Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 030906175X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
In 1997, after more than a decade of research, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) released a report which provided their assessment of radiation exposures that Americans may have received from radioactive iodine released from the atomic bomb tests conducted in Nevada during the 1950s and early 1960s. This book provides an evaluation of the soundness of the methodology used by the NCI study to estimate: Past radiation doses. Possible health consequences of exposure to iodine-131. Implications for clinical practice. Possible public health strategiesâ€"such as systematic screening for thyroid cancerâ€"to respond to the exposures. In addition, the book provides an evaluation of the NCI estimates of the number of thyroid cancers that might result from the nuclear testing program and provides guidance on approaches the U.S. government might use to communicate with the public about Iodine-131 exposures and health risks.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nuclear weapons
Languages : en
Pages : 202
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Book Description
This document lists chronologically and alphabetically by name all nuclear tests and simultaneous detonations conducted by the United States from July 1945 through September 1992. Two nuclear weapons that the United States exploded over Japan ending World War II are not listed. These detonations were not "tests" in the sense that they were conducted to prove that the weapon would work as designed (as was the first test near Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945), or to advance nuclear weapon design, or to determine weapons effects, or to verify weapon safety as were the more than one thousand tests that have taken place since June 30,1946. The nuclear weapon (nicknamed "Little Boy") dropped August 6,1945 from a United States Army Air Force B-29 bomber (the Enola Gay) and detonated over Hiroshima, Japan had an energy yield equivalent to that of 15,000 tons of TNT. The nuclear weapon (virtually identical to "Fat Man") exploded in a similar fashion August 9, 1945 over Nagaski, Japan had a yield of 21,000 tons of TNT. Both detonations were intended to end World War II as quickly as possible. Data on United States tests were obtained from, and verified by, the U.S. Department of Energy's three weapons laboratories -- Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California; and Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico; and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Additionally, data were obtained from public announcements issued by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and its successors, the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration, and the U.S. Department of Energy, respectively.
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309172594
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 239
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Book Description
More than 200,000 U.S. military personnel participated in atmospheric nuclear weapons tests between 1945 and the 1963 Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Questions persist, such as whether that test participation is associated with the timing and causes of death among those individuals. This is the report of a mortality study of the approximately 70,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen who participated in at least one of five selected U.S. nuclear weapons test series1 in the 1950s and nearly 65,000 comparable nonparticipants, the referents. The investigation described in this report, based on more than 5 million person-years of mortality follow-up, represents one of the largest cohort studies of military veterans ever conducted.
Author: Richard Lee Miller
Publisher: Two-Sixty Press
ISBN: 9780029216200
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 572
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Book Description
In "a chilling documentary history of America's above-ground nuclear tests conducted during the 1950s and early 1960s, Miller takes on the subject and universalizes it, at the same time giving it the flavor of a Dos Passos novel" ("Kirkus Reviews").
Author: Carole Gallagher
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262071460
Category : Nuclear weapons
Languages : en
Pages : 475
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Book Description
One photojournalist's decade-long commitment, a gripping collection of portraits and interviews of those whose lives were crossed by radioactive fallout.
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309096103
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 431
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Book Description
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was set up by Congress in 1990 to compensate people who have been diagnosed with specified cancers and chronic diseases that could have resulted from exposure to nuclear-weapons tests at various U.S. test sites. Eligible claimants include civilian onsite participants, downwinders who lived in areas currently designated by RECA, and uranium workers and ore transporters who meet specified residence or exposure criteria. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which oversees the screening, education, and referral services program for RECA populations, asked the National Academies to review its program and assess whether new scientific information could be used to improve its program and determine if additional populations or geographic areas should be covered under RECA. The report recommends Congress should establish a new science-based process using a method called "probability of causation/assigned share" (PC/AS) to determine eligibility for compensation. Because fallout may have been higher for people outside RECA-designated areas, the new PC/AS process should apply to all residents of the continental US, Alaska, Hawaii, and overseas US territories who have been diagnosed with specific RECA-compensable diseases and who may have been exposed, even in utero, to radiation from U.S. nuclear-weapons testing fallout. However, because the risks of radiation-induced disease are generally low at the exposure levels of concern in RECA populations, in most cases it is unlikely that exposure to radioactive fallout was a substantial contributing cause of cancer.
