Tom Zoellner

by Uranium - Rock That Shaped the World

  CHAPTER 2: BEGINNINGS

  This chapter and the next benefited greatly from Richard Rhodes’s The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986). Multiple facts and anecdotes—including Ernest Rutherford’s experiments, Otto Frisch’s walk through the Swedish woods, and the comparison of the Manhattan Project to the auto industry—were taken from Rhodes’s text-dense volume, easily the best comprehensive account of this often-told chapter in world history. Some history of St. Joachimsthal is in the town history Jachymov: The City of Silver, Radium, and Therapeutic Water, by Hana Hornatova (Prague: Medeia Bohemia, 2000); in the article “The Silver Miners of the Erzgebirge and the Peasants’ War of 1525 in Light of Recent Research,” by George Waring, in Sixteenth Century Journal, Summer 1987; and in “History of Uranium,” by Fathi Habashi and Vladimir Dufek, in the CIM Bulletin, Jan. 2001, published by the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy, and Petroleum. Additional details on the St. Joachimsthal Valley were taken from Atomic Rivals: A Candid Memoir of Rivalries Among the Allies Over the Bomb, by Bertrand Goldschmidt (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990). The peasants’ song was in Uranium Matters: Central European Uranium in International Politics, 1900 -1960, by Zbynek Zeman and Rainer Karlsch (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2008). The Taborite movement is explored in Pursuit of the Millennium, by Norman Cohn (Fairlawn, N.J.: Essential Books, 1957). Martin Klaproth’s story and Otto Frisch’s encounter with finished blocks of U-235 in chapter 3 were drawn from The Deadly Element, by Lennard Bickel (Hong Kong: Macmillan, 1979). Early musings about atomic power are found in the disjointed but prescient novel The World Set Free: A Story of Mankind, by H. G. Wells (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1914), and the farsighted treatise The Interpretation of Radium, by Frederick Soddy (London: John Murray, 1912). Radium physics are discussed in the articles “Radium and Radioactivity,” by Marie Curie, in Century magazine, Jan. 1904, and “Radiation Hormesis,” by Jennifer L. Prekeges, in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology, Nov. 2003. Some atomic metaphors were inspired by and drawn from A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson (New York: Broadway Books, 2004), and some physics were drawn from Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos, by Isaac Asimov and D. H. Bach (New York: Plume, 1992). Brief biographies of the Curies, Ernest Rutherford, Henri Becquerel, and James Chadwick and copies of their Stockholm lectures are archived at http://nobelprize.org. Background on the first man to use the phrase atomic bomb is from H. G. Wells: His Turbulent Life and Times, by Lovat Dickson (Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1969); The Science Fiction of H. G. Wells, by Frank McConnell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); and H. G. Wells, by Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973). Early assessments of uranium are in “Vast Energy Freed by Uranium Atom,” the New York Times, Jan. 31, 1939, and “The Atom Is Giving Up Its Mighty Secrets,” by Waldemar Kaempffert, the New York Times, May 8, 1932. Otto Hahn’s despair was mentioned in Savage Dreams, by Rebecca Solnit (New York: Vintage, 1994). Ed Creutz’s quote came from Atomic Quest, by Arthur Compton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956).

