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Background in nuclear essay
Background in nuclear essay
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The Hanford Nuclear Site, a highly radioactive place that contains two-thirds of the country's waste by volume. The site is known for making plutonium for the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in World War 2. We will be covering the activities within the Hanford Nuclear Site from the beginning to present and the involvement of the United States government. The nuclear site has many mysteries and unanswered questions but this is what is available.
The activities within the Hanford Nuclear Site is a mystery, but the information released to the public is what is available. The Hanford Nuclear Site was first established in 1943 to produce the plutonium for nuclear weapons such as the 2 atomic bombs dropped during World War 2. The nuclear site homed the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world known as the B Reactor or 105-B. The site also contained 3 nuclear reactors which were 105-B, 105-D, and 105-F and three plutonium processing canyons which were 221-T, 221-B, and 221-U. During 1945 after the war ended, the site has built 554 buildings.
The special nuclear materials...
until 1974. Since it was built about 50 years ago the reactor is older than one that was built in 20016.
The world as we know it was built with events and circumstances that many of us are unaware of. One of the most powerful and deadliest discoveries of the human race in the twentieth century was the development of the atomic bomb. Many are aware that we dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in the end of the Second World War, but what many do not know are the extensive research operations that evaluated the technology to be used in future military operations. In the summer of 1946, American Government and Military forces conducted this research in Operation: Crossroads which was performed in the Bikini Islands. More than 40 years later in 1988 director Robert Stone directed and produced a documentary on these tests which was named Radio Bikini: the most terrifying and unbelievable story of the nuclear age. The film was hailed by critics for the content of the film and its use of newsreels and military film for the movie as one critic said, “Wha...
Imagine working with radioactive materials in a secret camp, and the government not telling you that this material is harmful to your body. In the book Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters by Kate Brown, she takes her readers on a journey to expose what happened in the first two cities that started producing plutonium. Brown is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She has won a handful of prizes, such as the American Historical Association’s George Louis Beer Prize for the Best Book in International European History, and was also a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow. Brown wrote this book by looking through hundreds of archives and interviews with people, the evidence she found brought light to how this important history of the Cold War left a nuclear imprint on the world today.
The case study The Blast in Centralia no. 5: A mine Disaster No One Stopped is a useful lens through which to identify potential pitfalls for national security organizations. The most powerful lessons that ought to be learned by the case study are twofold. First, political interference in the work of governmental organizations can lead to dysfunction and mission failure. Second, the failure to conduct independent oversight over a governmental organization—especially when its performance has been openly questioned—permits that dysfunction to continue unabated.
From its time of discovery in 1941 Plutonium has been both beneficial and detrimental to the human race. The isotope most detrimental is Plutonium-239 which has been used to create nuclear weapons. Plutonium-239 was used in the atomic bomb codenamed “Fat Man” that was dropped on Nagasaki during World War II. Normally a nuclear bomb uses 10 kilograms of Plutonium, but “Fat Man” used even less and still caused a lot of destruction. To put it in perspective again just 1 kilogram of Plutonium-239 causes an explosion equal to that of 20,000 tons of TNT. The way Plutonium-239 works in an atomic bomb is it is controlled by explosives until it goes critical and cause a fission chain reaction. When this happens all the energy is released causing a nuclear
At 5:30 AM July 16th 1945, the nuclear age had started. The world’s first atomic bomb was detonated. On August 6th 1942 at 8:15 AM, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped a perfected atomic bomb created by the Americans, over the city of Hiroshima hoping to end the war. Thousands of people died in the two cities in Japan. They were Hiroshima and Nagasaki “the Manhattan Project”. The research and development project that produced these atomic bombs during this time was known as “the Manhattan Project”.
The Trinity Project was a project conducted to test the effects of a nuclear weapon. The Trinity nuclear device was detonated on a 100-foot tower on the Alamogordo Bombing Range in south-central New Mexico at 0530 hours on 16 July 1945. (Rohrer, 1995-2003). This project was organized by the Manhattan Engineer District (MED). This organization worked diligently planning and coordinating all of the logistics for the groundbreaking event. From 1945-1946 over 1000 personnel either worked or visited the test site. The United States was trying to gain nuclear proliferation throughout the world so this project was necessary for our enemies to see the devastation of a nuclear blast.
