Unmaking the Bomb: Environmental Cleanup and the Politics of Impossibility

by Shannon Cram

What does it mean to reckon with a contaminated world? In Unmaking the Bomb , Shannon Cram considers the complex social politics of this question and the regulatory infrastructures designed to answer it. Blending history, ethnography, and memoir, she investigates remediation efforts at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a former weapons complex in Washington State. Home to the majority of the nation's high-level nuclear waste and its largest environmental cleanup, Hanford is tasked with managing toxic materials that will long outlast the United States and its institutional capacities. Cram examines the embodied uncertainties and structural impossibilities integral to that endeavor. In particular, this lyrical book engages in a kind of narrative contamination, toggling back and forth between cleanup's administrative frames and the stories that overspill them. It spends time with the statistical people that inhabit cleanup's metrics and models and the nonstatistical people that live with their effects. And, in the process, it explores the uneven social relations that make toxicity a normative condition. 

Genres: History

221 pages, Paperback

Published September 26, 2023

Reviews

[Aidan Lahn · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the classes I took in Winter 2025 was Environmental Justice, taught by the author of this book, Dr. Shannon Cram. Many of the ideas covered in this book were things mentioned in the class, like defining 'clean up', statistical lives, what it means for something to be permanently contaminated, how contamination is embodied by surrounding communities, and how power and privilege (racism, colonialism, etc.) affect environmental cleanup and its aftermath. Unmaking the Bomb uses the Hanford site to explore what environmental cleanup really means, and what it means to work in such a contaminated site. This is an excellent book for anyone interested in environmental science and environmental justice as well as anyone who lives in Washington state, especially anyone who lives near the Hanford site. It is also a short read. Goodreads says the book has 221 pages, but it is more like 130 pages, with over 80 pages of footnotes and references.

[Ember McCoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up after it won the Rachel Carson Prize at this year’s 4S (society for the social studies of science) conference. I absolutely loved it, particularly chapter 4: the body burden. This is a well researched, easy to read book (esp for an academic book) and I loved Cram’s voice throughout. Incredibly well told, important story and excited to cite & build from it in my own work.

[Jennie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly researched and carefully explained. This is relentlessly disturbing and difficult information to grasp and Shannon Cram makes it easy to follow. She does an exceptional job making sense of esoteric concepts like deep time. And her humanity and hopefulness vibrates throughout the text in a way that I admired. The longitudinal impacts of nuclear waste has cost her dearly on a personal level. And her continued passion and advocacy around the unsexy issue of cleanup and containment is no less than heroic. This book is *extremely* important and I knew nothing about the Handford Nuclear Site, even though I live 3 hours away from it and I’ve driven within 20 minutes of it a half a dozen times.

I want everyone on earth to read this book and develop an understanding of just how challenging the problems of nuclear energy are - not just to solve, but to even comprehend or anticipate over time on the most basic fundamental level.

Bonus: for any podcast fans out there, the 99% Invisible episode “Ten Thousand Years” is a perfect companion piece. I highly recommend a listen.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't get as much out of this book as I was hoping to, hence the three stars. It's a book that "blends" too many approaches to a topic into one. It's there in the description, part "history, ethnography, and memoir" which should be code for the book is lacking a cohesive identity and doesn't nail any of those approaches. It's still a good read for the bit of historical insight I got out of it but everything else I am leaving behind. Others, who appreciate a more nuanced and personal book about a somewhat obscure topic, will likely enjoy this more than I did.