Measurements of the radioactivity of the cloud from the accident at Windscale Works (Sellafield, England) in October 1957: data submitted to the International Geophysical Year (IGY; July 1957-December 1958).

A fire in a nuclear reactor at Windscale Works (Sellafield, England) in October 1957 led to an uncontrolled aerial release of radionuclides. At the time of the accident air was sampled at various locations in Europe to monitor atmospheric pollution, and the opportunity was taken to measure the sampling filters for activity concentrations of iodine-131, caesium-137 and polonium-210 at the Harwell research establishment (United Kingdom); when it was not possible to perform measurements at Harwell, original measurement data were supplied. This programme of activity measurements was performed in the context of work by the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Radiation of the International Geophysical Year (IGY; July 1957-December 1958). The International Geophysical Year was an international programme of research into a comprehensive range of geophysical phenomena. The results of this measurement programme were originally reported in Harwell Memorandum AERE-M857 (1961) and this Harwell report is reproduced in this paper because of its historical interest and because it is no longer readily accessible to researchers.

Fast Breeder Reactors in Sweden: Vision and Reality.

The fast breeder is a type of nuclear reactor that aroused much attention in the 1950s and '60s. Its ability to produce more nuclear fuel than it consumes offered promises of cheap and reliable energy. Sweden had advanced plans for a nuclear breeder program, but canceled them in the middle of the 1970s with the rise of nuclear skepticism. The article investigates the nuclear breeder as a technological vision. The nuclear breeder reactor is an example of a technological future that did not meet its industrial expectations. But that does not change the fact that the breeder was an influential technology. Decisions about the contemporary reactors were taken with the idea that in a foreseeable future they would be replaced with the efficient breeder. The article argues that general themes in the history of the breeder reactor can deepen our understanding of the mechanisms behind technological change.

[The Chinese nuclear test and 'atoms for peace' as a measure for preventing nuclear armament of Japan: the nuclear non-proliferation policy of the United States and the introduction of light water reactors into Japan, 1964-1968].

Japan and the United States signed in 1968 a new atomic energy agreement through which US light-water nuclear reactors, including those of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant of Tokyo Electric Power Company, were to be introduced into Japan. This paper studies the history of negotiations for the 1968 agreement using documents declassified in the 1990s in the US and Japan. After the success of the Chinese nuclear test in October 1964, the United States became seriously concerned about nuclear armament of other countries in Asia including Japan. Expecting that Japan would not have its own nuclear weapons, the US offered to help the country to demonstrate its superiority in some fields of science including peaceful nuclear energy to counter the psychological effect of the Chinese nuclear armament. Driven by his own political agenda, the newly appointed Prime Minister Eisaku Sato responded to the US expectation favorably. When he met in January 1965 with President Johnson, Sato made it clear that Japan would not pursue nuclear weapons. Although the US continued its support after this visit, it nevertheless gave priority to the control of nuclear technology in Japan through the bilateral peaceful nuclear agreement. This paper argues that the 1968 agreement implicitly meant a strategic measure to prevent Japan from going nuclear and also a tactic to persuade Japan to join the Nuclear Non -Proliferation Treaty.

Supplementing the neurosurgical virtuoso: evolution of automation from mythology to operating room adjunct.

A central concept of scientific advancement in the medical and surgical fields is the incorporation of successful emerging ideas and technologies throughout the scope of human endeavors. The field of automation and robotics is a pivotal representation of this concept. Arising in the mythology of Homer, the concept of automation and robotics grew exponentially over the millennia to provide the substrate for a paradigm shift in the current and future practice of neurosurgery. We trace the growth of this field from the seminal concepts of Homer and Aristotle to early incorporation into neurosurgical practice. Resulting changes provide drastic and welcome advances in areas of visualization, haptics, acoustics, dexterity, tremor reduction, motion scaling, and surgical precision.

Increased occupational radiation doses: nuclear fuel cycle.

The increased occupational doses resulting from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident that occurred in Ukraine in April 1986, the reactor accident of Fukushima that took place in Japan in March 2011, and the early operations of the Mayak Production Association in Russia in the 1940s and 1950s are presented and discussed. For comparison purposes, the occupational doses due to the other two major reactor accidents (Windscale in the United Kingdom in 1957 and Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979) and to the main plutonium-producing facility in the United States (Hanford Works) are also covered but in less detail. Both for the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident and the routine operations at Mayak, the considerable efforts made to reconstruct individual doses from external irradiation to a large number of workers revealed that the recorded doses had been overestimated by a factor of about two.Introduction of Increased Occupational Exposures: Nuclear Industry Workers. (Video 1:32, http://links.lww.com/HP/A21).

Manhattan transfer: lethal radiation, bone marrow transplantation, and the birth of stem cell biology, ca. 1942-1961.

This study investigates how, in the late 1940s and 1950s, fears of nuclear accidents and nuclear warfare shaped postwar radiobiology. The new and intense forms of radiation generated by nuclear reactor technology, and which would be released in the event of a nuclear war, created concerns about a public-health hazard unprecedented in form and scale. Fears of inadvertent exposure to acute and potentially lethal radiation launched a search for anti-radiation therapies, out of which emerged the new technique of bone marrow transplantation (BMT). This study analyzes the use of BMT first as a research tool to explore the biological effects of ionizing radiation, and then as an adjunct to radiotherapy for the treatment of cancer. In highlighting how BMT became the province of different research and clinical constituencies, this study develops an understanding of the forces and contingencies that shaped its development. Exploring the emergence of BMT and the uses to which it was put, it reveals that BMT remained a technique in the making -- unstable and far from standardized, even as it became both a widely used research tool and rapidly made its way into the clinic. More broadly, it casts new light on one route through which the Manhattan Project influenced postwar radiobiology; it also affords new insights into one means by which radiobiology came to serve the interests of the Cold War state. In its focus on BMT this paper provides a new perspective on the evolving relationship between radiobiology and biomedicine in the postwar period.

Imaginary Savior: the image of the nuclear bomb in Korea, 1945-1960.

Two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 brought the unexpected liberation of Korea from the 35-year Japanese occupation. Koreans therefore had a very favorable and positive image of the nuclear bomb and nuclear energy from the beginning. The image of the nuclear bomb as "savior" was strengthened during the Korean War when the United States openly mentioned the possible use of the nuclear bomb against North Korean and Chinese military. After the end of the Korean War in July 1953 South Koreans strongly supported the development of the nuclear bomb in order to deter another North Korean invasion. When the US government provided South Korea with a research nuclear reactor in the late 1950s, most South Koreans hailed it as the first step to developing their own nuclear bomb. This paper will analyze how and why the savior image of the nuclear bomb originated and spread in Korea during the 1950s.

Fallout from Bikini: the explosion of Japanese medicine.

On 23 September 1954, Mr Aikichi Kuboyama died, the first Japanese victim of the Bikini incident--an American hydrogen bomb experiment on Bikini Atoll that took place on 1 March under the codename Operation Castle. This tragedy had several important consequences, influencing post-war negotiations between Japan and the United States over nuclear weapons, stimulating Japanese research into the biological effects of radiation and inspiring a commitment to the treatment of radiation sickness.

District surveys following the Windscale incident, October 1957. 1958.

During 10-11 October 1957 a fire in the core of a nuclear reactor at Windscale Works, Sellafield (in the current county of Cumbria, England) led to a significant release of radioactive material to atmosphere. The accident at Windscale No. 1 Pile required a large-scale environmental monitoring programme to be conducted and the results of this survey led to a restriction on the distribution of milk from an area adjacent to Windscale Works for a period of several weeks. This monitoring programme was described in detail by H J Dunster and his colleagues from the Industrial Group of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (which operated Windscale Works in 1957) in a paper presented to the Second United Nations International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, held in Geneva during 1-13 September 1958. The paper, from the proceedings of this conference, is reproduced here.

Environmental surveillance at Los Alamos: an independent reassessment of historical data.

Since 1971, a series of annual Environmental Surveillance ... reports have served as the official public record of Los Alamos National Laboratory's (LANL) environmental performance. In northern New Mexico, where past LANL emissions are a public health concern, there is public skepticism over the accuracy of information contained in these reports. To test the hypothesis that LANL Environmental Surveillance ... reports systematically understate past emissions, we compared the data on releases in LANL's own internal Occurrence Reports Collection (ORC) to the data reported to the public in the Environmental Surveillance ... reports. A data set of 89 environmental occurrences recorded in the ORC in the time period from 1971 through 1980 was assembled. We did not find a systematic pattern of quantitative underreporting of source terms. However, 17 of the 89 (19%) environmental occurrences recorded in the ORC were not reported to the public in the Environmental Surveillance ... reports. The observed discrepancies are discussed in terms of their relevance to public health concerns. Methodological caveats dictate restraint in applying these findings beyond the scope of the relative comparison performed here. Possible social origins for the rejected hypothesis are discussed. Areas for further consideration by the Centers for Disease Control's dose reconstruction study of LANL are identified.

Mice and the reactor: the "genetics experiment" in 1950s Britain.

The postwar investments by several governments into the development of atomic energy for military and peaceful uses fuelled the fears not only of the exposure to acute doses of radiation as could be expected from nuclear accidents or atomic warfare but also of the long-term effects of low-dose exposure to radiation. Following similar studies pursued under the aegis of the Manhattan Project in the United States, the "genetics experiment" discussed by scientists and government officials in Britain soon after the war, consisted in large-scale low-dose irradiation experiments of laboratory animals to assess the effects of such exposures on humans. The essay deals with the history of that project and its impact on postwar genetics. It argues that radiobiological concerns driven by atomic politics lay at the heart of much genetics research after the war and that the atomic links are crucial to understand how genetics became an overriding concern in the late 20th century.

[The SILENE reactor: a tool adapted for applied study of moderate and large doses]. / Réacteur silene : outil adapté aux études appliquées a l'effet des moyennes et fortes doses.

Designed in 1974 to study the phenomenology and consequences of a critical accident, the SILENE experimental reactor, an intense source of mixed neutron and gamma radiation, is also suited to radiobiological studies.

The reactor facility that was built at Columbia University but never used.

A large and heavy experimental plasma vessel is located on the second floor of the Engineering Building at Columbia University. It sits atop the concrete shell of the old nuclear reactor facility. The reactor facility was built many years ago but no nuclear fuel was ever loaded into it. It was designed to contain a 250 kW reactor core. However, due to certain circumstances, it was never fueled or operated. This paper describes the events leading to the decision to not put the reactor into operation.