Showing posts with the label Nuclear

The Building That Gave Its Residents Leukemia

Nov 1, 2023

Building number 7 on Gvardeytsiv Kantemirovtsiv street (now known as Mariyi Pryimachenko Street) in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, was the most recent...

The Radiological Incident in Ciudad Juárez

Jun 5, 2023

One of the worst radiation accident in North America took place in the city of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, in 1984. Although the incident is rela...

The 1967 Experiment That Proved Anyone Can Design a Nuclear Weapon

Mar 17, 2023

On 16 October 1964, China detonated a 22-kiloton nuclear weapon device at the Lop Nur test site, becoming the fifth nuclear power state in t...

Douglas Crofut: Suicide by Radiation

Mar 6, 2023

On January 22, 1981, a 38-year-old industrial radiographer named Douglas Crofut was admitted to a hospital in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, the United...

The Calutron Girls Who Helped Built The Atomic Bomb

Aug 17, 2022

The Manhattan project that developed and built the world’s first atomic weapon employed some 130,000 people, of which only a small number of...

Natural Gas Extraction by Nuclear Explosion

May 12, 2022

In the late 1950s, the United States of America launched a new kind of nuclear program called Project Plowshare aimed at finding ways to bet...

The 100 Ton TNT Test

Oct 28, 2021

By the spring of 1945, the United States had completed building the world’s first nuclear device, nicknamed The Gadget . It was an implosion...

Zwentendorf, The Nuclear Power Plant That Was Never Turned On

Apr 6, 2021

The Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant, located on the bank of the Danube River, about 20 miles northwest of Vienna, is Austria’s only nuclear ...

Guarapari’s Radioactive Beaches

Mar 17, 2021

About 50 km south of Vitória, the state capital of Espírito Santo, in southeastern Brazil, lies the coastal town of Guarapari, a popular tou...

The Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab

Feb 1, 2021

The 1950s were exciting times. There was much enthusiasm and optimism around the use of atomic energy, which was seen as the solution to all...

The Huron King Nuclear Test

Oct 6, 2020

The Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada, about 65 miles northwest of the city of Las Vegas, is scattered with relics from the United Stat...

The Uranium Cubes From a Nazi Nuclear Reactor

Aug 31, 2020

In the summer of 2013, Physicist Timothy Koeth of University of Maryland received an unexpected gift from one of his friends. It was a small...

Turning Night Into Day: Nuclear Explosions in Space

Jun 23, 2020

On August 1, 1958, a few minutes before midnight, an intense flash of white light tore across the night sky illuminating everything it touch...

That Time When The US Almost Blew Up North Carolina

Jun 18, 2020

During the 1950s and 60s, the United States suffered a string of mishaps with nuclear weapons. From lost nukes to accidentally dropping bomb...

Cosmos 954: The Nuke That Fell From Space

May 1, 2020

What goes up must eventually come down, including satellites that are currently orbiting the earth. After their work is done, they will be...

Where is Ground Zero in Nagasaki?

Feb 24, 2020

On the morning of August 9, 1945, six B29 bombers took off from Mariana Islands, located more than 2,100 kilometers north of Tokyo. One of t...

Anatoli Bugorski: The Man Who Stuck His Head Inside a Particle Accelerator

Feb 14, 2020

Out of all places to stick your head into, a particle accelerator would rank among the worst. Yet, on that fateful day of 13 July 1978, thir...

The Radiological Incident in Lia, Georgia

Jan 10, 2020

On a cold December day in 2001, three men took their truck and drove 50 kilometers east from their village Lia in order to collect firewood....

The Historic Hanford Reactor That Made Plutonium For The Nagasaki Bomb

Nov 7, 2019

Sitting squarely in the middle of the now decommissioned Hanford Site, a nuclear production complex on the Columbia River near Richland, Was...

The Goiânia Radiological Accident

Oct 24, 2019

A radiation therapy unit in a hospital. Photo credit: Thomas Hecker/Shutterstock.com Radioactive isotopes have a very niche use in medicin...