Atomic Environments
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A01=Neil Shafer Oatsvall
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atomic age
atomic bomb
atomic energy
Atomic Energy Commission
atomic environments
Author_Neil Shafer Oatsvall
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJK
Category=JPP
Category=NHK
Category=PDX
Category=RNQ
Cold War
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
Dwight D. Eisenhower
earth science
ecology
Eisenhower
environmental history
environmental impact
environmental science
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eq_history
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
eq_society-politics
geology
Harry S. Truman
Language_English
meteorology
nuclear fallout
nuclear history
nuclear policy
nuclear research
nuclear strategy
nuclear warfare
nuclear waste
Nuclear weapons
PA=Available
Policymaking
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
softlaunch
trinity nuclear test
Truman
White House
Product details
- ISBN 9780817321468
- Weight: 363g
- Dimensions: 153 x 231mm
- Publication Date: 21 Feb 2023
- Publisher: The University of Alabama Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Demonstrates how policymakers influenced environmental science during the early nuclear age
In Atomic Environments: Nuclear Technologies, the Natural World, and Policymaking, 1945–1960, Neil S. Oatsvall examines how top officials in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations used environmental science to develop nuclear strategy at the beginning of the Cold War. While many people were involved in research and analysis during the period in question, it was at highest levels of executive decision-making where environmental science and nuclear science most clearly combined to shape the nation’s policies.
Oatsvall clearly demonstrates how the natural world and the scientific disciplines that study it became integral parts of nuclear science rather than adversarial fields of knowledge. But while nuclear technologies heavily depended on environmental science to develop, those same technologies frequently caused great harm to the natural world. Moreover, while some individuals expressed real anxieties about the damage wrought by nuclear technologies, policymakers as a class consistently made choices that privileged nuclear boosterism and secrecy, prioritizing institutional values over the lives and living systems that they were ostensibly charged to protect.
By scrutinizing institutional policymaking practices and agendas at the birth of the nuclear age, a constant set of values becomes clear. Oatsvall reveals an emerging technocratic class that routinely valued knowledge about the environment to help create and maintain a nuclear arsenal, despite its existential threat to life on earth and the negative effects many nuclear technologies had on ecosystems and the American people alike. Although policymakers took their charge to protect and advance the welfare of the United States and its people seriously, Atomic Environments demonstrates how they often failed to do so because their allegiance to the US nuclear hierarchy blinded them to the real risks and dangers of the nuclear age.
In Atomic Environments: Nuclear Technologies, the Natural World, and Policymaking, 1945–1960, Neil S. Oatsvall examines how top officials in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations used environmental science to develop nuclear strategy at the beginning of the Cold War. While many people were involved in research and analysis during the period in question, it was at highest levels of executive decision-making where environmental science and nuclear science most clearly combined to shape the nation’s policies.
Oatsvall clearly demonstrates how the natural world and the scientific disciplines that study it became integral parts of nuclear science rather than adversarial fields of knowledge. But while nuclear technologies heavily depended on environmental science to develop, those same technologies frequently caused great harm to the natural world. Moreover, while some individuals expressed real anxieties about the damage wrought by nuclear technologies, policymakers as a class consistently made choices that privileged nuclear boosterism and secrecy, prioritizing institutional values over the lives and living systems that they were ostensibly charged to protect.
By scrutinizing institutional policymaking practices and agendas at the birth of the nuclear age, a constant set of values becomes clear. Oatsvall reveals an emerging technocratic class that routinely valued knowledge about the environment to help create and maintain a nuclear arsenal, despite its existential threat to life on earth and the negative effects many nuclear technologies had on ecosystems and the American people alike. Although policymakers took their charge to protect and advance the welfare of the United States and its people seriously, Atomic Environments demonstrates how they often failed to do so because their allegiance to the US nuclear hierarchy blinded them to the real risks and dangers of the nuclear age.
