Making a Real Killing
Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10044643 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Randel D Hanson (Arizona State University, corresponding author), Len Ackland (Arizona State University) |
| Year | 2001 |
| Volume | 88 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 1165 |
| Publication date | 2001-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2700542 |
| OpenAlex | W2009854953 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
In 1939, Enrico Fermi observed that nuclear weapons could not be produced unless the entire United States was turned into a bomb factory. As the Manhattan Project took shape and the Cold War unfolded, that sprawling nuclear weapons factory was built and expanded, housed in dozens of sites across the United States. As the prima materia of the Cold War national security state, nuclear products and processes were handled with utmost secrecy and security by the federal agencies and corporate contractors under whose guidance weapons were produced, and information about the conditions of these factory sites was highly guarded. The Cold War's end has changed this state of affairs, and, as many journalists, activists, and scholars have recently been documenting, an enduring radioactive mess has been left to clean up, such that clean up is the appropriate term. In Making a Real Killing, Len Ackland adds a new chapter to the story, chronicling the Rocky Flats plant near Denver, Colorado, built in 1951 to produce plutonium warhead triggers for nuclear weapons. A former editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and current director for the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Ackland employs investigative journalism at its best: he presents an allencompassing overview of Rocky Flats, threading portraits of key players and impacted people into the complex institutional and technical stories of the plant
Cold war · Factory (object-oriented programming · Ground zero · National security · Nuclear physics · Nuclear weapon · Plutonium · Political science · Politics · Secrecy · State (computer science · Engineering · History · Law · Nuclear and radioactivity studies · Nuclear Issues and Defense · Risk Perception and Management
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,24 |
| Citation span | 2005 - 2015 (11) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |