TY - GEN AB - How the scientific community overlooked, ignored, and denied the catastrophic fallout of decades ofnuclear testing in the American WestIn December of 1950, President Harry Truman gave authorization for the Atomic Energy Commission to conduct weapons tests and experiments on a section of a Nevada gunnery range. Over the next eleven years, more than a hundred detonations were conducted at the Nevada Test Site, and radioactive debris dispersed across the communities just downwind and through much of the country. In this important work, James C. Rice tells the hidden story of nuclear weapons testing and the negligence of the US government in protecting public health.Downwind of the Atomic State focuses on the key decisions and events shaping the Commission's mismanagement of radiological contamination in the region, specifically on how the risks of fallout were defined and redefined, or, importantly, not defined at all, owing to organizational mistakes and the impetus to keep atomic testing going at all costs. Rice shows that although Atomic Energy Commission officials understood open-air detonations injected radioactive debris into the atmosphere, they did not understand, or seem to care, that the radioactivity would irrevocably contaminate these communities.The history of the atomic Southwest should be a wake-up call to everyone living in a world replete with large, complex organizations managing risky technological systems. The legacy of open-air detonations in Nevada pushes us to ask about the kinds of risks we are unwittingly living under today. What risks are we being exposed to by large organizations under the guise of security and science? AU - Rice, James C., CN - TD195.N85 DO - 10.18574/nyu/9781479815371.001.0001 DO - doi ID - 1562178 KW - Armes nucléaires KW - SCIENCE / Space Science. KW - Nuclear weapons testing victims KW - Nuclear weapons KW - Nuclear weapons KW - Radioactive fallout KW - Radioactive pollution KW - Andrew Pickering. KW - Atomic Energy Commission. KW - Great Basin Desert. KW - Nevada Test Site. KW - Ulrich Beck. KW - archival research. KW - atmospheric detonations. KW - downwind residents. KW - downwind. KW - materiality. KW - open-air detonations. KW - organizational failures. KW - performativity of nature. KW - radioactive contamination. KW - radioactive fallout. KW - rationality. KW - risk society. KW - sociotechnical systems. KW - uranium. LA - In English. LK - https://univsouthin.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.degruyter.com/openurl?genre=book&isbn=9781479815371 N2 - How the scientific community overlooked, ignored, and denied the catastrophic fallout of decades ofnuclear testing in the American WestIn December of 1950, President Harry Truman gave authorization for the Atomic Energy Commission to conduct weapons tests and experiments on a section of a Nevada gunnery range. Over the next eleven years, more than a hundred detonations were conducted at the Nevada Test Site, and radioactive debris dispersed across the communities just downwind and through much of the country. In this important work, James C. Rice tells the hidden story of nuclear weapons testing and the negligence of the US government in protecting public health.Downwind of the Atomic State focuses on the key decisions and events shaping the Commission's mismanagement of radiological contamination in the region, specifically on how the risks of fallout were defined and redefined, or, importantly, not defined at all, owing to organizational mistakes and the impetus to keep atomic testing going at all costs. Rice shows that although Atomic Energy Commission officials understood open-air detonations injected radioactive debris into the atmosphere, they did not understand, or seem to care, that the radioactivity would irrevocably contaminate these communities.The history of the atomic Southwest should be a wake-up call to everyone living in a world replete with large, complex organizations managing risky technological systems. The legacy of open-air detonations in Nevada pushes us to ask about the kinds of risks we are unwittingly living under today. What risks are we being exposed to by large organizations under the guise of security and science? SN - 9781479815371 SN - 1479815373 T1 - Downwind of the Atomic State :Atmospheric Testing and the Rise of the Risk Society / TI - Downwind of the Atomic State :Atmospheric Testing and the Rise of the Risk Society / UR - https://univsouthin.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.degruyter.com/openurl?genre=book&isbn=9781479815371 ER -