of a continent’s vast forests, and the protection of America’s treasured public lands. The eruption of Mount St. Helens revealed how the past is constantly present in the lives of us all. At the same time, it transformed volcanic science, the study of environmental resilience, and, ultimately, our perceptions of what it will take to survive on an increasingly dangerous planet. Rich with vivid personal stories of lumber tycoons, loggers, volcanologists, and conservationists, Eruption delivers a spellbinding narrative built from the testimonies of those closest to the disaster, and an epic tale of our fraught relationship with the natural world.

Historic Photos of the Manhattan Project

Author : Timothy W. Joseph
Publisher : Turner
ISBN 13 : 9781596525214
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (252 download)

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Book Synopsis Historic Photos of the Manhattan Project by : Timothy W. Joseph

Download or read book Historic Photos of the Manhattan Project written by Timothy W. Joseph and published by Turner. This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The atomic age began at 5:30 a.m. on July 16, 1945, with the explosion of "the Gadget" at Trinity near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Prelude to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which forced the capitulation of Japan and ended World War II, the Trinity test was the culmination of herculean efforts by scientists, civilians, and the military of the United States to tap the potential of the atom for a wartime emergency. If Nazi Germany could engineer the bomb first, an Allied victory against Hitler was all but lost. Historic Photos of the Manhattan Project is a look back at the epic struggle to build the world's first atomic bomb. Nearly 200 images in vivid black-and-white reveal the project as it unfolded, from its secretive origins at Oak Ridge, Hanford, and Los Alamos, to the day Americans celebrated triumph over the Axis powers with victory over Japan. A pinnacle moment in the history of the United States, the Manhattan Project's application of Einstein's famous equation E = MC2 shows, perhaps better than any other single endeavor, what can be achieved by human ingenuity when the citizens of a great nation are united in freedom against a fearsome and despotic foe.

Uranium

Author : Tom Zoellner
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 9780670020645
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (26 download)

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Book Synopsis Uranium by : Tom Zoellner

Download or read book Uranium written by Tom Zoellner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the powerful mineral element explores its role as a virtually limitless energy source, its controversial applications as a healing tool and weapon, and the ways in which its reputation has been used to promote war agendas in the middle east.

Idaho Falls

Author : William McKeown
Publisher : ECW Press
ISBN 13 : 1554905435
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (549 download)

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Book Synopsis Idaho Falls by : William McKeown

Download or read book Idaho Falls written by William McKeown and published by ECW Press. This book was released on 2003-04-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The little-known true story of a mysterious nuclear reactor disaster—years before Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or Fukushima. Before the Three Mile Island incident or the Chernobyl disaster, the world’s first nuclear reactor meltdown to claim lives happened on US soil. Chronicled here for the first time is the strange tale of SL-1, an experimental military reactor located in Idaho’s Lost River Desert that exploded on the night of January 3, 1961, killing the three crewmembers on duty. Through exclusive interviews with the victims’ families and friends, firsthand accounts from rescue workers and nuclear industry insiders, and extensive research into official documents, journalist William McKeown probes the many questions surrounding this devastating blast that have gone unanswered for decades. From reports of faulty design and mismanagement to incompetent personnel and even rumors of sabotage after a failed love affair, these plausible explanations raise startling new questions about whether the truth was deliberately suppressed to protect the nuclear energy industry.

The Manhattan Project

Author : Al Cimino
Publisher : Arcturus Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1784281123
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (842 download)

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Book Synopsis The Manhattan Project by : Al Cimino

Download or read book The Manhattan Project written by Al Cimino and published by Arcturus Publishing. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ramifications of the Manhattan Project are still with us to this day. The atomic bombs that came out of it brought an end to the war in the Pacific, but at a heavy loss of life in Japan and the opening of a Pandora's box that has tested international relations. This book traces the history of the Manhattan Project, from the first glimmerings of the possibility of such a catastrophic weapon to the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It profiles the architects of the bomb and how they tried to reconcile their personal feelings with their ambition as scientists. It looks at the role of the politicians and it includes first-hand accounts of those who experienced the effects of the bombings.

Their Day in the Sun

Author : Ruth H. Howes
Publisher : Temple University Press
ISBN 13 : 9781592131921
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (319 download)

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Book Synopsis Their Day in the Sun by : Ruth H. Howes

Download or read book Their Day in the Sun written by Ruth H. Howes and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2003-05 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The public perception of the making of the atomic bomb is an image of the dramatic efforts of a few brilliant male scientists.

