Neutron's Children
Nuclear Engineers and the Shaping of Identity
1st Edition
Published on 26. April 2012
326 pages
978-0-19-163192-4 (ISBN)
Description
This account tracks the Allied atomic energy experts who emerged from the Manhattan Project to explore optimistic but distinct paths in the USA, UK and Canada. Characterized successively as admired atomic scientists, mistrusted spies and heroic engineers, their identities were ultimately shaped by nuclear accidents.
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04/2012
Oxford University Press
€103.94
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Content
- Cover
- Contents
- 1 Introduction: The neutron and its progeny
- 1.1 Core knowledge
- 1.2 Accounts of the nuclear age
- 1.3 Nuclear specialists and the shaping of expertise
- PART A: GESTATION
- 2 New knowledge for new purposes
- 2.1 A twentieth-century field
- 2.2 The trigger of war
- 3 Implanting industrial cultures
- 3.1 The Anglo-Canadian project and the challenges of technical collaboration
- 3.2 Du Pont and the gestation of nuclear specialists
- PART B: INCUBATION
- 4 The atomic nursery
- 4.1 Hesitant steps
- 4.2 National Laboratories in post-war America
- 4.3 Chalk River for Canadians
- 4.4 The British atomic bomb and beyond
- 4.5 Shaping secret programmes
- 5 'Like children in a toy factory'
- 5.1 The core of a new discipline
- 5.2 Walter Zinn and nucleonics at Argonne
- 5.3 Anti-discipline: Christopher Hinton and the British nuclear worker
- 5.4 Controlling information flow
- 5.5 Atomic industry for defence: The Savannah River Plant
- PART C: EMERGENCE
- 6 A state-managed profession
- 6.1 Triggered release: Declassifying nuclear knowledge
- 6.2 Freedom to publish
- 6.3 Professional fallout
- 6.4 Altering cross-sections: The first university-educated generation
- 7 Nuclear specialists at work
- 7.1 Nuclear unions: Segregation and identity
- 7.2 Risk and radioactivity
- PART D: REPRESENTATIONS
- 8 Unstable impressions
- 8.1 Popular atomics and public recognition
- 8.2 The neutron's grandchildren
- 9 Conclusions: Careers from the Manhattan Project to Fukushima
- 9.1 Fertile environments
- 9.2 Fragile ecosystems
- 9.3 Critical conditions
- 9.4 Between anonymity and rhetoric
- Appendix I: Acronyms, organizations, and year of origin
- Appendix II: Nuclear engineering periodicals since 1945
- Appendix III: Archival sources
- Abbreviations used for archive citations
- Bibliography
- Index
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
- W
- X
- Y
- Z
