Nuclear reactions: National security policy, culture, and environment in the Nevada Test Site region, 1950--1958

Nuclear Reactions examine relationships between the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the people and landscapes of the Nevada Test Site region during the period of above-ground atomic weapons testing within the continental United States. Based on extensive archival research, including government documents, newspapers, congressional testimony, local histories, and scientific publications, the study addresses both human and environmental interactions as the nation made atmospheric testing a centerpiece of its atomic weapons development program. As effects of the program, including radioactive fallout, became apparent, the AEC faced multiple public responses. Reactions were mediated by an array of factors, including religion, historical memory, and economic livelihood and varied widely across the region. To address critical responses that deviated from its desire for complete public acceptance of the Nevada tests, the AEC adopted a penetrating zone management program that coupled radiation safety, public indoctrination, and surveillance of the countryside. In attempting to justify and minimize the environmental consequences of the Nevada tests, the AEC imagined partnerships between nature and nation. To assess the likely impacts of radioactive fallout in the event of a nuclear attack, vast areas beyond the test site proper were used as an open laboratory for experimentation. By brokering a selective science that studied some radioactive effects, but not others, the agency charted a course with long-term consequences for the people and landscapes of the intermountain west. Recent scientific research has shown that addition of radioisotopes to a human-sculpted agricultural landscape created a pathway that moved cancer-causing toxins into the human food chain. Although underground testing began to replace its atmospheric forerunner in the late 1950s, this action has had the perverse effect of creating a nuclear contaminated landscape that must be monitored in perpetuity. Radiation exposure compensation and environmental management, ongoing and consuming hundreds of millions of dollars, constitute major legacies of the Cold War on the western front.