Subtitle: Radioactive Waste in the Oceans at the Dawn of the
Nuclear Age Author: Jacob
Darwin Hamblin Subject:History
of Science / History
of Technology Cloth ISBN
978-0-8135-4220-1 Pages: 320
pages Publication Date: February 2008
"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
"This impressively researched and judiciously argued
book challenges readers to think in new ways about what happens when
science, politics, and the environment intersect." —American Historical Review
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 Clemson University.
