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HISTORY 105-G02

Destroyer of Worlds: Nuclear Powers Rise and Fall from Infamy

In war between social giants, everything is a weapon. Fear becomes the new ammunition

in a battle not for lines in the sand, but peoples hearts and minds. These battles dont leave scars

on what we can see, but rather on how we see. One of the most drastic examples of this is the

global perception of nuclear power as compared to both before and after the Cold War. Due to

the rapid militarization and close development of nuclear weaponry alongside nuclear power, the

terms quickly became synonymous and made into another tool to be used against the enemy. On

both sides of the iron curtain, the fear and ignorance of the mechanics and the practicalities of

nuclear power changed how people perceived the technology warping it from bringer of the next

age to ender of the world.

This sort of change is drastic, but only so because of an environment of ignorance the

global public harbored toward nuclear anything. It was only in 1898 that the existence of high-

energy particles, what we now know as gamma rays, were discovered and further still till 1911

that the particles were proven as harmful to humans1. Despite this, the advent of uraniums

seemingly magical properties to self-heat and radiums ability to glow were being drummed up

into mass producible products. Because of the fundamental gaps in understanding, scientist,

engineers, and medical practitioners alike pushed nuclear use in markets which didnt have the

knowledge or procedure to prevent dangerous and sometimes lethal doses of radiation. These

actions formed the roots of global mistrust in radiation, but not necessarily why the distrust ran

deep. This is part of a cycle of understanding that humans have used for thousands of years.

Barring a massive global event, most physical advancements have gone through a cycle of being

1
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, History of Radiation Timeline, JBS Science
Department. 2009.
http://science.jburroughs.org/mbahe/BioEthics/ppt_pdf/110RadiationHistoryTimeline.pdf
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HISTORY 105-G02

widely used then recused, feared, and re-understood; lead as an example underwent a similar

transformation after its use as piping and every day manufacturing was found out to be severely

health hazardous nowadays the biggest issue the public faces from lead is measured in parts-

per-billion.

A global crisis did happen though, and it disrupted more than just the sovereignty of most

European nations, it all but destroyed our normal flow of exploration and understanding the

physical world. The Manhattan Project, which swathed the study of nuclear materials in secrets

and subterfuge to allow America to finally end World War Two, showed how utterly devastating

the application of nuclear materials could be. From an American perspective, this was a huge

source of pride. The weapon was an American tool to be used for American interests and other

military technology, such as microwaves, had immense public use, so why not the power of the

atom as well? Ideas and idealization surrounding miniature nuclear reactors that powered your

car, your refrigerator, and even your radio was pitched as inevitabilities of science and progress.

The big issue with this idealization of the potential that nuclear technology housed laid

with the lack of bilateral involvement with nuclear weapons. The Union of Soviet Socialist

Republics under Stalin didnt see the devastating tool wieldable by America for American

interests as a good thing for the USSRs sovereignty. Through spying and espionage, the soviets

took research on the atom bomb right from under the United States militarys nose to try and

level the playing field. When then president Truman broke the news that his country had a

powerful weapon to use against the Japanese to end the war, Stalin was publicly impassive and

privately urging his scientists to speed things up2. When both nations had the power of the

Georgii Konstantinovich Zhukov, The Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov, New York:

2

Delacorte Press, (1971), 674-675.

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HISTORY 105-G02

atom to use against one another the Cold War began and the attitude toward nuclear power was

soured, but only just. A New York Times article in 1949 praised nuclear power for its continuing

potential citing only that peacetime applications of atomic energy will have to wait until the

international situation is clear3 which was a big sign that despite the hurdles, the American

public thought American ingenuity would inevitably prevail just as it always had. Like radiation

though, the corrupting influence of the Cold War would decay this nuclear idol down to a toxic

stump.

The Soviet story was much more tragic. After the greatest theft of military secrets in

modern times, the Soviets went to work in putting the American ideals on nuclear power to

practice. Stalin sought to use nuclear power as a tool to enable communism in his country and

beyond. Massive reactors were sold as the union of the interests of mankind and nature. The

slogan for the later Bolshevik rule ended up being Communism equals Soviet power plus

electrification of the entire country 4. And to this end, Soviet engineers and scientists created

some of the first theoretical designs for sea vessels, airplanes, and cars both military and

domestic5 all powered by nuclear. Most of these designs wouldnt be put into place as engineers

couldnt agree on safe radiation dosage limits as still little was known on the long-term effects of

radiation, but the fact that the designs existed at all proved that they were nothing if not ready to

make that leap. The sole reason that the Soviets couldnt achieve this future is tied directly into

the American response to the rapid development and deployment of a Russian nuclear arsenal.

