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Article: The nuclear weapons legacy.
- Article from:
- Environment
- Article date:
- January 1, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Closing the Circle on the Splitting of the Atom and Estimating the Cold War Mortgage
In light of the information that has become available since the collapse of the Soviet Union, few can doubt that the West owes its freedom to the U.S. nuclear weapons program. Indeed, this may be the greatest contribution nuclear fission has made to human well-being. Looking back a half century, it seems nothing less than a miracle that physicists from the United States and other countries, working with little scientific and no engineering base, developed the atomic bomb in less than three years. In doing so, the United States gained an edge over competing programs, which it ...