Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2021
Volume 66, Number 5
Saturday–Tuesday, April 17–20, 2021; Virtual; Time Zone: Central Daylight Time, USA
Session Q06: Race, Colonialism, Nuclear Weapons and Their TestingInvited Live Undergrad Friendly
|
Hide Abstracts |
Sponsoring Units: FPS Chair: Cherrill Spencer, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (retired) |
Monday, April 19, 2021 10:45AM - 11:21AM Live |
Q06.00001: The Intersection of Race and Nuclear Weapons Invited Speaker: Vincent Intondi This talk will focus on the intersection of race and nuclear weapons. I will provide an overview of my research and book, which examines Black activists who fought for nuclear disarmament, often connecting the nuclear issue with the fight for racial equality and liberation movements around the world. Beginning with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I will explore the shifting response of Black leaders and organizations, and of the broader African American public to the evolving nuclear arms race and general nuclear threat throughout the postwar period. Many in the African American community actively supported nuclear disarmament even when the cause abandoned by other groups during the McCarthy era, allowing the fight to abolish nuclear weapons to reemerge powerfully in the 1970s and beyond. Black leaders never gave the nuclear issue up or failed to see its importance, and by doing so, broadened the Black freedom movement and helped define it in terms of global human rights. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, April 19, 2021 11:21AM - 11:57AM Live |
Q06.00002: Radiation Measurements in the Marshall Islands Invited Speaker: Emlyn Hughes From 1946 until 1958, the US government tested sixty-seven nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands as part of its Cold War program. Of these, eighteen weapon tests were thermonuclear and yielded energies greater than one megaton. On March 1, 1954, the US detonated a weapons-deliverable fifteen megaton hydrogen bomb, code named Castle Bravo. Environmental damage over a huge expanse of the northern Marshall Islands from this one test alone has been devastating, and even today many northern islands are too contaminated to be habitable. Coupled with secretive US government health studies of Marshallese exposed to the Bravo fallout and poor decisions on relocation of residents, the consequences of the US nuclear weapons testing program in the Marshall Islands become more chilling the deeper one probes. In a series of studies performed in 2015, 2017 and 2018, a research group from Columbia University engaged in an independent, exploratory assessment of radiological contamination in the northern Marshall Islands. Results from these studies were published in three back-to-back articles in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science on July 30, 2019. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, April 19, 2021 11:57AM - 12:33PM Live |
Q06.00003: 75 Years and Waiting:~ The Downwinders Perspective of the Trinity Test Invited Speaker: Tina Cordova On July 16, 1945 the US Government as part of the Manhattan Project tested the first nuclear device ever developed in the world in the desert of south central New Mexico. The tens of thousands of people who lived in the immediate area were not warned before or after the blast of the consequences of living within the fallout zone. As a result the people were overexposed to large amounts of radioactive fallout. The US government has never returned to assess the damage done to human health as a result of the overexposure to radiation suffered by the people. Most of the people exposed were people of color, indigenous Native Americans and Hispanic settlers. Furthermore, the US Government set up a fund in 1990, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) to compensate Downwinders of the Nevada Test Site. The Downwinders of New Mexico were never included in the compensation although they were the first people ever exposed to radiation any place in the world. For 75 years the people of New Mexico have been suffering with the health consequences while totally being ignored by the US Government although they were not only downwind of Trinity test but well documented as downwind of the Nevada Test site. In this presentation I will describe the test at Trinity and the unique qualities of the test that produced the heavy fallout which made it so damaging to human health. I will explore the lifestyles of the people in New Mexico in 1945 that presented the highest levels of exposure. There will be a presentation of what the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium (TBDC) has documented from first hand oral histories about the day of the test in 1945 and the health consequences via the health surveying we've conducted. Last I will present what it has meant to be left out of the RECA and ignored for 75 years. Stories will be shared and examples made of the impact of being a Downwinder inside of a family that has suffered great loss and experienced many financial hardships because of the lack of support and access to health care. [Preview Abstract] |
Follow Us |
Engage
Become an APS Member |
My APS
Renew Membership |
Information for |
About APSThe American Physical Society (APS) is a non-profit membership organization working to advance the knowledge of physics. |
© 2024 American Physical Society
| All rights reserved | Terms of Use
| Contact Us
Headquarters
1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3844
(301) 209-3200
Editorial Office
100 Motor Pkwy, Suite 110, Hauppauge, NY 11788
(631) 591-4000
Office of Public Affairs
529 14th St NW, Suite 1050, Washington, D.C. 20045-2001
(202) 662-8700