Did the nuclear age begin at Alamogordo, in Hiroshima, or with Fermi's nuclear chain reaction? Einstein said that the unleashed power of the atom changed everything except our modes of thinking; "thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."Â TUC Radio ARCHIVE, last offered in 2011.
Fermi's experiment provided the blueprint for the plutonium bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. Early on, hidden from the public, the military initiated mass production of nuclear weapons. The mile-long building of the Piketon Uranium Enrichment plant is proof of that effort. The Hanford Reactor is the million-fold scaled up extension of the Fermi experiment. And both now stand in huge tracts of poisoned land, sacrifice zones.
Boal speaks of scientists who dream of building thousands of nuclear power plants and propose to use nuclear bombs to straighten out Route 66 and create instant harbors.
The as yet unpublished story of Enrico Fermi, researched and told by the UC Berkeley historian of technology Iain Boal, is an intriguing weave of hard facts and art history. The sculptor Henry Moore was asked to turn the weedy contaminated lot where the experiment took place into a site of "pilgrimage". As Boal follows the negotiations with the artist he discloses the early lies and misrepresentations about the use of nuclear energy.
Iain Boal presents a chapter from his upcoming book: The Long Theft. He is co-editor of Resisting the Virtual Life, published by City Lights Books and the author of the history of the bicycle: The Green Machine (2011).
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