  CHAPTER 3: THE BARGAIN

  The recollections of Robert Rich Sharp are preserved in his memoirs, Early Days in Katanga (Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia: Rhodesia Printers, 1956). Leslie Groves discloses a portion of what he knew, including his relationship with Edgar Sengier, in his Now It Can Be Told (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962). Robert Laxalt’s recollection of the OSS officer is found in his memoirs, A Private War: An American Code Staffer in the Belgian Congo (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1998). Portions of the Guarin geological report are excerpted in the anthology The Secret History of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Dell, 1977). The lawyer-adverse quote from Edgar Sengier comes from Uranium Trail East, by Cordell Richardson (London: Bachman & Turner, 1977). An excellent map and description of the Archer Daniels Midland facility on Staten Island can be found in the CD book The Traveler’s Guide to Nuclear Weapons Sites, by Timothy L. Karpin and James M. Maroncelli (Lacey, Wash.: Historical Odysseys Publishers, 2002). The complaint about secrecy is drawn from a memo from Joe Volpe to Phillip Merritt, dated Jan. 3, 1945, and on file in the National Archives, “Manhattan Engineering District, General Administrative Files, General Correspondence 1942-1948,” Record Group 77, Entry 5. The OSS assessment of the Congo is in a memo dated Oct. 31, 1944, and on file in the National Archives, “Records of the Office of Strategic Services,” Record Group 226, Entry 108C. The story of the Leipzig fizzle was taken from The Making of the Atomic Age, by Alwyn McKay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). Some aspects of wartime enrichment at Oak Ridge and Hanford were taken from “The First Fifty Years,” in the Oak Ridge National Laboratories Review 25, no. 3-4 (1992). Details about Edgar Sengier and the operation at Shinkolobwe, including the financing of the pit rehabilitation, are drawn from Gathering Rare Ores: The Diplomacy of Uranium Acquisition, 1943-1954, by Jonathan E. Helmreich (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986). The conversation between Sengier and Colonel Kenneth Nichols has been reconstructed based on two sources: Nichols’s memoirs, The Road to Trinity, by Kenneth D. Nichols (New York: Morrow, 1987), and the official company history, La Mangeuse de Cuivre: La Saga de l’Union Minière du Haut-Katanga, 1906-1966, by Fernand Lekime (Brussels: Didier Hatier, 1992). U.S. Navy documents from the National Archives detailing the strange story of U-234 have been reproduced in the self-published book Critical Mass: How Nazi Germany Surrendered Enriched Uranium for the United States Atomic Bomb, by Carter Hydrick (Houston, Tex.: JiffyLine, 1998). Hydrick embraces some maverick theories, particularly that Germany possessed highly enriched uranium. His navy documents regarding U-234’s voyage, however, can be regarded as beyond question. A rigorous analysis of the known facts is in Germany’s Last Mission to Japan: The Failed Voyage of U-234, by Joseph Mark Scalia (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2000). The quotes from John Lansdale and Hans Bethe were taken from the 2001 documentary film Hitler’s Last U-Boat, directed by Andreas Gutzeit and distributed by International Historic Films, Inc., of Chicago. Further background and statements from Lansdale were taken from “Captured Cargo, Captivating Mystery,” by William J. Broad, the New York Times, Dec. 31, 1995, and the obituary “John Lansdale, 91, Hunter of Nazi Atomic-Bomb Effort,” by Anahad O’Connor, the New York Times, Sept. 3, 2003. Several details about Hanford and the life of Leslie Groves were taken from the excellent biography Racing for the Bomb: Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project’s Indispensable Man, by Robert S. Norris (Hanover, N.H.: Steerforth Press, 2003). Norris kindly furnished me with the daybook entry for Groves’s Aug. 13, 1945, conversation with Edwards. His book was also the source for the story of the enterprising reporter (and would-be draftee) Thomas Raper of Cleveland. The gadget anecdote came from 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos, by Jenant Conant (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005). I also drew facts from American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin (New York: Knopf, 2005); “Now They Can Be Told Aloud, Those Stories of ‘The Hill,’” by William McNulty, in the Santa Fe New Mexican, Aug. 7, 1945; and The Manhattan Project: Big Science and the Atom Bomb, by Jeff Hughes (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). The two-part Rabi quote is from “After the Bomb, A Mushroom Cloud of Metaphors,” by James Gleick, in the New York Times, May 21, 1989; and also Picturing the Bomb, by Rachel Fermi and Esther Samra (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995). The recollections from the survivors of Hiroshima were drawn from Robert Jay Lifton’s Death in Life (New York: Random House, 1967) and quoted in The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986). Further details were from the article “Imagining Nuclear Weapons: Hiroshima, Armageddon, and the Annihilation of the Ichijo School,” by James Foard, in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 1997. The weight comparison between the Nagasaki plutonium and the penny comes from The Curve of Binding Energy, by John McPhee (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973). Of special note are the m
emoirs of Otto Frisch, modestly and inaccurately titled What Little I Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), from which several anecdotes in this section—including the stacked oranges in Richmond and the dragon-tickling experiment at Los Alamos—were taken. One of the unexpected pleasures I had in writing this book was reading Otto Frisch, who was as subtle and engaging as a writer as he was insightful as a theorist.

