One of the pleasures of archival research is discovering stuff that is charged with atmosphere. At the National Archives in Kew, London, right next to Kew Gardens, I frantically grabbed and copied all that I could about the near-catastrophic reactor fire at Windscale, next to Sellafield, the big semi-military atomic
Writing up the Windscale fire/accident of 1957 has taxed me. It’s the first time I’ve attempted describing one of the close-call reactor accidents and I’m finding myself crowded by thoughts. Here’s something interesting. The Windscale factory/plant in rural England was run (behind barbed wire, it was a military reservation) by
Power reactors represent the “peaceful atom.” You will have your opinion about the peaceable atom, as do I, and many different debates could be had on the topic. But one thing I have found: to keep on top of the history and current status of the power reactors, i.e. the
In the late 1940s and into the 1950s, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission ramped up its efforts to understand the impacts of radiation on animals and plants. Walter Zinn’s crucial Argonne laboratory inherited a Division of Biology under the leadership of an eminent radiation scientist, Austin Brues, and in late
Here is a dilemma I face. Israel strove hard to obtain a nuclear weapons capability under cover of a nuclear energy story (even though it never built a nuclear electricity plant). Much has been written about the tale of Dimona and much is clear, but (as is true for all
Historian James Mahaffey has a knack for sharp insights well expressed. This is a footnote of his, talking about the time it took to run the first tiny experimental reactor, from December 2, 1942, and be certain that a big reactor could be built: It is important to note the
Raja Ramanna led the team that tested India’s first nuclear device in 1974. Perhaps he learned dissimulation from an early atomic spy for the Russians, Canadian Alan Nunn May: … in 1946 Raja Ramanna was being guided in his doctoral research by the head of the Department of Physics at
Francis (Franz) Simon was a German-born chemist and physicist who emigrated to England. He invented the crucial gaseous diffusion method of uranium enrichment. He doesn’t figure much in my story of power reactors but, to be on the safe side, I dutifully read a fairly recent biography by a Canadian
Illinois historian Eric Mogren now researches bow hunting (according to his university’s web page on him) but in 2002 he wrote an illuminating history of uranium mill tailings (i.e. the sandy residues of mining the mineral). This involves more detail than my general history can cover, but I did enjoy
Jacob Hamblin, a historian in Oregon, unearths the most fascinating archival material. Preparing for the BEAR meeting of oceanographers, Vine wrote a memorandum in February 1956 outlining what he considered to be the basic conundrum of waste disposal. He captured the uncertainty by describing the problem as “somewhere between nonexistent