Radioactive Dixie : a nuclear history of the American South / Caroline Rose Peyton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Peyton, Caroline (Historian), Author.

Series:

Environmental history and the American South http://id.loc.gov/resources/hubs/42941dd0-9555-f735-3b42-7d2b56d6afc8

Environmental history and the American South

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nuclear industry--Southern States--History.

Nuclear industry.

Radioactive waste disposal--Southern States--History.

Radioactive waste disposal.

Nuclear industry--History.

Radioactive waste disposal--History.

Southern States--History--1951-.

Southern States.

Southern States--Environmental conditions.

Physical Description:

xviii, 261 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Athens : The University of Georgia Press, [2025]

Summary:

"How and why did the South's history, culture, and politics shape the region's nuclear and energy industries? And how is that history linked to broader developments in the nuclear and energy industries-nationally and globally? Radioactive Dixie answers those questions as it traces the origins of the U.S. South's love affair with the atom. The South contains more nuclear reactors than any other region in the United States and much of the nation's radioactive waste. This book shows how the South's atomic footprint resulted from a decades-long effort by southern politicians, industry figures, universities, and government officials to transform the American South into a nuclear-oriented region. Waving the atomic talisman, the nuclear industry served as one pivotal part in a larger project of regional modernization-a process that began in the nineteenth century and lasted more than a century. From this perspective, bomb plants and nuclear reactors promised to expand the South's economy and to cast its identity as a center of modern industry, science, and engineering and as a producer of cheap, limitless energy. Radioactive Dixie is the first book to chronicle this regional story that had national implications. Southern history informed national siting decisions, regulatory oversight, and attitudes toward the various nuclear projects that proliferated in the post-World War II period"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Visions of a nuclear South and another new South

The kudzu and the reactor

The Louisiana way and the reactor

Kentucky's "atomic graveyard"

Barnwell and the nuclear burden of Southern history

Nuclear ghosts and the Tennessee Valley Authority's nuclear program.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

9780820373966

0820373966

9780820373973

0820373974

OCLC:

1511525074

Publisher Number:

90103219309

CIPO000312856