"In "Atomic Environments," Neil S. Oatsvall examines how top policymakers in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations used environmental science in their work developing nuclear strategy at the beginning of the Cold War. While many people were involved in research and analysis during the period in question, it was at highest levels of executive decision-making where environmental science and nuclear science most clearly combined to shape the nation's policies. Because making and testing weapons, dealing with fallout and nuclear waste, and finding uses for radioactive byproducts required advanced understanding of how nuclear systems interacted with the world, policymakers utilized existing networks of environmental scientists-particularly meteorologists, geologists, and ecologists-to understand and control the United States' use of nuclear technology. Instead of profiling individuals, Oatsvall focuses on executive institutions, especially the leadership of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and high level officials in the Truman and Eisenhower White Houses, including the presidents, themselves. By scrutinizing institutional policymaking practices and agendas at the birth of the nuclear age, a constant set of values becomes clear: "Atomic Environments" reveals an emerging technocratic class that consistently valued knowledge about the environment to help create and maintain a nuclear arsenal, despite its existential threat to life on earth and the negative effects many nuclear technologies directly had on ecosystems and the American people, alike. "Atomic Environments" is divided into five chapters, each of which probes a different facet of the entanglement between environment, nuclear technologies, and policymaking. The first three chapters form a rough narrative arc about nuclear weapons. Chapter One situates bombs in their "natural habitat" by considering why nuclear tests occurred where they did and what testers thought they revealed about the natural environment and how they influenced it. Focusing on nuclear fallout, Chapter Two argues that nuclear tests actually functioned as a massive, uncontrolled experiment in world environments and human bodies that intermingled medicine, nuclear science, and environmental science. Chapter Three shows how the environmental knowledge gained in the first two chapters led to nuclear test ban treaty talks during the Eisenhower era, when the advancement of environmental knowledge and the natural world itself became crucial grounds of contention in the creation of nuclear test detection and evasion systems. The last two chapters step away from weapons to question how other nuclear technologies and facets of the U.S. nuclear program interacted with the natural world. Chapter Four examines agriculture's place in the U.S. nuclear program, from breakthrough advances in agricultural science including the use of radioisotopes and the direct application of radiation to food, to "atomic agriculture's" public relations value as a peaceful proxy, which shifted the moral calculus and further leveraged the U.S. government's atomic power. Chapter Five shows how knowledge of the natural world and the functioning of its systems proved important to uncovering the most effective ways to dispose of nuclear waste. Running throughout, Oatsvall consistently demonstrates how the natural world and the scientific disciplines that study it became integral parts of nuclear science, rather than adversarial fields of knowledge. But while nuclear technologies heavily depended on environmental science to develop, those same technologies frequently caused great harm to the natural world. Moreover, while some individuals expressed real anxieties about the damage wrought by nuclear technologies, policymakers as a class consistently made choices that privileged nuclear boosterism and secrecy, prioritizing institutional values over the lives and living systems that agencies like the AEC were ostensibly charged to protect. In the end, Oatsvall argues that although policymakers took their charge to protect and advance the welfare of the United States and its people seriously, they often failed to do so because their allegiance to the U.S. nuclear hierarchy blinded them to the real risks and dangers of the nuclear age"--

The Manhattan Project—the World War II race to produce an atomic bomb—transformed the entire country in myriad ways, but it did not affect each region equally. Acting on an enduring perception of the American West as an “empty” place, the U.S. government located a disproportionate number of nuclear facilities—particularly the ones most likely to spread pollution—in western states. The Manhattan Project manufactured plutonium at Hanford, Washington; designed and assembled bombs at Los Alamos, New Mexico; and detonated the world’s first atomic bomb at Alamagordo, New Mexico, on June 16, 1945. In the years that followed the war, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission selected additional western sites for its work. Many westerners initially welcomed the atom. Like federal officials, they, too, regarded their region as “empty,” or underdeveloped. Facilities to make, test, and base atomic weapons, sites to store nuclear waste, and even nuclear power plants were regarded as assets. By the 1960s and 1970s, however, regional attitudes began to change. At a variety of locales, ranging from Eskimo Alaska to Mormon Utah, westerners devoted themselves to resisting the atom and its effects on their environments and communities. Just as the atomic age had dawned in the American West, so its artificial sun began to set there. The Atomic West brings together contributions from several disciplines to explore the impact on the West of the development of atomic power from wartime secrecy and initial postwar enthusiasm to public doubts and protest in the 1970s and 1980s. An impressive example of the benefits of interdisciplinary studies on complex topics, The Atomic West advances our understanding of both regional history and the history of science, and does so with human communities as a significant focal point. The book will be of special interest to students and experts on the American West, environmental history, and the history of science and technology.

