Downwind of the Atomic State : Atmospheric Testing and the Rise of the Risk Society / James C. Rice.
Rice, James C., author.
2024
TD195.N85 R53 2023
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Title
Downwind of the Atomic State : Atmospheric Testing and the Rise of the Risk Society / James C. Rice.
Author
Rice, James C., author.
ISBN
9781479815371
1479815373
DOI
https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479815371.001.0001
Published
New York, NY : New York University Press, [2024]
Copyright
2024
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource : 47 b/w illustrations
Item Number
10.18574/nyu/9781479815371.001.0001 doi
Call Number
TD195.N85 R53 2023
Dewey Decimal Classification
355.8/2511909790904
Summary
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?
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Access limited to authorized users.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Aug 2024).
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Frontmatter
Contents
Abbreviations
Introduction: The Atomic State in the Great Basin
Part I Fallout and Failures of Foresight
1 Uranium and the Agency of Nature in the Risk Society
2 Trinity and Lessons Not Learned
3 The Emerging Atomic Spectacular, 1950-1951
4 The Road to Upshot-Knothole, 1952
Part II Upshot-Knothole and the Fluidity of Nature
5 Dirty Harry and the Material-Discursive Bind, 1953
6 Dead Sheep and the Fluidity of Fallout
Part III The Long Road to Taming the Atomic State
7 Respite, Reconfiguration, and Operation Teapot, 1954-1955
8 Bulloch et al. v. United States: Deception and Dirty Science, 1956
9 Operation Plumbbob: Accelerated Testing in the Shadow of a Moratorium, 1957
10 Baby Teeth, Project Sunshine, and a Moratorium on Testing, 1958-1962
11 Sedan, Silent Spring, and the Reenchantment of Nature
Conclusion: The Legacy of Atomic Testing in the Great Basin
Notes
Index
About the Author

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