Madam, I'm Adam

 

Madam, I’m Adam

 

Most people are familiar with palindrones.

 

Broadly defined, they are defined as a sentence that reads the same front to back, or vice versa. The sentence listed above is the most familiar, but there are others.

 https://wordsmarts.com/palindromes/

However, the purpose of this article is not to discuss the quirks of the English language.

Its purpose is to discuss the atomic bomb, which means the title actually should be “Madam, I’m Atom.

I’m in the process of finishing a book titles “The Devil Reached Toward the Sky’, and it discusses the development of the atomic bomb that was developed by the Manhattan Project. The book itself is 50 pages, but a large portion of the book consists of quotes by the various parties involved – including the survivors of the bombs that were dropped on Japan. As a result, you can safely skim through a lot of it, and still get the basics of the story.

There are plenty of pictures, as well as a few maps.

In addition, there are 5 pages of acknowledgements, 30 pages of notes, and 30 pages devoted to indexing, which would confirm the fact that this is a well reserved boo.

The Manhattan Project involved thousands of people scattered through the country, but the primary production facilities were in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Los Alamos in New Mexico, and Hanford Washington.

Oak Ridge produced enriched uranium, Hanford produced plutonium, and Los Alamos produced the bomb itself.

 The project cost $2 billion in 1945 dollars, or about $30 billion in todays.

If you don’t want to spend a lot of time reading the book, watching the movie “Oppenheimer” provides a shorter summary, but you would have to sit through if for 3 hours to see the whole thing.

Towards the end of the book is a discussion of the morality of the project, as well as it’s necessitated. In the then, though, decision to drop the bomb actually saved both American and Japanese lives.

There are two factors that define the legacy of the bomb.

1)    The project created some terrifying environmental problems. Even today, the production facility in Harford is considered most polluted site in the country.

2)   The project eventually led to the arms race. The link below lists the various types of weapons. 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

Today, there are 13,805 in various counties around the world, but 90% of them are owned by Russia and the United States.

Treaties between Russian and the United States have reduced the number of weapons from their peak in the 1960’s, when Mutual Assured Destruction was thought to be a deterrent.

The weapons that were dropped on Japan had an explosive capacity of 20,000 tons of TNT, roughly equivalent to 15 megatons, or 15 kilotons.

The Nike missiles held in the United States range for 2 kilotons to 40 kilotons.

 Eventually, the participants in the Manhattan Project came to the conclusion that the awesome power of the atom could be used for peaceful purposes.

The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by the U.S. Congress to foster and control the  peacetime development of atomic science and technology. President Harry S. Truman signed the McMahon/Atomic Energy Act on August 1, 1946, transferring the control of atomic energy from military to civilian hands, effective on January 1, 1947.This shift gave the members of the AEC complete control of the plants, laboratories, equipment, and personnel assembled during the war to produce the atomic bomb.

An increasing number of critics during the 1960s charged that the AEC's regulations were insufficiently rigorous in several important areas, including radiation protection standards, nuclear reactor safety, plant siting, and environmental protection.

By 1974, the AEC's regulatory programs had come under such strong attack that the U.S. Congress decided to abolish the AEC. The AEC was abolished by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, which assigned its functions to two new agencies: the Energy Research and Development Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. On August 4, 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed into law the Department of Energy Organization Act, which created the Department of Energy. The new agency assumed the responsibilities of the Federal Energy Administration (FEA), the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), the Federal Power Commission (FPC), and various other federal agencies.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Atomic_Energy_Commission

(An interesting sidenote is that when Rick Perry was appointed to lead the Department of Energy in 2017, he was unaware of the fact that the department was involved in nuclear weapons.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Perry

Eventually, countries around world started to build nuclear power plants.

Ironically, Russia was the first country to use nuclear energy – in 1951.

Nuclear power plants operate in 31 countries and generate about a tenth of the world's electricity. Most are in Europe, North America and East Asia. The United States is the largest producer of nuclear power, while France has the largest share of electricity generated by nuclear power, at about 65%.

The largest nuclear power plant in America is located in a state that could also be a leader in solar energy – Arizona. California produces the most energy from solar sources. Arizona is third, right behind North Carolina.

Some countries operated nuclear reactors in the past but have no operating nuclear power plants at present. Among them, Italy closed all of its nuclear stations by 1990 and nuclear power has since been discontinued because of the 1987 referendums. Lithuania closed its nuclear station at 2009 because it was of the dangerous RBMK reactor type. Kazakhstan phased out nuclear power in 1999 but is planning to reintroduce it possibly by 2035 under referendum. Germany operated nuclear plants since 1960 until the completion of its phaseout policy in 2023. Austria (Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant) and the Philippines (Bataan Nuclear Power Plant) never started to use their first nuclear plants that were completely built.

Sweden and Belgium originally had phase-out policies however they have now moved away from their original plans. The Philippines relaunched their nuclear program on February 28, 2022 and may try to operate the 1984 mothballed Bataan Plant.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country

 Although nuclear energy is considered to be very same, there have been a few instances where things went wrong. The most prominent examples are Three Mile Island in 1979, and Chernobyl in 1986.

“Midnight in Chernobyl “goes into more details on the causes of the catastrophe.

Conditions have improved since 1986 so that, as of today, you can buy vodka produced in the area near the site.

 It’s called Atomic vodka, and it has had GLOWING reviews.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49251471

 It’s up to you if you want to read the book, but if you like history as much as I do, I think that you will enjoy it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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