The Hanford Plaintiffs

Author : Trisha T. Pritikin
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
ISBN 13 : 0700629041
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis The Hanford Plaintiffs by : Trisha T. Pritikin

Download or read book The Hanford Plaintiffs written by Trisha T. Pritikin and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than four decades beginning in 1944, the Hanford nuclear weapons facility in southeastern Washington State secretly blanketed much of the Pacific Northwest with low-dose ionizing radiation, the byproduct of plutonium production. For those who lived in the vicinity, many of them families of Hanford workers, the consequences soon became apparent as rates of illness and death steadily climbed—despite repeated assurances from the Atomic Energy Commission that the facility posed no threat. Trisha T. Pritikin, who has battled a lifetime of debilitating illness to become a lawyer and advocate for her fellow “downwinders,” tells the devastating story of those who were harmed in Hanford’s wake and, seeking answers and justice, were subjected to yet more suffering. At the center of The Hanford Plaintiffs are the oral histories of twenty-four people who joined In re Hanford Nuclear Reservation Litigation, the class-action suit that sought recognition of, and recompense for, the grievous injury knowingly caused by Hanford. Radioactive contamination of American communities was not uncommon during the wartime Manhattan Project, nor during the Cold War nuclear buildup that followed. Pritikin interweaves the stories of people poisoned by Hanford with a parallel account of civilians downwind of the Nevada atomic test site, who suffer from identical radiogenic diseases. Against the heartrending details of personal illness and loss and, ultimately, persistence in the face of a legal system that protects the government on all fronts and at all costs, The Hanford Plaintiffs draws a damning picture of the failure of the US Congress and the Judiciary to defend the American public and to adequately redress a catastrophic wrong. Documenting the legal, medical, and human cost of one community’s struggle for justice, this book conveys in clear and urgent terms the damage done to ordinary Americans in the name of business, progress, and patriotism.

Plutonium

Author : Jeremy Bernstein
Publisher : UNSW Press
ISBN 13 : 1742230881
Total Pages : 215 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (422 download)

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Book Synopsis Plutonium by : Jeremy Bernstein

Download or read book Plutonium written by Jeremy Bernstein and published by UNSW Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One girl's search to find her father, using the internet, some boys and quite a lot of hairspray from debut YA novelist Ellie Phillips. Sadie Nathanson spends her life trying to survive the excruciating embarrassment of simply existing. It's hard enough being a bit of a shrinking violet within a loud and outspoken extended family, but the unexpected card from 'Dad' on her 15th birthday is the last straw. As 'Dad' was an Internet sperm-donor, it doesn't take a genius to work out that this is a bad joke, probably set up by her ex-best-friend Shonna. But it starts Sadie wondering - just who was her father? Is he the cause of her worry crinkle and wonky bum? What would happen if she tracked him down? So she decides to do just that. With help from her nerd cousin Billy, his friend Nodding Tony and a regular dose of 'Haironomics' (Sadie's own hairstyle-related philosophy system), they uncover a lot more than they bargain for... A story with wit, warmth and knicker-wetting embarrassment , Ellie Phillips is a vibrant new voice in teen fiction. Dad's, Geeks and Blue Haired Freaks is one of the most original books for young adults you'll ever read - perfect for girls moving on from Louise Rennison and Cathy Cassidy.

Nature at War

Author : Thomas Robertson
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108419763
Total Pages : 399 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis Nature at War by : Thomas Robertson

Download or read book Nature at War written by Thomas Robertson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-02 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "World War II was the largest and most destructive conflict in human history. It was an existential struggle that pitted irreconcilable political systems and ideologies against one another across the globe in a decade of violence unlike any other. There is little doubt today that the United States had to engage in the fighting, especially after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The conflict was, in the words of historians Allan Millett and Williamson Murray, "a war to be won." As the world's largest industrial power, the United States put forth a supreme effort to produce the weapons, munitions, and military formations essential to achieving victory. When the war finally ended, the finale signaled by atomic mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, upwards of 60 million people had perished in the inferno. Of course, the human toll represented only part of the devastation; global environments also suffered greatly. The growth and devastation of the Second World War significantly changed American landscapes as well. The war created or significantly expanded a number of industries, put land to new uses, spurred urbanization, and left a legacy of pollution that would in time create a new term: Superfund site"--

The Nuclear Borderlands

Author : Joseph Masco
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691194289
Total Pages : 454 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis The Nuclear Borderlands by : Joseph Masco

Download or read book The Nuclear Borderlands written by Joseph Masco and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important investigation of the sociocultural fallout of America's work on the atomic bomb In The Nuclear Borderlands, Joseph Masco offers an in-depth look at the long-term consequences of the Manhattan Project. Masco examines how diverse groups in and around Los Alamos, New Mexico understood and responded to the U.S. nuclear weapons project in the post–Cold War period. He shows that the American focus on potential nuclear apocalypse during the Cold War obscured the broader effects of the nuclear complex on society, and that the atomic bomb produced a new cognitive orientation toward daily life, reconfiguring concepts of time, nature, race, and citizenship. This updated edition includes a brand-new preface by the author discussing current developments in nuclear politics and the scientific impact of the nuclear age on the present epoch of a human-altered climate.

