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During the time of the interview, David Hawkins was a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Colorado. This chapter presents how he came to know Robert Oppenheimer and his mentor Niels Bohr; how he acted as a liaison between the Los Alamos lab's military and civilian populations; the success of the Manhattan Project due primarily to Oppenheimer's efforts; and Hawkins' technical, administrative, and policy-making history of the Los Alamos lab. It notes that a complex institutional structure was developed at the laboratory, with divisions dedicated to theory, chemistry and metallurgy, research, ordnance, explosives, and the Trinity test.

The water, sediment, landform, and vegetation systems of the Northern Rio Grande provide the environmental framework within which plutonium moves and is stored. Plutonium enters the Northern Rio Grande from two sources: atmospheric fallout and releases from operations of Los Alamos National Laboratory that enter the main stream by transport through Los Alamos Canyon. This chapter describes the nature and timing of plutonium loading in the river’s sediment system as a means of identifying those years when sedimentation is likely to have accumulated those deposits with the highest concentrations of plutonium. This chapter also discusses plutonium in river water, sediments in transit, and sediments deposited along and stored along the channel, as well as the various mean values of plutonium concentrations found in the region of Los Alamos. The review includes plutonium in the regional environments around Los Alamos, including the compartments of river water, active sediments, flood-plain deposits, and reservoir deposits, as well as the plutonium concentrations in the sediments of Los Alamos Canyon. Most of the plutonium in atmospheric fallout is from the testing of nuclear weapons. Five nations have detonated a total of 484 nuclear devices in the atmosphere, 466 with known dates. These explosions have injected plutonium into the general atmospheric circulation, resulting in a global distribution of fallout as the material returns to the surface. There are three types of fallout: local, tropospheric, and stratospheric. Local or early fallout arrives within a day of the detonation and consists of particles 100 to 200 microns in diameter (fine sand) transported in the lower atmosphere and deposited within several hundred kilometers of the site of the explosion. Finer particles travel greater distances and disperse over greater areas. Tropospheric fallout arrives within a month of the detonation and consists of particles less than 100 microns in diameter (mostly silt size), transported in the lower atmosphere. The global atmospheric circulation transports tropospheric fallout around the world in a band about 30 degrees latitude wide, centered on the site of the explosion. Most of the tropospheric fallout delivers plutonium to the earth’s surface in precipitation, with only about 10 percent occurring as dry fall.

The Manhattan Project not only unlocked the power of the atom, it also inaugurated a subtle but total transformation of the biosphere, ushering nature into a new kind of nuclear regime in 1945. The technoscientific militarization of nature in nuclear discourses enabled a dual deployment of social evolution and biological extinction as the focal points of a new kind of modernity, producing not only new understandings of self, nature, and society, but also a profound mutation in each of these terms. In the post-Cold War period, the U.S. nuclear complex has implicitly recognized transformations of the biosphere by the nuclear testing regime through a new type of territorial re-inscription, such as the formation of a 1000-acre wildlife preserve within a 43-square mile territory of Los Alamos National Laboratory. This chapter describes the “re-wilding” of Los Alamos’ monitored hyper-toxic nuclear waste sites, which have been reinvented as pristine wild landscapes. It draws attention an unusual facet of Cold War environmental politics, focusing not on imagined nuclear immolation, but the creation of an ersatz “Ur” nature, a suite of new institutions, and the inscription of toxic landscapes as pristine sanctuaries.

This chapter outlines the process which began with the unexpected publication of the transcript of the Personnel Security Board hearing. Now, the search was on for villains, and theories about the slow—and seemingly unenthusiastic—development of the Super abounded. With active encouragement from air force sources, the pillorying of Los Alamos took place in the press, culminating in a widely read journalistic account of where the blame lay. With its dubious claim to extensive research, James Shepley and Clay Blair Jr.'s The Hydrogen Bomb owed its paternity and its material to the advocacy coalition that had successfully pushed for the Super. The issues were now public, and the original closed circle of decision widened to include other partisans in the worlds of science and politics. So acrimonious had the progress of the Super been that scores remained to be settled. And they would be.

Traces the series of Monte Carlo simulations run on ENIAC from their genesis in January 1947 exchanges between John von Neumann, Robert Richtmyer, and Stanislaw Ulam through the completion of detailed planning work for the initial batch of calculations in December 1947. Close attention to successive drafts illuminates the process by which John and Klara von Neumann worked with Adele Goldstine to transform the former’s outline plan of computation into a fully developed flow diagram documenting the flow of control and manipulation of data for a program written in the new style.

