The Uranium People

The Uranium People
Author: Leona Marshall Libby
Publisher:
Total Pages: 376
Release: 1979
Genre: Nuclear energy
ISBN:

The youngest and only woman member of the original team of scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project recounts the scientific, personal, and ethical problems encountered by those who built the first nuclear reactor.

The Navajo People and Uranium Mining

The Navajo People and Uranium Mining
Author: Doug Brugge
Publisher: UNM Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2007
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780826337795

Based on statements given to the Navajo Uranium Miner Oral History and Photography Project, this revealing book assesses the effects of uranium mining on the reservation beginning in the 1940s.

Downwind

Downwind
Author: Sarah Alisabeth Fox
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2014-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0803269498

Downwind is an unflinching tale of the atomic West that reveals the intentional disregard for human and animal life through nuclear testing by the federal government and uranium extraction by mining corporations during and after the Cold War. Sarah Alisabeth Fox highlights the personal cost of nuclear testing and uranium extraction in the American West through extensive interviews with “downwinders,” the Native American and non-Native residents of the Great Basin region affected by nuclear environmental contamination and nuclear-testing fallout. These downwinders tell tales of communities ravaged by cancer epidemics, farmers and ranchers economically ruined by massive crop and animal deaths, and Native miners working in dangerous conditions without proper safety equipment so that the government could surreptitiously study the effects of radiation on humans. In chilling detail Downwind brings to light the stories and concerns of these groups whose voices have been silenced and marginalized for decades in the name of “patriotism” and “national security.” With the renewed boom in mining in the American West, Fox’s look at this hidden history, unearthed from years of field interviews, archival research, and epidemiological studies, is a must-read for every American concerned about the fate of our western lands and communities.

Uranium

Uranium
Author: Tom Zoellner
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780670020645

A history of the powerful mineral element explores its role as a virtually limitless energy source, its controversial applications as a healing tool and weapon, and the ways in which its reputation has been used to promote war agendas in the middle east.

The Girls of Atomic City

The Girls of Atomic City
Author: Denise Kiernan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2014-03-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1451617534

This is the story of the young women of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, who unwittingly played a crucial role in one of the most significant moments in U.S. history. The Tennessee town of Oak Ridge was created from scratch in 1942. One of the Manhattan Project's secret cities. All knew something big was happening at Oak Ridge, but few could piece together the true nature of their work until the bomb "Little Boy" was dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, and the secret was out. The reverberations from their work there, work they did not fully understand at the time, are still being felt today.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 64
Release: 1980-01
Genre:
ISBN:

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is the premier public resource on scientific and technological developments that impact global security. Founded by Manhattan Project Scientists, the Bulletin's iconic "Doomsday Clock" stimulates solutions for a safer world.

Full Body Burden

Full Body Burden
Author: Kristen Iversen
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2013-06-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307955656

“An intimate and deeply human memoir that shows why we should all be concerned about nuclear safety, and the dangers of ignoring science in the name of national security.”—Rebecca Skloot, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks A shocking account of the government’s attempt to conceal the effects of the toxic waste released by a secret nuclear weapons plant in Colorado and a community’s vain search for justice—soon to be a feature documentary Kristen Iversen grew up in a small Colorado town close to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated "the most contaminated site in America." Full Body Burden is the story of a childhood and adolescence in the shadow of the Cold War, in a landscape at once startlingly beautiful and--unknown to those who lived there--tainted with invisible yet deadly particles of plutonium. It's also a book about the destructive power of secrets--both family and government. Her father's hidden liquor bottles, the strange cancers in children in the neighborhood, the truth about what was made at Rocky Flats--best not to inquire too deeply into any of it. But as Iversen grew older, she began to ask questions and discovered some disturbing realities. Based on extensive interviews, FBI and EPA documents, and class-action testimony, this taut, beautifully written book is both captivating and unnerving.

Metal of Dishonor, Depleted Uranium

Metal of Dishonor, Depleted Uranium
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 300
Release: 1999
Genre: History
ISBN:

The drastic health and environmental consequences of a new generation of radioactive weapons, Depleted Uranium (DU), currently being used in U.S.-waged wars are discussed in these essays. This new kind of nuclear war is examined alongside the effects on Vietnam and Gulf war veterans and the indigenous people on whose land these weapons are being tested. Among the issues covered are the collaborative military and media cover-up of DU, the government's denial of DU's toxic effects, uranium development on Native American land, nuclear testing on the Marshall Islands, and radioactive residue in the Middle East. Contributors include Ramsey Clark, Pat Broudy, and Helen Caldicott. Official government documents on DU and its effects and charts illustrating where DU is tested and stored in the United States are included for further examination.

Yellow Dirt

Yellow Dirt
Author: Judy Pasternak
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2011-07-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1416594833

Tells the story of uranium mining on the Navajo reservation and its legacy of sickness and government neglect, documenting one of the darker chapters in 20th century American history. --From publisher description.

Wastelanding

Wastelanding
Author: Traci Brynne Voyles
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2015-05-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1452944490

Wastelanding tells the history of the uranium industry on Navajo land in the U.S. Southwest, asking why certain landscapes and the peoples who inhabit them come to be targeted for disproportionate exposure to environmental harm. Uranium mines and mills on the Navajo Nation land have long supplied U.S. nuclear weapons and energy programs. By 1942, mines on the reservation were the main source of uranium for the top-secret Manhattan Project. Today, the Navajo Nation is home to more than a thousand abandoned uranium sites. Radiation-related diseases are endemic, claiming the health and lives of former miners and nonminers alike. Traci Brynne Voyles argues that the presence of uranium mining on Diné (Navajo) land constitutes a clear case of environmental racism. Looking at discursive constructions of landscapes, she explores how environmental racism develops over time. For Voyles, the “wasteland,” where toxic materials are excavated, exploited, and dumped, is both a racial and a spatial signifier that renders an environment and the bodies that inhabit it pollutable. Because environmental inequality is inherent in the way industrialism operates, the wasteland is the “other” through which modern industrialism is established. In examining the history of wastelanding in Navajo country, Voyles provides “an environmental justice history” of uranium mining, revealing how just as “civilization” has been defined on and through “savagery,” environmental privilege is produced by portraying other landscapes as marginal, worthless, and pollutable.