ustxtxb_obs_1996_05_03_50_00019-00000_000.pdf

Did they understand what they had done, these young men? Most did. Oppenheimer certainly did. Just as the fireball was at its most brilliant he recalled the words Shiva speaks in the Bhagavad-Gita: “I am become death, the Shatterer of Worlds.” Another scientist, this one in his mid-thirties but older than most, put it more prosaically: “Now we’re all sons of bitches.” The Day the Sun Rose Twice was first published in 1984, and although reprinted for the first time last year, it was not updated. This is unfortunate, since the last decade has provided us not only with more historical details of that interesting period, but with newer insights as well. THE FINAL VOLUME is not easy reading, but compelling nonetheless. In fact, the book may be best de scribed as chilling. Nuclear Wastelands provides a concise history of the weapons program of every declared and de facto nuclear nation. More importantly, it describes the health and environmental effects of these programs. For example, it is frightening enough to learn what happened in this countrythe tons of radioactive waste generated, the billions of dollars spent but almost unspeakable what happened in the former Soviet Union as a result of the Cold War. Worldwide, cancers and birth defects plague the residents of test areas; environmental contamination continues unabated in many nations; the storage of nuclear waste is haphazard and potentially lethal. Moreover, according to the author’s sources, there were over fifty thousand nuclear warheads in 1990, thirty-two thousand in the former Soviet Union alone. This represents over two hundred fifty metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium, and over two thousand tons of highly enriched uranium. Neither of these substances is easy to store or dispose of, and both are in evitable targets for today’s terrorists. But behind these figures are even more shocking numbers. It is staggering to learn that beyond the warheads themselves are an additional one hundred to two hundred million metric tons of uranium mill tailings, containing one hundred thousand curies 226 and thorium-230; over four hundred thousand metric tons of depleted uranium; about three billion curies of high level radioactive waste from plutonium production; twenty million curies of other radioactive wastes; and thousands of square miles of highly contaminated land. Not to mention global contamination caused by fallout from nuclear weapons tests and accidents. This is a somber book, one laced with tables and charts that will perhaps intimidate some readers. That is unfortunate, because Nuclear Wastelands contains a wealth of information, both historic and current, much of which has never been available before. It is also a frightening bookone that reminds us in no uncertain terms that the real cost of the Cold War has only begun to be realized. 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