As soon as Metropolis had completed the initial configuration of ENIAC for the new programming method, and before it was working properly, Klara von Neumann arrived to help. She had taken the leading role in converting the flow diagrams into program code, and together they worked around the clock for several weeks to get both program and machine into a usable state and to shuffle tens of thousands of cards in and out of it during Monte Carlo simulation of each exploding fission bomb. This chapter integrates the narrative of this initial “run,” of and a second batch of calculations carried out in late-1948 with analysis of the structure of the program itself. It finishes with an exploration of further Monte Carlo work run on ENIAC, including reactor simulations, simulation of uranium-hydride bombs, and in 1950 simulation of the “Super” concept for a hydrogen weapon.

This chapter introduces the author's memories of the atomic bomb when she was still a little girl. Her parents, both Chicagoans, fell in love and married while working on the creation of the atomic bomb. They were scientific workers, first at Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory and later at the bomb-building lab in New Mexico. The author's father, Harry Palevsky, worked on instrumentation at Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory, where Enrico Fermi and his colleagues had achieved the first man-made, controlled nuclear chain reaction. Harry later recommended Elaine Sammel for Los Alamos. Within three weeks of their wedding, the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the war ended. The chapter explores how the author's journey began in trying to understand the connection of her parents to the development of the atomic bomb.

In October 1995, Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs had received the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel committee recognized Pugwash's work in bringing together scientists and decision makers, in spite of political differences, to collaborate for the reduction of the nuclear threat. His wife and family perished in the Holocaust. Rotblat's work with James Chadwick led to his membership on the British bomb team and to the Manhattan Project—Chadwick headed Britain's scientific mission to Los Alamos. This chapter presents his views on the good and evil of atomic energy to mankind; his opposition to the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; General Leslie Groves' views on using the bomb to subdue the Russians; and the Oppenheimer trial.

Herbert York was the first director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the first chancellor of the University of California at San Diego. During World War II, the University of California managed the Los Alamos laboratory for the federal government. York worked in Manhattan Project Site Y-12 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where he was a member of the scientific team producing enriched uranium. For young Manhattan Project scientists such as York and the author's parents, the wartime bomb-building effort was an opportunity to work with many of the scientific giants of the era. York's own career is a significant link in this chain of connections. This chapter presents York's well-reasoned arguments in support of the decision to drop the bomb, and the deep context in which the war and the ultimate use of the bomb developed.

Although there are numerous aspects of sediment that might be considered in conjunction with questions related to plutonium transport and storage in rivers, particle size is the critical characteristic. Information on the size distribution of particles in sedimentary deposits connects plutonium, sediment, and river processes. An explanation of the geography of plutonium in the regional river system requires knowledge of particle sizes, the distribution of those particle sizes, and their potential mobility in the regional canyons, rivers, and reservoirs. Some general data concerning the size characteristics of fluvial sediment in the Rio Grande system are available from published sources for a few locations, particularly Los Alamos Canyon. Recent, previously unpublished field and laboratory investigations provide additional detailed information for the changing sedimentary environments associated with the river system. This chapter reviews the characteristics of river sediments in the Northern Rio Grande and presents a regional sediment budget from historical and geographical perspectives. Almost 200 sediment samples from deposits of various ages near the channels of the Rio Grande and tributaries demonstrate the variability of the sediment particle sizes. The analysis had three parts: sample collection, sieving, and electronic particle analysis. In the sample-collection phase, collection sites represented identifiable sedimentary units or channel deposits. Each collection site yielded three samples to indicate local variability. Penetration of the surfaces to depths of 5 to 90 cm with a standard cylindrical soil probe provided masses of about 120 g each for laboratory analysis. Investigators kept only the split of the sample that included those particles with diameters of less than 2 mm (that is, sand size or smaller). Laboratory procedures included sieving and electronic counting. Sieving divided each sample into masses consisting of those particles larger than 63 microns in diameter (the sand fraction) and those smaller than 63 microns (the silt and clay fraction). The weight of each fraction provided a standarized means of comparing the samples for this study and the results reported by other researchers. Analysis of the silt and clay fraction using a Coulter electronic particle analysis system permitted a detailed investigation of the frequency distribution of the particles in this restricted range.

