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Oldest Weapons-grade Plutonium Found In Dump
Urchin writes "Researchers have just identified the first batch of weapons-grade plutonium ever made. The batch was produced as part of the Manhattan Project, but predates Trinity — the first nuclear weapon test — by seven months. It was unearthed in a waste pit at Hanford, Washington, inside a beaten up old safe."
When someone sees an image of the Virgin Mary burned into their face from the radiation.
Under intense time pressure to work with previously theoretical isotopes that just might save tens of thousands of American lives?
At the cost of hundreds of thousands of civilian Japanese lives.
Do you have any idea of the kind of balls it took to be a part of this team? Under intense time pressure to work with previously theoretical isotopes that just might save tens of thousands of American lives?
And you judge them? You, with the heat on, comfortable, probably overly fed.
What. A. Putz. You. Are.
Nuclear isotopes were treated with quite a degree of reckleness for a good many years. Also I don't think they were any more heroic then anyone else who assisted with the war effort, although unlike many they were establishing for themselves quite a lucrative career. The men working in coal mines to supply energy to head up the war effort we far more heroic then a bunch of scientists getting paid handsome salarys to do what they like to do anyways, ground breaking science.
Did you notice that was the last time that Japan attacked anyone? Peace is the result of completely removing your enemy's capacity or desire to wage war. Sad, but true.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
peace for the enemy maybe, How long has US spent in the time since then NOT at war?
>peace for the enemy maybe, How long has US spent in the time since then NOT at war?
With all due respect, there has been nothing to compare with WWII. All states of War are not equal.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Tell that to the guys in the cemetary, their widows, their children.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I'm not sure why parent was modded Flamebait but he's right. The soldiers being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are just as dead as those killed in WWII or any other war or"police action." Believe me, all states of war are equal when you're on the wrong end of an enemy weapon.
No, minor skirmishes don't count. Even with the most pessimistic of calculations about civilian deaths in Iraq there have been about as many traffic fatalities in the US since the conflict began as there have been deaths there. I'm not saying conflict isn't horrible and bloody and messy, I'm just saying that most people alive today have no real concept of what war is.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
done on this, I think back in the 60's. They concluded that the actual likely casualties were much lower on both sides. Most of Japan's Army was in China or isolated in various places. The Allies had TOTAL air and sea superiority, so they could outflank any defense along the coast and prevent any movement or concentration of enemy forces, or even resupply. At that point there was basically no oil anywhere in Japan.
This may not have been as apparent to the Allies in 1945 however. We can endlessly argue one way or the other about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The truth is they attacked us and showed no mercy and we fought back against them with everything we had. If you have a guy on the ropes and he isn't quite down yet you step up and hit him again, as hard as you can.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank is a far better book and better researched.
The book you mention is interesting, but the author in that book appears to have an agenda that the use of the atomic bomb was unnecessary; I would submit that the Americans insisting on unconditional surrender is the key factor in both Germany and Japan's peaceful re-emergence as a major economic power rather than a military power.
Mostly I reject the thesis that the use of an atomic bomb in WW2 was ex facie immoral. Remember, this was the war that produced genocide against Jews, Gypsies, Ukrainians, Chinese and other peoples on the basis of ethnicity. The firebombing of Tokyo produced more causalities than the atomic bomb, so I think the historical context supports the idea that the Americans did not break any legal or moral taboos of the time (such as the ban on chemical warfare).
Remember, the atomic bomb was developed for use against the Nazi's; they had the good (or bad depending on your viewpoint) luck of surrendering to the Allies first, rendering the use of the A-bomb unnecessary.
I think the discussion at this point is just that. No one really understands why the war ended how or when it did; in my opinion, the use of these weapons was warranted and in retrospect left Japan infinitely better off 20 years after the war was over.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
All states of War are not equal.
Tell that to the guys in the cemetary, their widows, their children.
Believe me, all states of war are equal when you're on the wrong end of an enemy weapon.
Well, any state of war is bad (I think that's your point), but I offer you 416,000 examples of why "all states of war are equal" is a mistake to think. Compare that to the current war's 5,000ish figure and you can better visualize the point of the GGP.. BTW, figures are fatal U.S. military casualties only
Fishbowl's opinion remains true in my eyes - WWII does not compare to anything since and there is indeed a 'spectrum' in regard to the 'state of war'. War is war, but it is not the same every time -- Some wars are more heinous than others.
Here's a quick synopsis of casualties in major U.S wars.
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
And yet the first time a team of engineers tried to build one, it worked. They didn't even have a supercomputer to do simulations on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
They're also highly ineffective. Very little fallout can be spread through conventional means. And of the fallout that does spread, you'll kill very few people. The explosion intended to disperse the materials is guaranteed to kill more people than the radioactive fallout.
As a terror weapon, it works. The people who do not understand the difference vastly outnumber the ones who do.
BOMB? Radiation!?! SERIOUS PANIC
Will it actually rack up a large body count? No. But the resulting panic (OMG terrorist Radiation!!) would be far, far worse than anything we've yet seen.
You said "Currently the stored (highly radioactive) waste is leaking into the groundwater, but has not yet reached the river."
But I showed you that it has already. Operational or not - and you didn't mention that at all in your post; it's still there, and given that the site hasn't been cleaned up, it is still a problem, neh? Did it just stop leaking? Leakage is still occurring and will likely get worse as the containers buried there, and the liquid waste facilities, continue to deteriorate.
It's also highly likely that there's a lot of that waste, even from the time period you refer to, sequestered in sediments and other places along the river.
I guess I'm wondering what point you're trying to make in your reply. "That's not the waste I was talking about" sounds like "that's not the droids you are looking for."
Not yet? Are you implying that Hanford isn't a major problem, "yet"? It's been a superfund site since the late 80s, and is not-so-debatedly our worse radioactive dump site. Why it hasn't been seriously dealt with, considering it's location and the cities downstream, and the sheer amount of waste stored there, escapes me.
I'm not being pedantic. Hanford is a horrible problem and we should have put major funding into cleaning it up back in the 80s, when the problem was recognized. I'm old enough to remember the news and science journal reports back when it started becoming a concern - decades late wrt to our knowledge about the dangers, as far as I'm concerned.
That's what got my ire up about this story - finding an old Manhattan Proj era safe with near-critical mass material in it just "buried" at the site - likely lost thru oversight and secrecy, and we're apparently just getting that deep into digging this stuff up? Obviously our cleanup/superfund programs are underfunded or not being done competently. (Not news, but still aggravating)
So make yourself clear, if you can.
Yeah, I'm angry. Not at you, specifically, but at the ignoramuses who have and continue to bury problems like this because it's "not their problem" - or, "it's not a /(our) problem...yet" or "we don't want to pay money to fix it, let our kids do it." Bullshit. Metric tons of bullshit. ... superfund sites seem to exist at the whim of the current administration. Which is a travesty. We as a country need to own up to our past problems, and just fix them. Which will be costly, but not as costly as ceasing to exist as as a nation, culture, or society, or even a responsible political entity. If there is such a thing.
Not sorry if I seem to be ranting. Someone has to say it. I just wish I knew how to say it more clearly.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
BTW, figures are fatal U.S. military casualties only
I think that's exactly the problem with this line of discussion.
Wikipedia can say whatever it wants. The truth is this:
We gave them an ultimatum saying were would bomb the shit out of them unless they agreed to us. They said no.
We bombed hiroshima.
Then, we airdropped leaflets and told them that we would do it again unless they surrendered. They said no.
We bombed nagasaki.
Even _then_ the majority of the military elite wanted to keep fighting. It wasn't until 5 days later that the emporer decide to capitulate.
Fuck this shit about 'oh, the poor poor japanese' The alternative was for us to invade japan with troops (estimates at the time said it would take 1,000,000 troops to take it). Yeah, it sucks that we bombed them, yeah, it was terrible for the people that had to experience it, but we were in a war where the loser was going to be vanquished. If I were the president at the time and I had a choice between bombing some cities and conceivable losing a significant percentage of 1,000,000 of my own citizens, I would make the same choice.
-Bucky