Post archives
Filtering for posts categorized as ‘Redactions’
2013
February 2013
25
Redactions
A poem and song, both classified "secret," shed light on the early days of continental nuclear testing.
4
Redactions
"A good deal has been written about Hiroshima, but no-one can describe adequately the smell — and the flies."
January 2013
18
Redactions
The colorful physicist's postwar concerns about the teaching of nuclear physics, and an H-bomb doodle.
2012
December 2012
28
Redactions
A list of scholarship published on nuclear history for the year of 2012.
November 2012
30
Redactions | Visions
The US government doesn't like to draw atomic bombs, but the Russians don't mind drawing American nukes.
15
Redactions
What would make a nuclear bomb attack even worse? How about a nuclear attack that generates its own thunderstorm?
October 2012
18
Redactions
Did Truman know about the radiation effects of the atomic bombs before they were used? Does it matter?
September 2012
28
Redactions
A debate by Leo Szilard and Edward Teller on the moral responsibility of the scientist just before the bombing of Hiroshima.
12
Redactions
What drove Edward Teller to push for a 10,000 megaton hydrogen bomb?
5
Redactions
In 1955, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission experimentally answered the question none of us were asking: if you nuke beer, does it change the taste?
August 2012
29
Redactions
A document from 1947 points towards an interesting Los Alamos policy: banning all spheres, innocuous or not, from technical areas.
22
Redactions
What would have happened if the planes carrying the first atomic bombs had crashed on takeoff? Bad things.
15
Redactions
What the first technical history of the atomic bomb did — and didn't — say about the work of designing the bomb.
8
Redactions
When the scientists at Los Alamos made plans for how to use the atomic bomb, they optimized them for the burning of civilians.
1
Redactions
In November 1945, Beria sent an agent to interview Niels Bohr about the atomic bomb. Both Bohr and Beria, though, held their cards close.
July 2012
25
Redactions
The top WWII scientific administrator's plan for controlling BW warfare was in reality a trial balloon for a plan to control the bomb.
16
Redactions
A rare first-hand account of the first atomic bomb test, from the President of Harvard University.
11
Redactions
Even the real Dr. Strangelove dreaded getting judged by the standards of "loyalty" required for a security clearance.
4
Redactions
Enrico Fermi is today remembered as a great contributor to the American bomb project, but in the beginning, he was an "enemy alien."
June 2012
27
Redactions
Hans Bethe on why it was safe to declassify Project SUNSHINE, a study of the global effects of nuclear fallout.
20
Redactions
Why Hans Bethe wanted to postpone the test of the first hydrogen bomb in 1952.
13
Redactions
Hours after the first H-bomb was detonated, the press knew about it. But why did the government try to keep it secret for years after that?
6
Redactions
A new theory on why Joseph Rotblat left Los Alamos, and Groves' warning to the AEC that he had "doubts" about certain people on the project.
May 2012
30
Redactions
Gas centrifuges posed a tough problem for the US in the 1960s, perched in between fears of proliferation and the desires of industry.
23
Redactions
Why praise of Operation Argus gives me the willies.
16
Redactions
Why Norris Bradbury didn't want to build the bomb... again. And what they ended up eventually doing about it.
9
Redactions
Barely a month after the bombings of Hiroshima, the Army Air Forces made its first request for more atomic bombs — and a list of targets.
2
Redactions
In 1946, scientists at the U. of Penn. attempted to publish a book about atomic bomb design. 60+ years later, here is the censored chapter.
April 2012
25
Redactions
What would have happened if Japan hadn't surrendered and the US had continued to drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities?
18
Redactions
General Groves gets grilled by the press at Oak Ridge on the subject of "the secret," the "Super," and radioactivity at Hiroshima.