A handbook for scholars, students, policy makers, journalists, and peace and environmental activists.A handbook for scholars, students, policy makers, journalists, and peace and environmental activists, Nuclear Wastelands provides concise histories of the development of nuclear weapons programs of every declared and de facto nuclear weapons power, as well as detailed surveys of the health and environmental effects of this development both in these countries and in non-nuclear nations involved in nuclear weapons testing and uranium mining. Among the more obvious but largely deferred costs of the Cold War are those related to the management of radioactive waste. The world is burdened with thousands of unwanted nuclear devices and mounting surpluses of weapons-grade plutonium and enriched uranium. In addition, the process of weapons production and testing has left many lands, aquifers, rivers, lakes, and seas contaminated by a multitude of weapons-related poisons. This book follows the production process step by step and country by country from uranium mining to the final assembly and storage of weapons, analyzing the potential hazards of each step and compiling the most complete information available on the actual health and environmental effects, in each country involved. Nuclear Wastelands includes a wealth of information that has only recently come to light, particularly on the nuclear weapons program of the former Soviet Union. It also features critical analyses of official public communications concerning the health and environmental consequences of nuclear weapons production, bringing to light governmental secrecy and outright deception that have led to the subversion of democratic principles, and have camouflaged the damage done to the very people and lands the weapons were meant to safeguard.

Perhaps the first environmental engineer at Hanford, Melvin R. Adams spent 24 years on its 586 square miles of desert terrain. His thoughtful vignettes recall challenges and sites he worked on or found personally intriguing--like the 216-U-pond, contaminated with plutonium longer than any place on earth. In what Adams considers his most successful project, he helped determine the initial scope of the soil and solid waste cleanup. His group also designed and tested a marked, maintenance-free disposal barrier, expanded a network of groundwater monitoring wells, and developed a pilot scale pump and treatment plant. Adams shares his perspective on leaking high-level waste storage tanks, dosimeters, and Hanford¿s obsession with safety. He even answers his least favorite question, insisting he does not glow in the dark. He leaves that unique ability to spent fuel rods in water storage basins--a phenomenon known as Cherenkov radiation.

The late 1960s saw an extraordinary growth in the American nuclear industry: dozens of plants of unprecedented size were ordered throughout the country. Yet at the same time, public concern about the natural environment and suspicion of both government and industry increased dramatically. Containing the Atom is the first scholarly history of nuclear power regulation during those tumultuous years. J. Samuel Walker focuses on the activities of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the agency entrusted with the primary responsibility for the safety of nuclear power, and shows that from the beginning the AEC faced a paradox: it was charged with both promoting and controlling the nuclear power industry. Out of this paradox grew severe tensions, which Walker discusses in detail. His balanced evaluation of the issues and the positions taken by the AEC and others makes this study an invaluable resource for all those interested in the continuing controversies that surround nuclear energy. The late 1960s saw an extraordinary growth in the American nuclear industry: dozens of plants of unprecedented size were ordered throughout the country. Yet at the same time, public concern about the natural environment and suspicion of both government and industry increased dramatically. Containing the Atom is the first scholarly history of nuclear power regulation during those tumultuous years. J. Samuel Walker focuses on the activities of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the agency entrusted with the primary responsibility for the safety of nuclear power, and shows that from the beginning the AEC faced a paradox: it was charged with both promoting and controlling the nuclear power industry. Out of this paradox grew severe tensions, which Walker discusses in detail. His balanced evaluation of the issues and the positions taken by the AEC and others makes this study an invaluable resource for all those interested in the continuing controversies that surround nuclear energy.

Provides in-depth knowledge on novel materials that make electronics work under high-temperature and high-pressure conditions This book reviews the state of the art in research and development of lead-free interconnect materials for electronic packaging technology. It identifies the technical barriers to the development and manufacture of high-temperature interconnect materials to investigate into the complexities introduced by harsh conditions. It teaches the techniques adopted and the possible alternatives of interconnect materials to cope with the impacts of extreme temperatures for implementing at industrial scale. The book also examines the application of nanomaterials, current trends within the topic area, and the potential environmental impacts of material usage. Written by world-renowned experts from academia and industry, Harsh Environment Electronics: Interconnect Materials and Performance Assessment covers interconnect materials based on silver, gold, and zinc alloys as well as advanced approaches utilizing polymers and nanomaterials in the first section. The second part is devoted to the performance assessment of the different interconnect materials and their respective environmental impact. -Takes a scientific approach to analyzing and addressing the issues related to interconnect materials involved in high temperature electronics -Reviews all relevant materials used in interconnect technology as well as alternative approaches otherwise neglected in other literature -Highlights emergent research and theoretical concepts in the implementation of different materials in soldering and die-attach applications -Covers wide-bandgap semiconductor device technologies for high temperature and harsh environment applications, transient liquid phase bonding, glass frit based die attach solution for harsh environment, and more -A pivotal reference for professionals, engineers, students, and researchers Harsh Environment Electronics: Interconnect Materials and Performance Assessment is aimed at materials scientists, electrical engineers, and semiconductor physicists, and treats this specialized topic with breadth and depth.

Nanoscale Science, whose birth and further growth and development has been driven by the needs of the microelectronics industry on one hand, and by the sheer human curiosity on the other hand, has given researchers an unprecedented capability to design and construct devices whose function ality is based on quantum and mesoscopic effects. A necessary step in this process has been the development of reliable fabrication techniques in the nanometer scale: two-dimensional systems, quantum wires and dots, and Coulomb blockade structures with almost ideal properties can nowadays be fabricated, and subjected to experimental studies. How does one fabricate micro/nanostructures of low dimensionality? How does one perform a nanoscale characterization of these structures? What are the fundamental properties typical to the structures? Which new physical processes in nanostructures need to be understood? What new physical processes may allow us to create new nanostructures? An improved understanding of these topics is necessary for creation of new concepts for future electronic and optoelectronic devices and for characterizing device structures based on those concepts.