Supplying the Nuclear Arsenal: American Production Reactors, 1942-1992

by Rodney P. Carlisle, Joan M. Zenzen

Although the history of commercial-power nuclear reactors is well known, the story of the government reactors that produce weapons-grade plutonium and tritium has been shrouded in secrecy. In the first detailed look at the origin and development of these production reactors, Rodney Carlisle and Joan Zenzen describe a fifty-year government effort no less complex, expensive, and technologically demanding than the Polaris or Apollo programs--yet one about which most Americans know virtually nothing. Carlisle and Zenzen describe the evolution of the early reactors, the atomic weapons establishment that surrounded them, and the sometimes bitter struggles between business and political constituencies for their share of "nuclear pork." They show how, since the 1980s, aging production reactors have increased the risk of radioactive contamination of the atmosphere and water table. And they describe how the Department of Energy mounted a massive effort to find the right design for a new generation of reactors, only to abandon that effort with the end of the Cold War. Today, all American production reactors remain closed. Due to short half-life, the nation's supply of tritium, crucial to modern weapons, is rapidly dwindling. As countries like Iraq and North Korea threaten to join the nuclear club, the authors contend, the United States needs to revitalize tritium production capacity in order to maintain a viable nuclear deterrent. Meanwhile, as slowly decaying artifacts of the Cold War, the closed production reactors at Hanford, Washington, and Savannah River, South Carolina, loom ominously over the landscape.

296 pages, Hardcover

First published July 23, 1996

About the author

Dr. Rodney P. Carlisle is a professor emeritus of Rutgers University. He received his AB degree from Harvard College and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He most recently served as general editor of the award-winning Encyclopedia of Politics: The Left and Right (2005) and authored The Iraq War (2004).

Reviews

[Andrew Breshears · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carlisle does a good job of covering the history of production reactors in the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Program. Carlisle is verbose in later chapters. However, he ties it up well in the penultimate and final chapters.