Poison in the well : radioactive waste in the oceans at the dawn of the nuclear age / Jacob Darwin Hamblin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hamblin, Jacob Darwin.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Radioactive waste disposal in the ocean.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (326 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In the early 1990's, Russian President Boris Yeltsin revealed that for the previous thirty years the Soviet Union had dumped vast amounts of dangerous radioactive waste into rivers and seas in blatant violation of international agreements. The disclosure caused outrage throughout the Western world, particularly since officials from the Soviet Union had denounced environmental pollution by the United States and Britain throughout the cold war. Poison in the Well provides a balanced look at the policy decisions, scientific conflicts, public relations strategies, and the myriad mishaps and subsequent cover-ups that were born out of the dilemma of where to house deadly nuclear materials. Why did scientists and politicians choose the sea for waste disposal? How did negotiations about the uses of the sea change the way scientists, government officials, and ultimately the lay public envisioned the oceans? Jacob Darwin Hamblin traces the development of the issue in Western countries from the end of World War II to the blossoming of the environmental movement in the early 1970's. This is an important book for students and scholars in the history of science who want to explore a striking case study of the conflicts that so often occur at the intersection of science, politics, and international diplomacy.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. Threshold Illusions

Chapter 2. Radiation Anxieties

Chapter 3. The Other Atomic Scientists

Chapter 4. Forging an International Consensus

Chapter 5. No Atomic Graveyards

Chapter 6. The Environment as Cold War Terrain

Chapter 7. Purely for Political Reasons

Chapter 8. Confronting Environmentalism

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 291-299) and index.

ISBN:

1-281-39720-2

9786611397203

0-8135-4423-8

OCLC:

476163928