Half-Lives & Half-Truths: Confronting the Radioactive Legacies of the Cold War

by Johnston, Rose Barbara

• ISBN13: 9781930618824
• ISBN10: 1930618824
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of New Mexico Pr

Summary

The long Cold War of the twentieth century has ended, but only now are the poisonous legacies of that "first nuclear age" coming to light. Activists and anthropologists, the authors of this volume reveal the devastating, complex, and long-term environmental health problems afflicting the people who worked in uranium mining and processing, lived in regions dedicated to the construction of nuclear weapons or participated, often unknowingly, in radiation experiments. The nations and individuals, many of them members of indigenous or ethnic minority communities, are now demanding information about how the United States and the Soviet Union poisoned them and meaningful remedies for the damage done to them and the generations to come. As nuclear proliferation accelerates, this struggle takes on ever greater urgency.

Table of Contents

Half-Lives, Half-Truths, and Other Radioactive Legacies of the Cold War	p. 1
"More like us than mice": Radiation Experiments with Indigenous Peoples	p. 25
Earle Reynolds: Scientist, Citizen, and Cold War Dissident	p. 55
There Are No Peripheries to Humanity: Northern Alaska Nuclear Dumping and the Inupiat's Search for Redress	p. 77
Uranium Mining and Milling: Navajo Experiences in the American Southwest	p. 97
Uranium Mine Workers, Atomic Downwinders, and the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA): The Nuclear Legacy	p. 117
Hanford, Tribal Risks, and Public Health in an Era of Forced Federalism	p. 145
From Cold War Complex to Nature Preserve: Diagnosing the Breakdown of a Multi-Stakeholder Decision Process and Its Consequences for Rocky Flats	p. 165
Health Assessment Downwind: Past Abuses Shadow Future Indicators	p. 193
From Analysis to Action: Efforts to Address the Nuclear Legacy in the Marshall Islands	p. 213
Russia's Radiation Victims of Cold War Weapons Production Surviving in a Culture of Secrecy and Denial	p. 249
Unraveling the Secrets of the Past: Contested Versions of Nuclear Testing in the Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan	p. 277
Nuclear Legacies: Arrogance, Secrecy, Ignorance, Lies, Silence, Suffering, Action	p. 299
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