  CHAPTER 4: APOCALYPSE

  An early forecast for atomic power is in the Associated Press report “Fantastic World Envisioned with Atomic Energy,” by Chiles Coleman, reprinted in, among other papers, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Aug. 7, 1945. Some editorial clips came from the peerless work By the Bomb’s Early Light by Paul S. Boyer (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994). Saint Augustine’s admonition was recalled in “A Comet’s Tale,” by Tom Bissell, in Harper’s, Feb. 2003. Some fragmentary pictures of the post-Hiroshima mood are in “U.S. Warns Artist Who Sketched Bomb,” in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug. 8, 1945; “Wellsian Apocalypse,” in the Washington Post, Oct. 25, 1945; “Atom Discounted as Rival of Coal,” in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug. 8, 1945; and the Associated Press dispatch “Vatican City Paper Deplores Creation of ‘Catastrophic’ Weapon,” Aug. 7, 1945. The Morley quote appeared in Human Events on August 29, 1945, and was republished in The Manhattan Project, ed. Cynthia C. Kelly (New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2007). The grim poll results from the Social Science Research Center were quoted in Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom, by Allan M. Winkler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). This excellent book also provided source material for this chapter, including Oppenheimer’s first conversation with Harry S. Truman and a sketch of Bernard Brodie’s thinking. Brodie’s philosophy is also examined in Bernard Brodie and the Foundations of American Nuclear Strategy, by Barry Steiner (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991). Some of the speculations about the power of uranium are in “Uranium Metal,” in Scientific American, Feb. 1947; “New Responsibilities,” in Science News Letter, Aug. 18, 1945; “Congo Is Blind to the Richest Uranium Mine,” by Associated Press reporter Arthur L. Gavshon, in the Washington Post, Aug. 6, 1950; and “Mystery Man of the A-Bomb,” by John Gunther, in Reader’s Digest, Dec. 1953. Reports of a uranium black market in China came from the Jan. 20, 1946, memo “Directive to All X-2 Field Stations” and the June 24, 1946, summary report from X-2’s Shanghai station. Both reports are located in the National Archives in “Records of the Office of Strategic Services,” Record Group 226, Entry 211. The account of Oppenheimer’s ill-fated meeting with Truman is in Winkler, Life Under a Cloud, as well as 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos, by Jenant Conant (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005). The major writings of William L. Laurence are his two memoirs, Dawn Over Zero and Men and Atoms, as well as the New York Times stories “U.S. Atom Bomb Site Belies Tokyo Tales,” Sept. 12, 1945, and “Atom Bombing of Nagasaki Told by Flight Member,” Sept. 9, 1945. His article “The Atom Gives Up” was in the Saturday Evening Post, Sept. 7, 1940. He offers candid reflections in two oral history interviews, the transcripts of which are on file in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University in New York City. One interview was conducted by Scott Bruns in 1964; the other by Louis Starr in 1957. A bit more of his biography, including the anecdote about the rifle butt, is in his obituary “William Laurence of The Times Dies,” on Mar. 19, 1977, as well as in an essay he wrote for the anthology How I Got That Story, by members of the Overseas Press Club (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1967). The influence of his hyperbole is examined in The Myths of August, by Stewart Udall (New York: Pantheon, 1994); News Zero: The New York Times and the Bomb, by Beverly Ann Deepe Keever (Monroe, Maine.: Common Courage Press, 2004); a later article by Keever, “Top Secret: Censoring the First Rough Drafts of Atomic-Bomb History,” in the journal Media History, vol. 4, no. 2, 2008; Nuclear Fear: A History of Images, by Spencer R. Weart (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988); and, most especially, in the peerless Hiroshima in America: A Half Century of Denial, by Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell (New York: Avon Books, 1995). His post-Hiroshima reporting on radioactivity was scrutinized in The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them, by