3 ms·
Semi-related: If you're interested in the topic, I highly recommend "Plutopia" [1] book which describes in great detail the history of plutonium production, and
by jakub_g 10y ago
Semi-related: If you're interested in the topic, I highly recommend "Plutopia" [1] book which describes in great detail the history of plutonium production, and the consequences of it, near Richland, Washington and Ozyorsk (Russia).
It significantly changed my view on the nuclear energy. Not necessarily because it's inherently bad, but when big money is at stakes and you have incompetent people managing stuff, things can go pretty wild.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Plutopia-Families-American-Plutonium-Disasters/dp/0190233109 https://www.amazon.com/Plutopia-Families-American-Plutonium-...
- philipkglass 10y agoI will second the Plutopia recommendation, with a caution. The author tries too hard (IMO) sometimes to narratively equate Richland and Ozyorsk in terms of contamination. By the numbers -- and there are numbers in the book -- Ozyorsk suffered far worse contamination. At the Ozyorsk site the ambient environment suffered far worse exposure, plutonium workers suffered far worse exposure, and nearby populations suffered far worse exposure. But that's not to give the Hanford site a free pass. It is creepy and infuriating how the operators undertook casual large scale experiments and covered up accidents. It's doubly infuriating how locals with good plutonium jobs would turn a blind eye to, or turn against, people who were harmed on the job and whose medical/safety complaints threatened the illusion that everything was great.
- ianai 10y agoCan you offer a good link for the Richland site?
- philipkglass 10y agoI read Plutopia about 2 years ago and at certain points I recall searching Google Scholar and HathiTrust for further quantitative information about the Ozyorsk and Richland sites and other topics raised in the book. There is some quantitative information in the book too but I wanted to dive deeper. I don't know if there is any web site that presents the social Faustian bargain of Richland's "atomic city" years as well as the book does.
- bsder 10y agoNUMEC which did plutonium processing was involved in a bunch of this stuff in Western Pennsylvania. http://triblive.com/neighborhoods/yourallekiskivalley/yourallekiskivalleymore/9678472-74/nuclear-corps-materials http://triblive.com/neighborhoods/yourallekiskivalley/youral... http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/23/what-lies-beneath-numec-apollo-zalman-shapiro/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/23/what-lies-beneath-numec-...