Nuclear History

Physics informs our understanding of how the world works - but more than that, key breakthroughs in physics have transformed everyday life. We journey back to 10 separate days in history to understand how particular breakthroughs were achieved, meet the individuals responsible and see how each breakthrough has influenced our lives.

North Korea's bizarre feuds with the rest of the world have been turned into comedy gold time and time again, perhaps because their endless threats seem so far removed from reality. But just how serious is the threat of nuclear war against North Korea? North Korea’s Nuclear Program: The History of the Hermit Kingdom’s Development of Nuclear Weapons looks at how North Korea has developed and tested destructive nuclear weapons over the past several decades.

In this Very Short Introduction, John Heilbron draws on sources never before presented in English to cover the life and work of one of the most creative physicists of the 20th century. In addition to his role as a scientist, Heilbron considers Bohr as a statesman and Danish cultural icon, who built scientific institutions and pushed for the extension of international cooperation in science to all nation states. As a humanist he was concerned with the cultivation of all sides of the individual, and with the complementary contributions of all peoples to the sum of human culture.

In the Cold War conflict that pitted nuclear superpowers against one another, Europe was the principal battleground. Washington and Moscow had troops on the ground and missiles in the fields of their respective allies, the NATO nations and the states of the Warsaw Pact. Euromissiles—intermediate-range nuclear weapons to be used exclusively in the regional theater of war—highlighted how the peoples of Europe were dangerously placed between hammer and anvil.

Uranprojekt: The History and Legacy of Nazi Germany’s Nuclear Weapons Program During World War II examines the Nazis’ race to reach the ultimate goal from 1939-45, how they went about their objectives, and why they failed. You will learn about Nazi Germany’s nuclear weapons program like never before.

Uranium is best known for the destructive power of the atom bombs, which ushered in the nuclear era at the end of World War II, but given the effectiveness of nuclear power, nuclear power plants were constructed around the developed world during the second half of the 20th century. While nuclear power plants were previously not an option and thus opened the door to new, more efficient, and more affordable forms of energy for domestic consumption, the use of nuclear energy understandably unnerved people living during the Cold War and amid ongoing nuclear detonations.

On July 21, 2003, in a speech urging Middle Eastern governments to band together and “[fight] terrorism in all its forms”, President George W. Bush had declared that terrorism was fueling the governments of Syria and Iran. About two years later, he reiterated the bold statement in his State of the Union address, lambasting Iran as the world's “primary state sponsor of terror”. These hostile sentiments toward Iran only continued to escalate.

As award-winning biographer and science writer Graham Farmelo describes in Churchill's Bomb, the British set out to investigate the possibility of building nuclear weapons before their American colleagues. But when scientists in Britain first discovered a way to build an atomic bomb, Prime Minister Winston Churchill did not make the most of his country's lead and was slow to realize the bomb's strategic implications.

Prepare for the unthinkable with "Nuclear Crash Survival" by Dr. James J. Archer. This ultimate guide equips you with essential survival skills and knowledge to not only survive but thrive amidst nuclear disasters and other 21st-century catastrophes. From understanding the mechanics of nuclear explosions to implementing comprehensive preparation plans, this indispensable manual provides vital information for navigating the aftermath of an atomic bomb or nuclear attack.

The End of Victory recounts the costs of failure in nuclear war through the work of the most secret deliberative body of the National Security Council, the Net Evaluation Subcommittee (NESC). From 1953 onward, US leaders wanted to know as precisely as possible what would happen if they failed in a nuclear war—how many Americans would die and how much of the country would remain. The NESC told Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy what would be the result of the worst failure of American strategy.

Covering the development of the atomic bomb during the Second World War, the origins and early course of the Cold War and the advent of the hydrogen bomb in the early 1950s, Churchill and the Bomb in War and Cold War explores a still neglected aspect of Winston Churchill's career: his relationship with and thinking on nuclear weapons.

Tens of millions died during World War II as the warring powers raced to create the best fighter planes, tanks, and guns, and eventually that race extended to bombs which carried enough power to destroy civilization itself. While the war raged in Europe and the Pacific, a dream team of Nobel Laureates was working on the Manhattan Project, a program kept so secret that Vice President Harry Truman didn’t know about it until he took the presidency after FDR’s death in April 1945.

Who were the German scientists who worked on atomic bombs during World War II for Hitler's regime? How did they justify themselves afterward? Examining the global influence of the German uranium project and postwar reactions to the scientists involved, Mark Walker explores the narratives surrounding 'Hitler's bomb'.

“A tour de force of investigative history.” —Steve Coll The Dead Hand is the suspense-filled story of the people who sought to brake the speeding locomotive of the arms race, then rushed to secure the nuclear and biological weapons left behind by the collapse of the Soviet Union—a...

Nuclear power once promised to be the solution to the world's energy crisis, but that all changed in the late twentieth century after multiple high-profile accidents and meltdowns. Power plant workers, finding themselves the subject of public opposition, became leery of reporters. But one plant in Zion, Illinois, allowed unrestricted access to one journalist: the Chicago Tribune's Casey Bukro. Bukro spent two years inside the Zion nuclear plant, interviewing employees, witnessing high-risk maintenance procedures, and watching the radiation exposure counter on his own dosimeter tick up and up.

On a tranquil summer night in July 2012, a trio of elderly peace activists infiltrated the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Nicknamed the "Fort Knox of Uranium", Y-12 was reputedly one of the most secure nuclear weapons facilities in the world, a bastion of warhead parts that harbored hundreds of metric tons of highly enriched uranium - enough to power thousands of nuclear bombs. The activists - a house painter, a Vietnam war veteran, and an 82-year-old Catholic nun - penetrated the complex's exterior with alarming ease.

Tim Koeth peered into the crumpled brown paper bag; inside was a surprisingly heavy black metal cube. He recognized the mysterious object instantly—he had one just like it sitting on his desk at home. It was uranium metal, taken from the nuclear reactor that Nazi scientists had tried—and failed—to build at the end of World War II. This unexpected gift, wrapped in a piece of paper inscribed with a few cryptic but crucial lines, would launch Koeth, a nuclear physicist and professor, and his colleague Miriam Hiebert, a cultural heritage scientist, on an odyssey to trace the tale of these cubes.

In Leveraging Latency, Tristan A. Volpe argues that having greater capacity to build weaponry doesn't translate to greater coercive advantage. Volpe finds that there is a trade-off between threatening proliferation and promising nuclear restraint. States need just enough bomb-making capacity to threaten proliferation, but not so much that it becomes too difficult for them to offer nonproliferation assurances. The boundaries of this sweet spot align with the capacity to produce the fissile material at the heart of an atomic weapon.

Jon Hunner’s concise account of Oppenheimer’s life and the emergence of an Atomic West distills a vast literature for students and general listeners. In this brisk, engaging biography, the author recounts how Oppenheimer helped locate the atomic weapons research lab at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and helped establish leading physics departments at the University of California–Berkeley and Caltech.

After his father died, James L. Nolan, Jr., took possession of a box of private family materials. To his surprise, the small secret archive contained a treasure trove of information about his grandfather's role as a doctor in the Manhattan Project. Dr. Nolan, it turned out, had been a significant figure.