When completing his creation, Victor Frankenstein is in the thrall of technical sweetness, which is the allure of the pieces of an intellectual puzzle fitting neatly together. Scientists working at Los Alamos experienced a similar excitement and blindness to the full implications of their work, and they reacted similarly to Victor, bearing a burden of responsibility for their work into the post-WWII context. Frankenstein thus serves as a useful parable for scientists and engineers, showing the difficulty of looking past immediate technical success to the broader implications of their work.

This introductory chapter examines three clandestine nuclear sites in the U.S.—Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Hanford, Washington. Oak Ridge pioneered the first large-scale plutonium reactor, while Hanford concentrated on producing the fissionable plutonium-239. Simultaneously, in Los Alamos, J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team of scientists worked nonstop designing and assembling bombs. The chapter also highlights the difference between Oak Ridge and the other sites, stating that the place was a community closely resembling a typical American neighborhood, with more opportunity for social interaction between different types of people, in which class and racial biases intervened.

This chapter looks into the business of campaigning for or against nuclear development. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and its committees were at the epicenter of this debate. Here, the array of advice and potential pressure on the question of the Super as it existed in late 1949 offered no clear direction to the president. Powerful congressional opinion challenged the advice of the most powerfully placed scientists, but that had not yet been sufficient to swing Truman behind the Super's development. His views, however, began to take shape in mid-January after receiving a report on the military aspects. Furthermore, the scientific General Advisory Committee (GAC), chaired by the former Los Alamos laboratory director J. Robert Oppenheimer, enjoyed a privileged position that it used to block, as it seemed, further activity beyond the theoretical work already accomplished at Los Alamos.

This chapter explores the construction and initial use of ENIAC during 1944 and 1945. It highlights the challenges of procuring components in the wartime environment, from wire and steel to custom-built power supplies and high precision resistors. ENIAC was built by a forgotten, almost exclusively female, team of “wiremen.” The project was repeatedly delayed, requiring contract renegotiations. The chapter then introduces machine’s initial cohort of six female operators, putting their work into the broader context of labor in applied mathematics. In concludes with a description of some of the challenges, including a flood, faced by the team as it worked to debug ENIAC as it struggled to run a calculation for Los Alamos intended to determine the viability of Edward Teller’s design for a “Super” fusion weapon.

In 1946, after the South Pacific campaign and time in Hiroshima, Melvin Cohn became a graduate student of Pappenheimer at New York University; later he became a postdoctoral fellow of Jacques Monod’s at the Pasteur Institute. In 1954, after five years in Paris, Cohn took a faculty position at Washington University in Saint Louis. The Midwest had an active network of molecular geneticists, including Szilard. Cohn met Edwin Lennox on a visit to Urbana. The background and war experiences of Lennox, including his time in Los Alamos, are recounted. Cohn had moved to Stanford by the time of Salk’s visit in 1959. He heard about Salk’s plan for a molecular biology institute. Cohn and Lennox were tempted by faculty positions at the future institute.

Dr. Hopkins is one of the few American women to have held a doctorate in science and a license to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Her career included academia, industry, and government. Esther was born Esther Arvilla Harrison on September 16, 1926, in Stamford, Connecticut. She was the second of three children born to George Burgess Harrison and Esther Small Harrison. Her father was a chauffeur and sexton at a church, and her mother worked in domestic service. Neither of her parents had an advanced education. Her father had some high school education; her mother attended only primary school. However, both of her parents wanted to make sure their children had a good education. When Esther was three and a half years old, her mother took her along to register her older brother for school. Because Esther was taller than her brother, the teacher suggested that she take the test to start school. She passed the test and was able to start kindergarten at the age of three and a half! She and her brother went to school together all through elementary school. Boys and girls were separated in junior high school; in high school they remained separate but attended the same school. She decided in junior high school that she wanted to be a brain surgeon. This was because she met a woman doctor in Stamford who had an office in one of the buildings that her father cleaned. The woman was a physician and graduate of Boston University Medical School. Esther decided that she wanted to be just like her. Therefore, when Esther entered high school, she chose the college preparatory math and science track. She took as many science courses as possible in order to get into Boston University. She spent a lot of time at the local YWCA, becoming a volunteer youth leader. One speaker at a YWCA luncheon discouraged her from entering science and suggested that she become a hairdresser. Esther was hurt but not discouraged by this. She graduated from Stamford High School in 1943.