Picturing the Bomb

Author : Rachel Fermi
Publisher : ABRAMS
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Picturing the Bomb by : Rachel Fermi

Download or read book Picturing the Bomb written by Rachel Fermi and published by ABRAMS. This book was released on 1995 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The compelling photographs from the Manhattan Project, by turns specific, abstract, dramatic, and surreal, offer a multifaceted look at history. Photographs of landscapes and of construction, of scientific experiments and their results, are framed against official portraits and casual snapshots.

Plutopia

Author : Kathryn L. Brown
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199855765
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (998 download)

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Book Synopsis Plutopia by : Kathryn L. Brown

Download or read book Plutopia written by Kathryn L. Brown and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Plutopia, Brown draws on official records and dozens of interviews to tell the stories of Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia-the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium. To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias--communities of nuclear families living in highly-subsidized, limited-access atomic cities. Brown shows that the plants' segregation of permanent and temporary workers and of nuclear and non-nuclear zones created a bubble of immunity, where dumps and accidents were glossed over and plant managers freely embezzled and polluted. In four decades, the Hanford plant near Richland and the Maiak plant near Ozersk each issued at least 200 million curies of radioactive isotopes into the surrounding environment--equaling four Chernobyls--laying waste to hundreds of square miles and contaminating rivers, fields, forests, and food supplies. Because of the decades of secrecy, downwind and downriver neighbors of the plutonium plants had difficulty proving what they suspected, that the rash of illnesses, cancers, and birth defects in their communities were caused by the plants' radioactive emissions. Plutopia was successful because in its zoned-off isolation it appeared to deliver the promises of the American dream and Soviet communism; in reality, it concealed disasters that remain highly unstable and threatening today. -- From publisher description.

Atomic America

Author : Todd Tucker
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439158282
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis Atomic America by : Todd Tucker

Download or read book Atomic America written by Todd Tucker and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-03-03 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On January 3, 1961, nuclear reactor SL-1 exploded in rural Idaho, spreading radioactive contamination over thousands of acres and killing three men: John Byrnes, Richard McKinley, and Richard Legg. The Army blamed "human error" and a sordid love triangle. Though it has been overshadowed by the accident at Three Mile Island, SL-1 is the only fatal nuclear reactor incident in American history, and it holds serious lessons for a nation poised to embrace nuclear energy once again. Historian Todd Tucker, who first heard the rumors about the Idaho Falls explosion as a trainee in the Navy's nuclear program, suspected there was more to the accident than the rumors suggested. Poring over hundreds of pages of primary sources and interviewing the surviving players led him to a tale of shocking negligence and subterfuge. The Army and its contractors had deliberately obscured the true causes of this terrible accident, the result of poor engineering as much as uncontrolled passions. A bigger story opened up before him about the frantic race for nuclear power among the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force -- a race that started almost the moment the nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS), where the meltdown occurred, had been a proving ground where engineers, generals, and admirals attempted to make real the Atomic Age dream of unlimited power. Some of their most ambitious plans bore fruit -- like that of the nation's unofficial nuclear patriarch, Admiral Rickover, whose "true submarine," the USS Nautilus, would forever change naval warfare. Others, like the Air Force's billion dollar quest for a nuclear-powered airplane, never came close. The Army's ultimate goal was to construct small, portable reactors to power the Arctic bases that functioned as sentinels against a Soviet sneak attack. At the height of its program, the Army actually constructed a nuclear powered city inside a glacier in Greenland. But with the meltdown in Idaho came the end of the Army's program and the beginning of the Navy's longstanding monopoly on military nuclear power. The dream of miniaturized, portable nuclear plants died with McKinley, Legg, and Byrnes. The demand for clean energy has revived the American nuclear power industry. Chronic instability in the Middle East and fears of global warming have united an unlikely coalition of conservative isolationists and fretful environmentalists, all of whom are fighting for a buildup of the emission-free power source that is already quietly responsible for nearly 20 percent of the American energy supply. More than a hundred nuclear plants generate electricity in the United States today. Thirty-two new reactors are planned. All are descendants of SL-1. With so many plants in operation, and so many more on the way, it is vitally important to examine the dangers of poor design, poor management, and the idea that a nuclear power plant can be inherently safe. Tucker sets the record straight in this fast-paced narrative history, advocating caution and accountability in harnessing this feared power source.