287 notes to introduction 1 Mrs. J. W. Nichols to Col. F. T. Matthias, Aug. 17, 1945, box 80, MED-C. 2 Bohr cited in Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), 294. In 1945, upon visiting Los Alamos , New Mexico, Bohr thought back to his prediction and declared, “You have done just that” (500). Peter Galison lumps wartime Hanford under the laboratory rubric while discussing the extent to which the industrial site departed from an academic model for physics; see Galison, “Three Laboratories,” in Technology and the Rest of Culture, ed. Arien Mack (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001), 194– 200, and compare to Bruce Hevly, “Hanford’s Postwar Voices,” epilogue to S. L. Sanger, Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of World War II Hanford (Portland, OR: Portland State University Continuing Education Press, 1995), 227–242. 3 RichardG.HewlettandOscarE.Anderson,Jr.,AHistoryof theUnited States Atomic Energy Commission, vol. 1, The New World, 1939/1946 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962); Richard G. Hewlett and Francis Duncan, A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, vol. 2, Atomic Shield, 1947/1952 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1969); and Richard G. Hewlett and Jack M. Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 1953–1961: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). 4 The quite personal focus on second-generation studies of Hanford is epitomized by Teri Hein, Atomic Farmgirl: Growing Up Right in the Wrong Place, rev. ed. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003). Hein writes, “I don’t care that expensive scientific studies claim there is no definitive proof that Hanford caused cancers. I don’t care about judges and lawyers who ping-pong evidence in and out of court— Notes 288 n ote s to i n todu c ti on valid one day and not admissible the next—as if it were a game of table tennis. I just care about my father, and he is only one of thousands of people probably, and quite tragically, affected by [Hanford] activities during the Cold War” (ix-x; emphasis added). 5 See A Guide to the Hanford Thyroid Disease Study: Final Report (Atlanta: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Seattle: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, 2002). This guide, along with the complete report and other useful sources, may be found at http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/hanford/htdsweb/index.htm. (accessed July 29, 2010). On downwinder lawsuits, see TCH, May 20, Nov. 24, 2005, Dec. 16, 2008. There is greater confidence that Hanford operations caused ill health for workers on the site. 6 Thomas Powers, “Downwinders: Some Casualties of the Nuclear Age,” Atlantic Monthly 273 (March 1994): 124. For examples of titles that tend to lose sight of the national-security context behind Hanford ’s emissions, see Michael D’Antonio, Atomic Harvest: Hanford and the Lethal Toll of America’s Nuclear Arsenal (New York: Crown, 1993); and Peter Bacon Hales, Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998). 7 Michele Stenehjem Gerber, On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site, 3rd ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007). 8 An exception to this generalization is health physics and environmental research, and some reactor physics research undertaken in support of the production mission. 9 T. E. Marceau, “Historic Overview,” in Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943–1990 (Columbus, OH: Battelle Press, 2003), 1.5. “Weapons-grade plutonium” refers to, in this case, plutonium as the output of Hanford’s reactors and chemical separation facilities that was practically all comprised of the isotope plutonium-239. In particular, plutonium tinged with a few percent of the isotope plutonium-240 (that is, plutonium with one more neutron in its nucleus) is not suitable for use in nuclear weapons, because it is subject to spontaneous fission and can lead to an early and inefficient detonation. Because the two isotopes are chemically indistinguishable, the requisite purity has to be controlled for in the operation of the production reactors. 10 Students of the American West have begun examining how defense [52.91.84.219] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 00:08 GMT) n ote s to i n todu c ti on An d c hAPte r on e 289 industries and military bases were integral to the region’s economic development during the mid-twentieth century. They have paid less attention, though, to the century’s...