Author: Nicholas L. Miller
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501717820
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 471
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Book Description
This is an intense and meticulously sourced study on the topic of nuclear weapons proliferation, beginning with America's introduction of the Atomic Age... His book provides a full explanation of America's policy with a time sequence necessarily focusing on the domino effect of states acquiring a nuclear weapons capability and the import of bureaucratic decisions on international political behavior.― Choice Stopping the Bomb examines the historical development and effectiveness of American efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Nicholas L. Miller offers here a novel theory that argues changes in American nonproliferation policy are the keys to understanding the nuclear landscape from the 1960s onward. The Chinese and Indian nuclear tests in the 1960s and 1970s forced the US government, Miller contends, to pay new and considerable attention to the idea of nonproliferation and to reexamine its foreign policies. Stopping the Bomb explores the role of the United States in combating the spread of nuclear weapons, an area often ignored to date. He explains why these changes occurred and how effective US policies have been in preventing countries from seeking and acquiring nuclear weapons. Miller's findings highlight the relatively rapid move from a permissive approach toward allies acquiring nuclear weapons to a more universal nonproliferation policy no matter whether friend or foe. Four in-depth case studies of US nonproliferation policy—toward Taiwan, Pakistan, Iran, and France—elucidate how the United States can compel countries to reverse ongoing nuclear weapons programs. Miller's findings in Stopping the Bomb have important implications for the continued study of nuclear proliferation, US nonproliferation policy, and beyond.
Author: Emmet Gowin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691196036
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 161
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Book Description
"Emmet Gowin likes to ask a provocative question: "Which country on earth has had the largest number of nuclear bombs detonated within its borders?" The answer is the United States. Covering approximately 680 square miles, the Nevada National Security Site, formerly known as the Nevada Test Site, was the primary testing location of American nuclear devices from 1951 to 1992; 1,021 announced nuclear tests occurred there, 921 of which were underground. The site, which is closed to the public, including its airspace, contains 28 areas, 1,100 buildings, 400 miles of paved roads, 300 miles of unpaved roads, 10 heliports, and two airstrips. Its surface is covered with subsidence craters from testing, and in places looks like the moon. In 1996, Gowin received permission to document the landscape by air, after over a decade of working to secure access. These aerial views of environmental devastation--made quietly majestic but no less potent in the hands of a master photographer--unveil environmental travesties on a grand scale. While groups of images from the Nevada Test Site series have been published previously, this book will produce the largest number yet, and three quarters of the pictures will not have been published at all. Gowin is the only photographer to have been granted access to this site, which is now permanently closed, post-9/11. Other than images made by the government for geographic purposes, no other images of this landscape exist. The book will feature a preface by photographer Robert Adams (America, b. 1937), whose photographic and written work is concerned with landscape, urbanization, and activism. It will also feature an afterword by Gowin on how he made the images, and their significance to him today."--Provided by publisher.
Author: Jonathan M. Weisgall
Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 488
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Book Description
Weisgall (law, Georgetown U.) is the legal counsel for the people of Bikini and provides the first non-government account of the two atomic bomb tests on the Pacific island in 1946. He thinks that they were not a good idea, and argues that the government knew that at the time. He was also the executive producer of the film Radio Bikini. Includes lots of photographs. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: Stephen I. Schwartz
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815722946
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 750
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Book Description
Since 1945, the United States has manufactured and deployed more than 70,000 nuclear weapons to deter and if necessary fight a nuclear war. Some observers believe the absence of a third world war confirms that these weapons were a prudent and cost-effective response to the uncertainty and fear surrounding the Soviet Union's military and political ambitions during the cold war. As early as 1950, nuclear weapons were considered relatively inexpensive— providing "a bigger bang for a buck"—and were thoroughly integrated into U.S. forces on that basis. Yet this assumption was never validated. Indeed, for more than fifty years scant attention has been paid to the enormous costs of this effort—more than $5 trillion thus far—and its short and long-term consequences for the nation. Based on four years of extensive research, Atomic Audit is the first book to document the comprehensive costs of U.S. nuclear weapons, assembling for the first time anywhere the actual and estimated expenditures for the program since its creation in 1940. The authors provide a unique perspective on U.S. nuclear policy and nuclear weapons, tracking their development from the Manhattan Project of World War II to the present day and assessing each aspect of the program, including research, development, testing, and production; deployment; command, control, communications, and intelligence; and defensive measures. They also examine the costs of dismantling nuclear weapons, the management and disposal of large quantities of toxic and radioactive wastes left over from their production, compensation for persons harmed by nuclear weapons activities, nuclear secrecy, and the economic implications of nuclear deterrence. Utilizing archival and newly declassified government documents and data, this richly documented book demonstrates how a variety of factors—the open-ended nature of nuclear deterrence, faulty assumptions about the cost-effectiveness of nuclear weapons, regular misrepresentati