Waldemar Kaempffert, Atomic Power for Peacetime use Will be High in Cost, but it
3

has Certain Advantages, New York Times, (Jan 30, 1949).

Paul R. Josephson, Red Atom: Russias Nuclear Power Program from Stalin to Today.
4

(New York: W. H. Freeman, 2000), 6.

5
Josephson, Red Atom, 127-134.
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HISTORY 105-G02

Feeling that the communists of Russia posed a systematic threat to the very existence of

the American way of life and that the nothing could be kept secret from Soviet spies, the United

States armed itself with the only thing that could battle such a foe; more and more potent nuclear

bombs. At this point in America, the nuclear power was a fledgling science with marginal

success being demonstrated at several universities. The next step, though, required using several

key elements in purification and pressurization that the military was already using to generate

second-phase fissile material; the extremely potent plutonium-239. When it was found that the

technology powering the nuclear reactors could easily be repurposed into creating plutonium, the

military expanded its arsenal of produces. The American government put into plan the building

of hundreds of reactors to service as sourcing fuel for building the new plutonium bombs. When

news of this technique broke, both sides rushed to build more and more of the same equipment as

to spend the other side into the ground. The public problem with this is that nuclear power, a

scientific endeavor on both sides of the conflict up to this point, was then integrally tied to

military action. This was further made worse by drastic cuts on development of nuclear power

and refinement in favor of arsenal spending. Famously, nuclear physicist and scientist former

president Jimmy Carter put a ban on research and development into critical nuclear recycling

technology6. The political maneuver was to prevent more secretes from falling into Russian

hands by simply banning any such development in the first place. This succeeded resulting in

stagnating industry-wide research on both sides which set the stage for a string of high-profile

accidents.

6
Jimmy Carter, Statement on Nuclear Power Policy, Jimmy Carter Library, Records of
the Speech Writers Office, April 7, 1977.
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The first occurred in America. Due to a mechanical error in a critical cooling element,

core two of the Three Mile Island power plant had a partial meltdown resulting in a release of

both waterborne and airborne radiation close to a residential region7. This sparked mass hysteria

due to the public still lacking understanding on radioactivity combined with the still thick

military shroud of secrecy preventing any such explanations from being put forth. This shroud

also caused problems in the USSR when the dangerous Chernobyl RBMK went supercritical.

The design had several flaws which US engineers had since corrected, but no such corrections

could be made in the USSR due to the information embargo. Human error inevitably caused the

reactor to go critical during a test which blew open the reactor housing and the building it was

housed in8. The death and destruction caused by this accident was much more severe with flames

and fire spewing from the site for nine days. Thousands were displaced or were poisoned by the

resulting fallout, and even to this day containment proves to be an issue. This event killed soviet

drive for a nuclear future and when this disaster mingled with the USs public panic already in

motion from Three Mile so too did it kill the American dream of the nuclear tomorrow. The

public on both sides agreed; the use and containment of nuclear power is too dangerous and

damaging to continue development.

The actual application of the public death of nuclear power didnt, though, kill the idea of

nuclear power. The industrial and scientific communities still saw the immense practical uses as

being viable in the public and private spheres. Technology that has such capacity for change

rarely can just be buried and forgotten. Rather, it matured and was re-discovered in recent years

Jack Spencer and Nicolas Loris, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl: What Went Wrong
7

and Why Today's Reactors Are Safe, The Heritage Foundation, (Mar 27, 2009).
8
Jack Spencer, Nicolas Loris, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
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on both sides of the iron curtain. Even before the fall of the USSR in 1991, peace between the

US and Russia had been improving to the point that nuclear techniques were being shared. They

both recognized the issue with the rapid nuclear militarization and sought to relinquish their

absolute control and power of nuclear weaponry. As a result, both the United States and Russia

signed a series of treaties that has slowly reduced the military industrial complex surrounding

nuclear research. Despite heavy resistance internally and externally in both countries, especially

when the USSR was still standing9, the reduction has allowed limited research and improvements

to spread to both powers making existing and future nuclear power stations safer and more

reliable. Such developments gradually lead to an improvement in the publics opinion on the

matter, but political charge has prevented massive change. Despite these remaining hurdles,

Russia in 2006 started redevelopment of the nuclear sector to start to meet national energy

needs10. The United States has seen more support for such actions as well with traditionally anti-

nuclear power groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, along with the Sierra Club

and EDF publicly supporting continued operation of nuclear facilities over more coal and natural

gas generation11. Both are results of a very different policy that the two countries are using.

