Thesis ID: CBB001562819

Radioactive Fallout, the Politics of Risk, and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis, 1954--1963 (2011)

unapi

Higuchi, Toshihiro (Author)


Georgetown University
Painter, David S.


Publication Date: 2011
Edition Details: Advisor: Painter, David S.
Physical Details: 504 pp.
Language: English

This dissertation examines the problem of radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing as a pioneering case of global environmental politics during the Cold War. It traces the fallout crisis from the radiological disaster of 1954 in the Pacific to the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963. Informed by sociological studies of risk, the dissertation explores why the mid-20 th century world came to interpret the risk of global fallout as unacceptable. It argues that this shift was an outcome of politics, which developed around the paradox that one must blend scientific facts and social values to conceive of risk but also demarcate them to be recognized as authoritative. This tension, arising from the trans-scientific nature of risk, shaped the respective courses of public debates, scientific research, and expert reviews. The dissertation focuses on the United States but emphasizes its interactions with Japan, where the fallout crisis first broke out, and also with the other two fallout polluters of the time, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. The dissertation analyzes the politics of risk as unfolding at global and local levels. The global level revolved around the proposition that the biological effects of low-level radiation from global fallout were infinitesimal to the individual but loomed large on the scale of the whole population. This raised a serious question of whether the risk was acceptable to innocent bystanders in the world. The local level of risk politics centered at the interplay of fallout monitoring and radiation safety standards. The expanding surveillance of fallout revealed its rising levels and uneven distribution. The permissible dose, however, gradually declined in anticipation of the increase of radiation exposure. This dynamic created the alarming impression that a margin of safety was rapidly vanishing. The dissertation also investigates various impacts of the changing outlook of risk on the issue of a nuclear test ban among the three nuclear powers. It argues that the politics of risk stimulated not only a call for a test ban but also a pursuit of technological solutions, and that the partial ban was a joint product of these opposite approaches to the risk.

...More

Description Cited in ProQuest Diss. & Thes. . ProQuest Doc. ID 894264783.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001562819/

Similar Citations

Book Elisabetta Bini; Elisabetta Vezzosi; (2020)
Scienziati e guerra fredda: Tra collaborazione e diritti umani (/isis/citation/CBB957549150/)

Book Lente, Dick van; (2012)
The Nuclear Age in Popular Media: A Transnational History, 1945--1965 (/isis/citation/CBB001253035/)

Book Toshihiro Higuchi; (2020)
Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis (/isis/citation/CBB347886249/)

Book Goodman, Michael S.; (2007)
Spying on the Nuclear Bear: Anglo-American Intelligence and the Soviet Bomb (/isis/citation/CBB001020723/)

Book Baggott, Jim; (2010)
The First War of Physics: The Secret History of the Atom Bomb, 1939--1949 (/isis/citation/CBB001033687/)

Book Toshihiro Higuchi; (2020)
Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis (/isis/citation/CBB212919708/)

Book Rotter, Andrew Jon; (2008)
Hiroshima: The World's Bomb (/isis/citation/CBB000831077/)

Book Hartmut Berghoff; Jan Logemann; Felix Römer; (2017)
The Consumer on the Home Front: Second World War Civilian Consumption in Comparative Perspective (/isis/citation/CBB363431823/)

Article Rothschild, Rachel; (2013)
Environmental Awareness in the Atomic Age: Radioecologists and Nuclear Technology (/isis/citation/CBB001213269/)

Book Mark Wolverton; (2018)
Burning the Sky: Project Argus, The Most Dangerous Scientific Experiment in History (/isis/citation/CBB958011130/)

Thesis Benjamin W. Goossen; (2021)
The Year of the Earth (1957-1958): Cold War Science and the Making of Planetary Consciousness (/isis/citation/CBB233980968/)

Article Yamazaki, Masakatsu; Okuda, Kenzo; (2004)
Pacifying Anti-American Sentiments: Introducing Nuclear Reactors into Japan after the Bikini Incident (/isis/citation/CBB000600642/)

Book Jamie L. Pietruska; (2017)
Looking Forward: Prediction and Uncertainty in Modern America (/isis/citation/CBB992930313/)

Article Shun'ya, Yoshimi; (2012)
Radioactive Rain and the American Umbrella (/isis/citation/CBB001202144/)

Thesis Greene, Benjamin Patrick; (2004)
Crucified on a Cross of Atoms: Eisenhower, Science, and the Nuclear Test Ban Debate, 1945--1963 (/isis/citation/CBB001562077/)

Authors & Contributors
Higuchi, Toshihiro
Lehman, Michael R.
Bini, Elisabetta
Berghoff, Hartmut
Vezzosi, Elisabetta
Logemann, Jan
Concepts
Nuclear weapons; atomic weapons
Nuclear testing
Science and politics
Cold War
International relations
Science and war; science and the military
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
21st century
Modern
19th century
Places
United States
Soviet Union
Great Britain
Japan
Germany
Europe
Institutions
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; Partial Test Ban Treaty; Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963)
International Geophysical Year (IGY)
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
United States Air Force (USAF)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment