Nuclear Testing

The thought that every one of us could be killed in one swift action used to be something read about in science fiction or watched in the cinemas. It was something in a world of make-believe inhabited by power-crazed dictators and mindless robots. Now, the threat of total destruction by nuclear explosion is very real indeed.

In 1939, advances in nuclear physics had shown that it was possible to make an atomic bomb. French and German scientists had discovered that a nuclear chain reaction was possible and that atoms of uranium could be made to split and so release enormous amounts of energy. This meant that a bomb of massive destructive power could be built. Albert Enstein, the most famous nuclear physicist of his time, wrote a letter to the American president, Franklin Roosevelt, pointing out the dangers of a German atomic bomb. The result of this was the Manhattan Project, carried out in the United States, which employed nearly 40,000 people at 37 installations and it’s aim was to make an atomic bomb before Hitler did. In December 1942, the Americans produced the world’s first controlled nuclear chain reaction. Hitler did not make the first atomic bomb, the Americans did. The first nuclear test was carried o

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Each test costs up to $70 million and there are still 21,000 nuclear weapons in the world today, 95% of which are in the hands of the USA and Russia. org

• Center for Defence Information: www. The crisis came in April 1961 when Russia deployed nuclear missiles in Cuba, a communist island less than 100 miles from Florida.

Bibliography

Books:

• Nuclear Radiation: Risks and Benefits by Edward Pochin, published by Oxford University Press 1986. Stontium-90, however, attaches to the bones and thus stays in the body giving radiation doses over a longer period of time. It includes approximately 450 nuclear weapons of at least five different types, made up of around 300 strategic weapons that could be fired from land, air and from submarines and around 150 tactical weapons made up of artillery shells and atomic demolition munitions. We tend to think that the world is now safe from nuclear destruction because it is not in the news so much and so we do not think about it. By 1949, the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union had become strained.

A major nuclear exchange could cause rapid cooling over much of the Earth as dark clouds of smoke and dust generated by the explosions and fires spread far beyond the area of warfare. org

Also:

• Microsoft Encarta 97 Encyclopaedia

. The explosion of an atomic bomb differs to that of a conventional (chemical) bomb not only in the amount of energy released, but also in the fact that an atomic explosion causes radioactivity which can be harmful to living organisms. It was therefore decided to use the atomic bomb against Japan even though Japan had secretly asked to make peace. They told the Russians to dismantle the missile sites in Cuba and remove them. In August 1953, the Russians exploded their first hydrogen bomb and in August 1954, the Americans tested a new, improved version of the hydrogen bomb.

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