After the Japanese rejected the U.S. demand for unconditional surrender in the spring on 1945, Harry Truman, the U.S. President authorized the use of atomic weapons in Japan. The Manhattan project had produced two nuclear weapons by that time, one based on uranium known as Little Boy and the other based on plutonium named Fat Man.
The Manhattan Project to create nuclear bomb during the early 1940s was successful. Two bombs were created, one based on the fission of uranium-235 called “Little Boy” and a second based on the fission of plutonium-239 called “Fat Man”. Upon completion of the bombs in the summer of 1945, the U.S.
On July 26, the United States, Britain and China produced the Potsdam Declaration which contained the terms that they demanded for the surrender of Japan. The Declaration required that Japan surrender immediately and without conditions. The surrender terms included:
After the successful test of a plutonium implosion device in July of 1945 at the Trinity site near Alamogordo, New Mexico, the Manhattan Project proceeded with the design and construction of a plutonium bomb to be used as a weapon. The code name for the device was “Fat Man”, homage to one of the characters in the movie “The Maltese Falcon.” The name came to be used for the whole class of nuclear bombs based on the same design.
While the Manhattan Project was developing plutonium production facilities and producing plutonium at Hanford, Washington in the early 1940s, the Project was also working on the design of a bomb that would utilize the plutonium. It turned out that gun-type design being worked on for a uranium bomb would not work for a plutonium bomb. Plutonium-239 was being produced in reactors but the reactors were also creating plutonium-240 as well.
In the summer of 1945, the United States Manhattan Project to create an atomic bomb delivered one hundred and ten pounds of uranium enriched to 89% U-235 too the Los Alamos testing grounds in New Mexico.
While the U.S. Manhattan project refined and enriched uranium for an atomic bomb in the early 1940, a parallel project was carried out to create plutonium. Plutonium is very rare in nature so it was necessary to create nuclear reactor in which plutonium could be generated by injecting neutrons into a mass of uranium. Most naturally occurring uranium is the U-238 isotope. When U-238 is bombarded with neutrons, some of it is converted to U-239 by absorption of a neutron.
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December of 1942, the Manhattan project ramped up with millions of dollar and thousands of staff. Four major deposits of uranium ore had already been identified and efforts were being made to obtain ore from the three that were in Allied hands. In November of 1942 it had been determined that there should be sufficient ore available to produce an atomic weapon.
The Manhattan Project was started in 1939 by the US Government to explore the military potential of uranium. The knowledge that the Germans were working on nuclear weapons research at the same time spurred the creation of the program. It started with a modest budget and a small group of researchers. In the meantime, Brittan was also pursuing nuclear research and verified in 1939 that fifty pounds of uranium could be made into a bomb that could be carried in a conventional bomber.
Radioactive elements were first isolated and studied around 1900. In 1933, Leo Szilard, a Hungarian physicist, was the first to suggest that the chain reaction of radioactive elements could be used to construct a bomb. He left Hungary for Berlin in 1919 and studied at the Institute of Technology under people like Albert Einstein. He got his doctorate in physics in 1923 from Humboldt University of Berlin. He worked as a physicist and inventor in Berlin for the next decade.
The Tuareg are a nomadic people who inhabit the Sahara desert in Northern Africa. Most Tuareg live in Niger or Mali but they do move their herds across national borders in that area. They resisted the French invasion of their territory but lost and signed a treaty in 1917. Fighting continued until 1922 when the Niger became a French Colony. The northern part of Niger is traditional Tuareg territory while the southern part consists of Hausa tribal lands.
From the days of the Hudson Bay Company, the indigenous peoples in what became the country of Canada have been move off ancestral lands, exploited for their resources, their cultures deliberately destroyed and their health, well-being and environments undermined.
When explorers and settlers arrived in North America, their diseases and wars reduced the Native American population by an estimated ninety percent over a few generations. This left vast areas of the country unpopulated and ripe for exploitation. Numerous treaties were struck with Indian Tribes giving them rights to their ancestral lands. Unfortunately, the U.S. government repeatedly broke those treaties.
Previous posts have dealt with uranium mining in Australia. In this post, I want to delve more deeply into the impact on and reaction of the Australian Aboriginals to the mining of uranium on Aboriginal land. All indigenous people in the world have a strong identification with their traditional lands. However, the relationship of the Australian Aboriginals to their ancestral lands goes far beyond the usual strong feelings of indigenous peoples.
A lot of ink has been spilled over the decision of the German government to shut down all the nuclear reactors in Germany by 2020. Concern has been expressed over the impact of the shut down on German’s power needs, the German economy, the reduction of carbon dioxide emission for German power generation, etc.
I have discussed spent nuclear fuel in a number of previous posts. I just encountered a study that deals with the current spent fuel rods inventory in the United States and the dangers that it poses. I thought that it would be worthwhile to recap the findings in the study.
A major problem with government oversight of the commercial sector is something called regulatory capture. The idea is that a government agency that is supposed to be an independent watchdog for the public interest becomes a lapdog for the industry that it is supposed to regulate. This has probably been a problem for as long as there have been governments and businesses.
I have already mentioned in several previous posts problems with TEPCO in particular and the Japanese nuclear industry in general I have covered the Fukushima disaster in March of 2011 extensively. Today I am going to delve into past problems involving Japanese companies that own and operate nuclear reactors.
When I was just a kid, someone said that I was a cynic. I got a dictionary and looked up the word. Turns out that it comes from an ancient Greek school of philosophy. These Cynics felt that human institutions were perfectible but they had not been perfected yet and they offered constructive criticism.
I have covered Fukushima extensively in these posts but I have just come across something that I had not seen before. There have been recent articles lately about the involvement of the Yakuza in the Japanese nuclear industry and the presence of members of the Yakuza at the Fukushima nuclear plant that suffered the catastrophe in March of 2011.
