Nuclear reactors were invented to kill people. Within a year of the first full-scale reactor coming online at #Hanford in 1944, they were the key to killing almost 100,000 people in #Nagasaki.
American military leaders were aware of the dangers of radioactive particles long before #Hiroshima or #Trinity.
On #DDay there was a special unit, Operation Peppermint, that came ashore in Normandy with Geiger Counters in anticipation that the Nazis might "pepper" the beaches with uranium particles to sicken and slow the invasion.
Militarization of radioactive particles predated fission weapons.
Tomorrow afternoon Sydney time, join my hybrid lecture, either at #UNSW, or register on Zoom at the link below.
It will be a book talk about my book, Nuclear Bodies: The Global Hibakusha (Yale 2022). The subtitles is: How millions harmed by #nuclear weapons & power have been made invisible during the Cold War & after