How do humans make sense of the bomb? — a thread of every picture in this photo essay by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/zxKL50GnJTh
This glass sphere, 3.2 inches across, is the exact size of the plutonium ball in the Nagasaki bomb.
Photo by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
A model of the uranium atom at the American Museum of Science and Energy, Los Alamos, New Mexico on June 11, 1982.
Photo by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
A monument to the splitting of the atom in Chelyabinsk City, Russia on May 18, 1992.
Photo by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
A replica of the Hiroshima atomic bomb at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC on June 26, 1981.
Photo by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
Yoshito Matsushige, the only photographer known to have taken pictures inside Hiroshima the day the A-bomb exploded.
Photo by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
Photos by Matsushige, the only person known to have taken photos in Hiroshima on the day of the attack. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
Denver artist Barbara Donachy’s installation, Amber Waves of Grain, depicts in one glance the 25,000 warheads in the US nuclear arsenal at the height of the Cold War.
Photo by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
Edward Teller, a theoretical physicist known as the “father of the hydrogen bomb.”
Photo by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
Howard Morland’s Model of an H-Bomb Warhead.
Photo by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
Nuclear weapons designer Ted Taylor in Damascus, Maryland on October 13, 1986.
Photo by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
Peaceful Atoms: The CANDU Reactor in Darlington, Ontario, Canada on January 21, 1987.
Photo by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
Spent fuel in dry storage in Gentilly, Quebec on July 14, 1999.
Photo by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
These million-gallon, double-walled carbon steel tanks are designed to contain high-level liquid radioactive waste.
Photo by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
The speaker displays a chart showing the toxicity of various radioactive elements released to the environment during a chemical explosion 35 years earlier known as the Kyshtym disaster.
Photo by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
A particle of plutonium in the lung tissue of an ape at Lawrence Radiation Laboratory on September 20, 1982.
Photo by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
Alice Stewart, an epidemiologist who became a world authority on the health effects of low-level ionizing radiation.
Photo by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
Alvin Weinberg, an atomic pioneer who helped design the military production reactors at Hanford to convert uranium to plutonium for the Manhattan Project.
Photo by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
Two nuclear jet aircraft engines at an EBR-1 facility near Arco, Idaho National Laboratory on November 9, 1984.
Photo by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
These women live in a village on the River Techa, 35 kilometers downstream from five plutonium-production reactors and a plutonium reprocessing plant.
Photo by Robert Del Tredici. ow.ly/REns50GnLtn
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The 2023 #DoomsdayClock announcement has begun. Follow this thread for highlights from the event or watch it live here: bit.ly/3J0njqv
"The time on the Doomsday Clock represents the judgement of leading science and security experts about the threat to human existence, with a focus on man-made threats." - Bulletin President and CEO @RachelBronson1
"As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned this past August, the world has entered 'a time of nuclear danger not seen since the height of the Cold War.'" - Bulletin President and CEO @RachelBronson1
THREAD: In a nuclear war, hundreds or thousands of detonations would occur within minutes of each other. Smoke from mass fires after the detonations would inject massive amounts of soot into the stratosphere.
As this simulation from @AlanRobock illustrates, a nuclear war between the US & Russia, could waft more than 150 Tg of soot into the stratosphere, leading to a nuclear winter that would disrupt virtually all forms of life on Earth over several decades.
Injecting this much soot into the stratosphere could make global temperatures drop by 8 degrees Celsius—3 degrees lower than Ice Age values.
THREAD: Here's how this 1998 thriller novel helped jumpstart the creation of the US Strategic National Stockpile ⬇️
The Cobra Event is a novel by Richard Preston that tells the story of a madman who engineered a virus called “brain-pox” and unleashed it on New York City.
It was widely criticized when it published.
However, at least one high-profile reader was a fan: Bill Clinton.
After reading the book, Clinton asked a tech entrepreneur if terrorists could engineer a worse version of the smallpox virus.
The entrepreneur told him they could and recommended Preston’s book.
THREAD: Happy International #WomenInScience day! Take a look at some influential women who have had a positive impact on the field.👇
Janne Nolan made us all part of something. Part of her girl gang. Part of her consensus. Part of her plan to break open the nuclear priesthood and speak truth to power. #WomenInScienceow.ly/ferN50HSZLn
Kateryna Pavlova battled a pandemic, wildfires, corruption, and sexism in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone #WomenInScienceow.ly/qRLF50HSZVJ