Plutonium, Deadly Gold of the Nuclear Age PDF Download

Author: Howard Hu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Author: International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262632041
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 700

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A handbook for scholars, students, policy makers, journalists, and peace and environmental activists.A handbook for scholars, students, policy makers, journalists, and peace and environmental activists, Nuclear Wastelands provides concise histories of the development of nuclear weapons programs of every declared and de facto nuclear weapons power, as well as detailed surveys of the health and environmental effects of this development both in these countries and in non-nuclear nations involved in nuclear weapons testing and uranium mining. Among the more obvious but largely deferred costs of the Cold War are those related to the management of radioactive waste. The world is burdened with thousands of unwanted nuclear devices and mounting surpluses of weapons-grade plutonium and enriched uranium. In addition, the process of weapons production and testing has left many lands, aquifers, rivers, lakes, and seas contaminated by a multitude of weapons-related poisons. This book follows the production process step by step and country by country from uranium mining to the final assembly and storage of weapons, analyzing the potential hazards of each step and compiling the most complete information available on the actual health and environmental effects, in each country involved. Nuclear Wastelands includes a wealth of information that has only recently come to light, particularly on the nuclear weapons program of the former Soviet Union. It also features critical analyses of official public communications concerning the health and environmental consequences of nuclear weapons production, bringing to light governmental secrecy and outright deception that have led to the subversion of democratic principles, and have camouflaged the damage done to the very people and lands the weapons were meant to safeguard.

Author: Michael D. Gordin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691193452
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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A multifaceted portrait of the Hiroshima bombing and its many legacies On August 6, 1945, in the waning days of World War II, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The city's destruction stands as a powerful symbol of nuclear annihilation, but it has also shaped how we think about war and peace, the past and the present, and science and ethics. The Age of Hiroshima traces these complex legacies, exploring how the meanings of Hiroshima have reverberated across the decades and around the world. Michael D. Gordin and G. John Ikenberry bring together leading scholars from disciplines ranging from international relations and political theory to cultural history and science and technology studies, who together provide new perspectives on Hiroshima as both a historical event and a cultural phenomenon. As an event, Hiroshima emerges in the flow of decisions and hard choices surrounding the bombing and its aftermath. As a phenomenon, it marked a revolution in science, politics, and the human imagination—the end of one age and the dawn of another. The Age of Hiroshima reveals how the bombing of Hiroshima gave rise to new conceptions of our world and its precarious interconnectedness, and how we continue to live in its dangerous shadow today.

Author: Eileen Welsome
Publisher: Delta
ISBN: 0307767337
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 724

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When the vast wartime factories of the Manhattan Project began producing plutonium in quantities never before seen on earth, scientists working on the top-secret bomb-building program grew apprehensive. Fearful that plutonium might cause a cancer epidemic among workers and desperate to learn more about what it could do to the human body, the Manhattan Project's medical doctors embarked upon an experiment in which eighteen unsuspecting patients in hospital wards throughout the country were secretly injected with the cancer-causing substance. Most of these patients would go to their graves without ever knowing what had been done to them. Now, in The Plutonium Files, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Eileen Welsome reveals for the first time the breadth of the extraordinary fifty-year cover-up surrounding the plutonium injections, as well as the deceitful nature of thousands of other experiments conducted on American citizens in the postwar years. Welsome's remarkable investigation spans the 1930s to the 1990s and draws upon hundreds of newly declassified documents and other primary sources to disclose this shadowy chapter in American history. She gives a voice to such innocents as Helen Hutchison, a young woman who entered a prenatal clinic in Nashville for a routine checkup and was instead given a radioactive "cocktail" to drink; Gordon Shattuck, one of several boys at a state school for the developmentally disabled in Massachusetts who was fed radioactive oatmeal for breakfast; and Maude Jacobs, a Cincinnati woman suffering from cancer and subjected to an experimental radiation treatment designed to help military planners learn how to win a nuclear war. Welsome also tells the stories of the scientists themselves, many of whom learned the ways of secrecy on the Manhattan Project. Among them are Stafford Warren, a grand figure whose bravado masked a cunning intelligence; Joseph Hamilton, who felt he was immune to the dangers of radiation only to suffer later from a fatal leukemia; and physician Louis Hempelmann, one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the plan to inject humans with potentially carcinogenic doses of plutonium. Hidden discussions of fifty years past are reconstructed here, wherein trusted government officials debated the ethical and legal implications of the experiments, demolishing forever the argument that these studies took place in a less enlightened era. Powered by her groundbreaking reportage and singular narrative gifts, Eileen Welsome has created a work of profound humanity as well as major historical significance. From the Hardcover edition.

Author: National Academy of Sciences
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309051452
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Within the next decade, many thousands of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons are slated to be retired as a result of nuclear arms reduction treaties and unilateral pledges. Hundreds of tons of plutonium and highly enriched uranium will no longer be needed for weapons purposes and will pose urgent challenges to international security. This is the supporting volume to a study by the Committee on International Security and Arms Control which dealt with all phases of the management and disposition of these materials. This technical study concentrates on the option for the disposition of plutonium, looking in detail at the different types of reactors in which weapons plutonium could be burned and at the vitrification of plutonium, and comparing them using economic, security and environmental criteria.

Author: Gray Brechin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520250086
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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""Imperial San Francisco" provides a myth-shattering interpretation of the hidden costs that the growth of San Francisco has exacted on its surrounding regions, presenting along the way a revolutionary new theory of urban development".--"Palo Alto Daily News". 86 photos.

Author: Young Whan Kihl
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
ISBN: 9781563247897
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description
Details North Korea's technology, infrastructure, and institutions and discusses difficulties the country faces in creating alternatives to a nuclear weapons program within the context of maintaining environmentally sound, ecologically sustainable energy development in the region. Contains sections on nuclear reactors and technology transfer, economic sanctions and incentives, strategy and confidence building, and Korea and the major powers. Includes appendices of documents. Paper edition (unseen), $24.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Author: Sajed Kamal
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136540199
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Our environment and society is threatened by fuel shortages, a changing climate and energy wars. In our race for survival we are awakened to the simple truth that the essential condition of sustainability lies in our ability to live within the limits and renewability of natural resources. It invokes within us an urgent need for transition from an obsolete, destructive and unsustainable energy path to a sustainable path of innovation, renewable energy and peace. The good news is that the technology required to make this transition is already available. From an author with over thirty years' experience campaigning for and setting up renewable energy projects around the world, this book is unique for its interdisciplinary approach-interweaving technology, economics, environmental science, philosophy, history, spirituality and politics, asserting that to understand the crisis and find a sustainable solution requires a holistic perspective. Readers will understand the vast renewable resource we have at our disposal in the form of solar, wind, water, heat and biogas, and the technologies used to harness this power. There are also the emerging prospects of solar hydrogen fuel cells, biofuels and geothermal. The true economic advantages of a shift to a renewables-based economy (and how we can get there) are also laid out clearly. There's much to learn from examples around the world while we devise local and appropriate solutions. Written for a crossover readership of students, educators, professionals, academics, activists and policymakers, both nationally and internationally, this is a comprehensive but readable and practical book that will inspire readers to wake others up to our renewable solutions.

Author: Patt Leonard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315480832
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1725

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This bibliography, first published in 1957, provides citations to North American academic literature on Europe, Central Europe, the Balkans, the Baltic States and the former Soviet Union. Organised by discipline, it covers the arts, humanities, social sciences, life sciences and technology.

Author:
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
ISBN: 9780765619624
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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