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Thesis ID: CBB001561527

The Intractable Atom: The Challenge of Radiation and Radioactive Waste in American Life, 1942 to Present (2007)

Washington University in St. Louis
Bernstein, Iver
Publication date: 2007
Language: English

Publication Date: 2007
Edition Details: Advisor: Bernstein, Iver
Physical Details: 417 pp.

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Environmental sciences Public health Pollution, radioactive Nuclear and radioactive waste Science and government Cold War 20th century, late

Mid-century tensions driving cold-war nuclear production receded in its aftermath to reveal a multibillion dollar legacy of environmental contamination and illness among former nuclear workers. Taking uranium processing at the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in St. Louis, Missouri, as a point of entry, this dissertation seeks the origins of these contemporary problems in conceptions of environment and health prevailing at mid-century. Even after the turn of the twenty-first century, St. Louis confronted a landscape of scattered radioactively contaminated sites and their human corollary of numerous claims by Mallinckrodt workers for federal benefits under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000. Inevitably, these outcomes derived in part from bureaucratic goals and pressures, which not only shaped production quotas, but also the limits of possibility for safety improvements and waste disposal. Yet, production also unfolded within a context of ideas about health, environment, and moral responsibility which shaped its meaning for participants. The proprietor of the Chemical Works, Edward Mallinckrodt Jr., generally perceived not one environment, but many dissociated ones, landscapes to be preserved alongside those to be used. In his own personal activism, he viewed the loss of nature as the fundamental environmental crisis of mid- century, not seeping contaminants. The fact that both federal and company safety officials at mid-century experienced great difficulty in defining and even perceiving "damage" caused by uranium, whether ecological or biological, only further complicated the problem of anticipating environmental harm and injury. For these reasons, as nationalistic fervor made production a moral imperative, federal and company planners remained willing to accept high production quotas and a degree of local contamination - the use of production sites as buffers against broader pollution. Workers, for their part, shared similar ideas. They perceived a decided separation between their occupational environment and other places, which forestalled worry about pollution. Their focus on immediate conditions also deterred concern about long-term consequences of radiation exposure, as did emotionally charged patriotism and camaraderie at the Chemical Works. The contemporary legacy of radioactive contamination, then, must be understood in light of mid-century conceptions of environment, health, and civic obligation.

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Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 68/06 (2007). Pub. no. AAT 3268095.

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