Rather than ignore the looming threat of another nuclear crisis, they are actively developing

nuclear technologies that cant be used for weaponization12. The end goal to this is to uphold an

Christoph Bluth, The Nuclear Challenge: US-Russian Strategic Relations after the
9

Cold War, Ashgate, 2000, 111-116

10
Anatoly S. Diyakov, "The Nuclear "Renaissance & Preventing the Spread of
Enrichment & Reprocessing Technologies: A Russian View," Daedalus 139, no. 1 (2010),
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40544049, 117.
11
Amy Harder, "Green Groups Ease Opposition to Nuclear Power," Wall Street Journal
(New York, N.Y.), June 17, 2016.
12
Anatoly S. Diyakov, "The Nuclear "Renaissance, 120
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aged series of treaties, like the Non-Proliferation Act, against an onslaught of non-nation entities

and rouge states whod use the technology to attack them and their allies something the treaties

were never designed to prevent13. This is the final galvanizing point for us as a global

community in re-understanding the mechanics and practicalities of nuclear power.

These fleeting moments of cooperation still havent proven to solve most of the pressing

issues facing nuclear power, but the act of working together has started to undo the image of

nuclear power as the destroyer of worlds. Slowly, and if kept in good standing for a time, the

social scars of the rapid militarization of nuclear power can start to heal. Despite the strangeness

of the cycle, what were seeing is the natural end of the cycle of understanding for nuclear

power. The only real difference is that due to mistrust between the United States and Russia, and

the suppression of knowledge as a tool of war throughout and extending past the official end of

the Cold War, the cycle continues to linger in fear-and-disuse stage of understanding. The global

branding of nuclear power as a weapon as well as the still present ignorance on radiation and

basic nuclear physics was built over decades and will take just as long to dismantle. Further, the

series of mistakes made because of the lack of development between the two countries continues

to give credence to the perceived evils of nuclear power in the global conscious. Only now that

there remains no threat to fight, can the development of nuclear power become everything the

dreams of yesteryear said it would be.

13
Miller, Steven E., Scott D. Sagan, "Nuclear Power without Nuclear Proliferation?"
Daedalus 138, no. 4 (2009): 7-18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40543997, 7-9
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Bibliography

Carter, Jimmy. "Statement on Nuclear Power Policy." Speech, Statement on Nuclear Power
Policy, The White House, Washington DC, April 7, 1977.

Diyakov, Anatoly S. "The nuclear renaissance & preventing the spread of enrichment &
reprocessing technologies: a Russian view." Daedalus 139, no. 1 (2010): 117-25.
doi:10.1162/daed.2010.139.1.117.

Harder, Amy. "Green Groups Ease Opposition to Nuclear Power." Wall Street Journal, June 17,
2016.

Josephson, Paul R. Red atom: Russias nuclear power program from Stalin to today. New York:
W.H. Freeman, 2000.

Kaempffert, Waldemar. "Atomic Power for Peacetime use Will be High in Cost, but it has
Certain Advantages." New York Times, January 30, 1949.

Miller, Steven E., and Scott D. Sagan. "Nuclear power without nuclear proliferation?" Daedalus
138, no. 4 (2009): 7-18. doi:10.1162/daed.2009.138.4.7.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. "History of Radiation Timeline." JBS Science

Department. 2009.
science.jburroughs.org/mbahe/BioEthics/ppt_pdf/110RadiationHistoryTimeline.pdf.

Spencer, Jack, and Nicolas Loris. "Three Mile Island and Chernobyl: What Went Wrong and
Why Today's Reactors Are Safe." The Heritage Foundation. March 27, 2009.
www.heritage.org/environment/report/three-mile-island-and-chernobyl-what-went-
wrong-and-why-todays-reactors-are-safe.

Zhukov, Georgii Konstantinovich. The memoirs of Marshal Zhukov. New York: Delacorte Press,
1973.