Manhattan Project

Julia Barton's father

Returning to the secret government lab where my grandfather worked

Culture

Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was once a secret city. Every American nuclear bomb contains uranium from the lab there.

New documentary highlights place where killers are heroes

Arts, Culture & Media

Congress considering measure to preserve atomic labs as National Parks

Global Politics

Trespassing, Vandalism, and Peace Activism in Oak Ridge

The Women Who Built the Bomb

Sequester Causes Problems for Toxic Waste Cleanup

An announcement by Washington State Governor Jay Inslee this week has nuclear energy watchdogs concerned: Six underground radioactive waste tanks at Washington’s Hanford Nuclear reservation are leaking. The tanks hold highly radioactive waste, produced over decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons. The government spends billions of dollars annually on cleanup efforts at the site. […]

Earth Ear

The desert winds blow through the old rusted hangar in Utah where the Enola Gay, the airplane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, was once housed.

Residents Voice Concern Over Safety in Los Alamos

11,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where a wildfire has burned more than 110 square miles of land since Sunday. On Wednesday, crews began to burn a blaze to act as a barrier. The new  fires are meant to protect the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where 10,000 drums–each containing […]

Top of the Hour: Weather Threatens U.S. Nuclear Facilities, Morning Headlines

This morning, severe weather is threatening three separate nuclear facilities in the U.S. The Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory, in New Mexico, has been closed because a 50,000-acre wildfire has moved within a mile of the facility. Los Alamos residents are evacuating the town. Meanwhile, flood waters are rising around two nuclear facilities in Nebraska.  

The World

NUCLEAR POETRY

Debra Greger, a poet raised in the atomic energy boom town of Hanford, Washington, reads from her work and talks with Steve about growing up in the shadow of the atom.