Download your Atomic Tourism calendar for January 2025! This month’s featured image is the monument at the Trinity Site on the White Sands MIssile Range, taken during an open house in a rare moment without people nearby. On the reverse, you’ll find a timeline of some significant Manhattan Project and Cold War atomic events in chronological order. Following that is a complete listing of all atomic shots during the month of January day by day. Get yours today!
Steve Olson presented a talk and question & answer session about his newest book, The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age, at the Graham Pierce County Library on Saturday, February 11, 2023.
The Apocalypse Factory tells the story of plutonium from it’s discovery by Glenn Seaborg at the birth of nuclear fission, the technology of using and testing plutonium as a weapon, the development of Hanford and the reactor complexes, and the Cold War aftermath and reliance on the manufacturing of plutonium.
Much has been written about uranium, the Manhattan Project, and the development of the first atomic bomb used on the citizens of Hiroshima. Mr. Olson’s book looks at the second atomic bomb, using implosion and plutonium, which was used on the citizens of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. More importantly, plutonium pits became the standard for the U.S. stockpile of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, creating the Cold War and the arms race.
As Glenn Seaborg noted on his discovery of plutonium:
I was a 28-year old kid and didn’t stop to ruminate about it… I didn’t think, “My God, we’ve changed the history of the world.”
(as cited in Olson, 2020, The Apocalypse Factory, p. 31)
Steve Olson is the author of Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens (winner of a Washington State Book Award), Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes (a finalist for the National Book Award), and other books. He has written for the Atlantic, Science, Smithsonian, and more. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
On the corner of Ruby Hill Avenue and Monroe Street is the Eureka Sentinel Museum, housed in the old Eureka Sentinel newspaper building in Nevada.
Nuclear-Chicago’s Model 2302 Super Sniffer
An unassuming display case of artifacts from the Sentinel offices contains the 1954 Nuclear-Chicago Model 2302 Super Sniffer.
To capitalize on the uranium fever spreading across the West, Nuclear-Chicago created this low cost, general purpose instrument for the detection of x-rays, gammas, and high energy betas, specifically designed for uranium prospecting. Using standard flashlight batteries, it could be used continuously for up to 2 hours. The unit came with earphones, batteries, radioactive check source, a U.S. government prospecting book and instructions — all for $49.50.
