Nuclear Wastelands: A Global Guide to Nuclear Weapons Production and its Health and Environmental Effects

Abstract

ABSTRACT Its comprehensive coverage suggests that Nuclear Wastelands is intended primarily as a reference work. Yet, the coverage is sharply limited by many still-intact secrecy walls, although some have started to crumble.Enough information, however, has been released to yield a large book. It is well indexed and has 44 pages of references, indicating careful documentation. It contains details on the history of nuclear arms and the various steps in the production of nuclear weapons: mining uranium ores, milling to produce uranium concentrates, conversion to uranium hexafluoride, enrichment (increasing the concentration of uranium 235), reduction to metallic form, and bomb construction. The production of plutonium adds steps, as do fusion bombs: military reactors to generate plutonium (plutonium from civilian reactors can be used but is less efficient) plus generation of tritium plus reprocessing. Waste management pertains to all steps. Sites in each of 13 nations are described for each step. Potential