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Poison
in the Well
Price: $24.95
First
Paperback Edition
Subtitle: Radioactive Waste in
the Oceans at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age
Author:
Jacob Darwin Hamblin
Subject: Health
and Medicine
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-4674-2
Pages:
326 pages
Publication Date: September 2009
Praise for the Poison in the Well:
"Hamblin's
examination of radioactive waste dumping in Europe and America is an
important and valuable study, particularly for those interested in the
role of science, technology, and environment in modern life."-Ronald
Rainger, Professor of History, Texas Tech University
"A fascinating account of the role of health physicists and
marine scientists in the international politics and public relations of
dumping radioactive waste at sea."-John Krige, author of American Hegemony and the Postwar
Reconstruction of Science in Europe
"Poison
in the Well tells how British and American nuclear scientists
have handled radioactive wastes since World War II, despite uncertainty
about long-term genetic and somatic effects, creating a legacy that
will last for thousands of years. Interdisciplinary turf battles,
government secrecy, and technological hubris all play a role in this
well-constructed narrative."-Robert W. Seidel, Professor of History of
Science and Technology, University of Minnesota
Description:
In the
early 1990s, 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 1970s.
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.
About the Author:
Jacob Darwin Hamblin is an assistant professor of
history at Oregon State University.
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Price: $24.95
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