Hidden nuclear history
On the week of the 26th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the first-ever study of nuclear engineers has shown how they were shaped by secrecy and shifting goals. First defined by the Second World War's Manhattan Project, they marked out a new field described as a 'strange journey through Alice in Wonderland' and 'What Buck Rogers reads about when he reads'. In a new book Sean Johnston, Reader in History of Science and Technology at the University of Glasgow's School of Interdisciplinary Studies in Dumfries discovers how the working experiences of these experts shaped not only their identities but our collective memories of the nuclear age. Nuclear specialists remained hidden by security for a decade after the Second World War to explore peaceful applications of atomic energy at a handful of new national labs. During the early Cold War, nuclear scientists were often characterised as unapproachable geniuses or as potential traitors of the atomic secret. But even after they became more visible to the public, nuclear workers carried the legacy of their origins. At universities and the first nuclear power stations, they often became symbols of national ingenuity and even selfless bravery.