In 1941, The United States began an atomic bomb program called the “Manhattan Project.” The main objective of the “Manhattan Project” was to research and build an atomic bomb before Germany could create and use one against the allied forces during World War II. German scientists had started a similar research program four years before the United States began so the scientists of the “Manhattan Project” felt a sense of urgency throughout their work (Wood “Men … Project”).
decided on Los Alamos, New Mexico, as the site for the nuclear weapons laboratory. Groves
In late 1942 and early 1943 Hanford was selected as the site of the Manhattan Engineer District (Whiteley, 1993). The objective of this project was to test and produce mass quantities of plutonium to produce the Atomic bomb. This site appeared to have little value, according to Lieutenant General Leslie R. Groves, one of the members of the Manhattan Engineer District (Whiteley, 1993). Little attentions were given to the possible contamination of the Columbia, nor the majestic green forests of the northwest. The project began in March of 1943 and by August of 1945 sufficient plutonium had been produced for the Nagasaki bomb (Whiteley, 1993). The United States government along with the members if the Manhattan Engineer District knew of the radioactive fumes that were emitted into the air, but did little to prevent it. In addition, low-level and high-level radioactive wastes were spilled into the soil and the Columbia River.
Chernobyl was the greatest nuclear disaster of the 20th century. On April 26th, 1986, one of four nuclear reactors located in the Soviet Union melted down and contaminated a vast area of Eastern Europe. The meltdown, a result of human error, lapsed safety precautions, and lack of a containment vessel, was barely contained by dropping sand and releasing huge amounts of deadly radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere. The resulting contamination killed or injured hundreds of thousands of people and devastated the environment. The affects of this accident are still being felt today and will be felt for generations to come.
They studied nine locations for ten years and then narrowed it down to three. The three sites were Hanford, Washington; Deaf Smith County, Texas; and Yucca Mountain, Nevada. In 1987, Wes Barnes, the director of the Yucca Mountain Project (an offshoot of the Department of Energy) decided the desolate mountain ridge in south-western Nevada is to become the final resting place (Monastersky, 1997). More than one hundred of America's commercial nuclear reactors are planned to deposit the worst of their nuclear waste deep into the mountain. It is to be stored permanently, but the project says it will be guaranteed for ten thousand years. The project proposes that the containers be surrounded by impermeable layers of volcanic rock guaranteeing safety (Wolfe, 1997).
The day that Groves had been appointed the new project leader he took an overnight train to Knoxville, Tennessee. After driving around the area for a few hours Groves finally selected Oak Ridge, Tennessee as the first site and was code-named Site X. Oak Ridge would be the home of three plants code-named Y-12, K-25, and S-50. Their purpose was to produce uranium with a high concentration of U-235 or enriched uranium. These three plants had a different function to preform, but that still resulted in producing enriched uranium. “The Y-12 plant used an electromagnetic separation process, the K-25 plant used gaseous diffusion, and the S-50 plant used thermal diffusion (Loeber 22).” With these plants also came economic opportunity for the state and its residents. Tennessee had been broke and sitting out the Great Depression for the past
The nuclear bomb was the most devastating weapon ever created by man. It was developed between 1942 and 1945 during the second World War. The project to build the worlds first atomic weapon was called The Manhattan Project. The nuclear bomb was based on the idea of splitting an atom to create energy, this is called fission. Three bombs were created, “Trinity”, “Little Boy”, and “Fat Man”. “Trinity” was dropped on a test site in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, proving the theories, engineering and mathematics of the bomb to be correct. Shortly after that, not more than 2 months, the U.S. performed the first actual nuclear attack in the history of war. The bomb “Little Boy” was dropped on the town of Hiroshima, instantly killing thousands. “Fat Man” was dropped shortly after on the town of Nagasaki. After the bombing almost all scientist involved with the creation of the bomb regretted its construction and spoke out against the abolishment of nuclear weapons.
The United States started a nuclear bomb program called the "Manhattan Project" in the year of 1941. The "Manhattan Project’s" was to research and fabricate a nuclear bomb before Germany