Poison in the Well: Radioactive Waste in the Oceans at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age

by Jacob Darwin Hamblin

In the early 1990s, Russian President Boris Yeltsin revealed that for the previous thirty years the Soviet Union had dumped vast amounts of dangerous radioactive waste into rivers and seas in blatant violation of international agreements. The disclosure caused outrage throughout the Western world, particularly since officials from the Soviet Union had denounced environmental pollution by the United States and Britain throughout the cold war. Poison in the Well provides a balanced look at the policy decisions, scientific conflicts, public relations strategies, and the myriad mishaps and subsequent cover-ups that were born out of the dilemma of where to house deadly nuclear materials. Why did scientists and politicians choose the sea for waste disposal? How did negotiations about the uses of the sea change the way scientists, government officials, and ultimately the lay public envisioned the oceans? Jacob Darwin Hamblin traces the development of the issue in Western countries from the end of World War II to the blossoming of the environmental movement in the early 1970s. This is an important book for students and scholars in the history of science who want to explore a striking case study of the conflicts that so often occur at the intersection of science, politics, and international diplomacy.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science

311 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Jacob Darwin Hamblin is a historian who writes about science, technology, and the environment. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, and many publications devoted to the history of science, technology, and the natural world. He currently resides in the American Pacific Northwest, where he is a professor of history at Oregon State University.

Reviews

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

Properly researched and well written book on the dumping of nuclear waste in the oceans in the past decades (1950-1970ish). I am very interested in radiation and I am a marine biologist, so this was exactly in my niche. This book describes the politics and problems associated with dumping of radioactive material and looks at the situation from the dumpers' perspective and the environmental perspective. I found it engaging and easy to read (for a book so specific).

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

The main focus of this book seemed to be politics. A good bit of the text was devoted to various nations arguing how much waste they could (safely?) dump before oceanographers or the public became concerned. The book wasn't quite what I was expecting. It could have been much more interesting, focusing on the actual dumping, rather than the politics of it. Parts of it were interesting, but overall, I felt my eyes glazing over during most of it. This would probably be more interesting to an environmentalist, or perhaps someone doing academic work.

[Sadie Metcalfe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very very dense and a lot going on, but also very interesting. Read for a class