David Goodman and Amy Goodman (New York: Hyperion, 2004); an excerpt has been republished at commondreams.org. The testing outside of Las Vegas is examined in Weart, Nuclear Fear; “The Mushroom Cloud as Kitsch,” by A. Costandina Titus, in the anthology Atomic Culture: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, edited by Scott C. Zeman and Michael A. Amundson (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2004); Bombs in the Backyard: Atomic Testing and American Politics, by A. Costandina Titus (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2001); and Nukespeak: The Selling of Nuclear Technology in America, by Stephen Hilgartner, Richard Bell, and Rory O’Conner (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1982). Further period details of Las Vegas and the Nevada Test Site are in “The Melted Dog: Memories of an Atomic Childhood,” by Judith Miller, in the New York Times, Mar. 30, 2005, and Vanderbilt, Survival City. The General Electric executive’s quote comes from “Power from the Atom: An Appraisal,” by C. G. Suits, in Nucleonics, Feb. 1951, and was quoted in “Atomic Myths, Radioactive Realities: Why Nuclear Power Is the Poor Way to Meet Energy Needs,” by Arjun Makhijani, in the Journal of Land, Resources & Environmental Law 24, no. 1 (2004). John C. Frémont’s observations were quoted in Savage Dreams, by Rebecca Solnit (New York: Vintage, 1994). Changes to American architecture and planning were skillfully examined in Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America, by Tom Vanderbilt (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002), which was also the source of the Augur quotes and the “terrible light” fragment from Time. E. B. White’s passage is from his short and delightful book Here Is New York (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948). Project Gnome is discussed in “Peaceful Atomic Blasting,” in Time, Mar. 4, 1958; “Radiation Drops in A-Blast Zone,” by Bill Becker, in the New York Times, Dec. 11, 1961; and “U.S. A-Bomb Test Releases Radiation,” by Bill Becker, in the New York Times, Dec. 10, 1961; Beyond Engineering: How Society Shapes Technology, by Robert Pool (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); and in Proving Grounds: Project Plowshare and the Unrealized Dream of Nuclear Earthmoving, by Scott Kirsch (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2005). Criticisms of the Atoms for Peace program are also noted in The Curve of Binding Energy, by John McPhee (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973). Mount Weather’s layout is discussed in “Is This Bush’s Secret Bunker?,” by Tom Vanderbilt, in the Guardian, Aug. 26, 2006. Some cold-war reckonings were taken from Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940, edited by Stephen I. Schwartz (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1998); and Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race, by Richard Rhodes (New York: Knopf, 2007), which was also the source of the Churchill quote. Background on Abraham Feinberg is in “Going Steady,” in Time, Aug. 29, 1955, as well as Michael Karpin’s excellent The Bomb in the Basement (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), one of the most comprehensive accounts of the Israeli nuclear program’s history. The scrambled eggs anecdote involving Ernst Bergmann, as well as other details of Dimona’s origins and the description of the reprocessing building, were taken from The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, by Seymour M. Hersh (New York: Random House, 1991). Further background was drawn from the June 1981 United Nations report “Israel: Nuclear Armament,” prepared by Ali Mazuri et al.; the seminal Israel and the Bomb, by Avner Cohen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); “Recipe for an Israeli Nuclear Arsenal,” by Martha Wegner, in Middle East Report, Nov. 1986; and the article “The Nuclear Arsenal in the Middle East,” by Frank Barnaby, in Journal of Palestine Studies, Autumn 1987, which was the source of the “pushed into the sea” observation. Mordechai Vanunu’s story was first told in “Revealed: The Secrets of Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal,” in the London Sunday Times, Oct. 5,
1986, and the tale of “Cindy” and her Roman flat is related in “Mordechai Vanunu,” the Guardian, Apr. 16, 2004. The Scheersberg story first broke in the Los Angeles Times, “200 Tons of Uranium Lost; Israel May Have It,” by Robert Gillette, Apr. 29, 1977, followed up in the New York Times with “Escort Unit Urged for Uranium Cargo,” Apr. 30, 1977; a New York Times op-ed titled “The Plumbat Affair,” by Paul S. Leventhal, Apr. 30, 1978; and also “Uranium Loss Fails to Change Security,” in the New York Times, Feb. 25, 1979. Time magazine exposed more details in “Uranium: The Israeli Connection,” May 30, 1977. The story of A. Q. Khan has been told in several places, but the following sources contributed most heavily to this section: the 2007 dossier Nuclear Black Markets: Pakistan, A. Q. Khan, and the Rise of Proliferation Networks, by the staff of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London; the book The Atomic Bazaar, by William Langewiesche (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), from which I drew the color about Khan’s relationship with Frits Veerman, among several other details; the British Broadcasting Company documentary “The Nuclear Wal-Mart,” reported by Jane Corbin, aired on Nov. 12, 2006; “A Tale of Nuclear Proliferation,” in the New York Times, Feb. 12, 2003; and The Nuclear Jihadist, by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins (New York: Twelve Books, 2007), which was the source for several facts, including “the Beast” in Johannesburg, Khan’s largess to journalists and charities, and some snippets from his authorized biography, as well as the Bob Hope joke quoted elsewhere in this chapter. Some centrifuge metaphors were from “A Tantalizing Look at Iran’s Nuclear Program,” by William J. Broad, in the New York Times, Apr. 29, 2008. Some of Khan’s stranger investments were disclosed in “Khan Built Hotel in Timbuktu,” in the Times of India, Feb. 1, 2004. Khan’s jingoistic quote was taken from Pakistan 1995, by Rashul Rais and Charles Kennedy (Denver: Westview Press, 1995). His recollection of free chai was in the Q&A “Abdul Qadeer Khan: The Man Behind the Myth,” by Zeba Khan, reprinted by the Human Development Foundation at yespakistan.com. Some of the flavor of Dubai is captured in “An Unlikely Criminal Crossroads,” in U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 5, 2005; “Boom Town,” in the Guardian, Feb. 13, 2006; and the well-reported memoir Hide and Seek: Intelligence, Law Enforcement, and the Stalled War on Terrorist Finance, by John Cassara (Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2006). Some post-Khan impacts were examined in “The Bomb Merchant,” by William J. Broad and David Sanger, in the New York Times, Dec. 26, 2004, and “How Gadhafi Got His Groove Back,” by Judith Miller, in the Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2006. Information on the uranium mine at Banjawarn comes from “A Case Study on the Aum Shinrikyo,” by the staff of the U.S. Senate Government Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Oct. 31, 1995; Aum Shinrikyo, Al-Qaeda, and the Kinshasa Reactor: Implications of Three Case Studies for Combating Nuclear Terrorism, by Sara Daly, John Parachini, and William Rosenau (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corp., 2005); “The Changing Proliferation Threat,” by John F. Sopko, in Foreign Policy, Winter 1996-1997; and “The AFP Investigation into Japanese Cult Activities in Western Australia,” a case study compiled by Richard Crothers of the Australian Federal Police, Apr. 24, 2007. The psychology and doctrine of the group is dissected in Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism, by Robert Jay Lifton (New York: Owl Books, 1998), and The End of Time: Faith and Fear in the Shadow of the Millennium, by Damian Thompson (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1996). The rich history of apocalyptic thinking through history is explored in Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith, by Norman Cohn (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993); Apocalypses: Prophesies, Cults, and Millennial Beliefs Through the Ages, by Eugen Weber (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999); Apocalypse: On the Psychology of Fundamentalism in America, by Charles B. Strozier (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994); and When Time Shall Be No More, by Paul S. Boyer (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1992).