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122-691: In 1961, the United Nuclear Corporation was formed to oversee the founding partner's existing nuclear projects and profit from the growing nuclear market during the cold war . At formation, UNC began managing the Hematite, Missouri Production Plant and the New Haven Naval Products Plant previously owned by Mallinckrodt and Olin respectively. The company announced the development of a nuclear "fast burst reactor" designed for use in research contexts. Later known as

244-426: A critical or supercritical fission reaction (one that is self-sustaining in power or increasing in power) should only occur inside a safely shielded location, such as a reactor core or a suitable test environment. A criticality accident occurs if the same reaction is achieved unintentionally, for example in an unsafe environment or during reactor maintenance. Though dangerous and frequently lethal to humans within

366-417: A "heat wave" during a criticality event. It is not known whether this may be a psychosomatic reaction to the realization of what has just occurred (i.e. the high probability of inevitable impending death from a fatal radiation dose), or if it is a physical effect of heating (or non-thermal stimulation of heat sensing nerves in the skin) due to radiation emitted by the criticality event. A review of all of

488-415: A "recriticality", most unlikely. It has been observed that many criticality accidents emit a blue flash of light. The blue glow of a criticality accident results from the fluorescence of the excited ions, atoms and molecules of the surrounding medium falling back to unexcited states. This is also the reason electric sparks in air, including lightning , appear electric blue . The smell of ozone

610-804: A German rebuilding effort set forth by western European countries in 1948, the US, Britain and France spearheaded the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany from the three Western zones of occupation in April 1949. The Soviet Union proclaimed its zone of occupation in Germany the German Democratic Republic that October. Media in the Eastern Bloc was an organ of the state , completely reliant on and subservient to

732-646: A general term, in his essay "You and the Atomic Bomb", published 19 October 1945 in the British newspaper Tribune . Contemplating a world living in the shadow of the threat of nuclear warfare , Orwell looked at James Burnham 's predictions of a polarized world, writing: Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery... James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications—that is,

854-464: A low power steady state or may even become either temporarily or permanently shut down (subcritical). In the history of atomic power development, at least 60 criticality accidents have occurred, including 22 in process environments, outside nuclear reactor cores or experimental assemblies, and 38 in small experimental reactors and other test assemblies. Although process accidents occurring outside reactors are characterized by large releases of radiation,

976-522: A major propaganda effort began in 1949 was Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty , dedicated to bringing about the peaceful demise of the communist system in the Eastern Bloc. Radio Free Europe attempted to achieve these goals by serving as a surrogate home radio station, an alternative to the controlled and party-dominated domestic press in the Soviet Bloc. Radio Free Europe was a product of some of

1098-642: A neutral Germany to prevent West Germany's incorporation into NATO, but his attempts were cut short after he was executed several months later during a Soviet power struggle. The events led to the establishment of the Bundeswehr , the West German military, in 1955. In 1949, CCP Chairman Mao Zedong 's People's Liberation Army defeated Chiang Kai-shek 's United States-backed Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist Government in China. The KMT-controlled territory

1220-675: A new war". On 6 September 1946, James F. Byrnes delivered a speech in Germany repudiating the Morgenthau Plan (a proposal to partition and de-industrialize post-war Germany) and warning the Soviets that the US intended to maintain a military presence in Europe indefinitely. As Byrnes stated a month later, "The nub of our program was to win the German people ... it was a battle between us and Russia over minds ..." In December,

1342-710: A plan envisioning an economically self-sufficient Germany, including a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods and infrastructure already taken by the Soviets. In June 1947, in accordance with the Truman Doctrine , the United States enacted the Marshall Plan , a pledge of economic assistance for all European countries willing to participate, including the Soviet Union. Under the plan, which President Harry S. Truman signed on 3 April 1948,

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1464-499: A result of the incident, the Atomic Energy Commission charged UNC with 14 violations of nuclear safety regulations, however no fines were ever levied against the company. After decontamination, the plant reopened on 1965 and remained in operation until it was decommissioned in 1980. A 1979 aerial survey found radiation exposure rates in the area to be consistent with natural background radiation, except directly over

1586-629: A secret 1950 document, the National Security Council proposed reinforcing pro-Western alliance systems and quadrupling spending on defense. Truman, under the influence of advisor Paul Nitze , saw containment as implying complete rollback of Soviet influence in all its forms. United States officials moved to expand this version of containment into Asia , Africa , and Latin America , in order to counter revolutionary nationalist movements, often led by communist parties financed by

1708-480: A source of intelligence. During the late 1970s and 1980s, the KGB perfected its use of espionage to sway and distort diplomacy. Active measures were "clandestine operations designed to further Soviet foreign policy goals," consisting of disinformation, forgeries, leaks to foreign media, and the channeling of aid to militant groups. Retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin , former head of Foreign Counter Intelligence for

1830-524: A spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency ( IAEA ) "emphasized that the nuclear reactors won't explode." By 23 March 2011, neutron beams had already been observed 13 times at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant. While a criticality accident was not believed to account for these beams, the beams could indicate nuclear fission is occurring. On 15 April, TEPCO reported that nuclear fuel had melted and fallen to

1952-555: A time. In 1979, the toppling of pro-US governments in Iran and Nicaragua and a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan again raised fears of war. In the 1980s, the US provided support for anti-communist forces in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and the leadership of the USSR changed with the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev , who expanded political freedoms in his country and the Eastern Bloc. This led to

2074-542: A unified and neutral Germany was undesirable, with Walter Bedell Smith telling General Eisenhower "in spite of our announced position, we really do not want nor intend to accept German unification on any terms that the Russians might agree to, even though they seem to meet most of our requirements." Shortly thereafter, Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade (June 1948 – May 1949), one of the first major crises of

2196-583: A very small time constant, known as the prompt neutron lifetime. Thus there is a very large increase in neutron population over a very short time frame. Since each fission event contributes approximately 200 MeV per fission, this results in a very large energy burst as a "prompt-critical spike". This spike can be easily detected by radiation dosimetry instrumentation and "criticality accident alarm system" detectors that are properly deployed. Criticality accidents are divided into one of two categories: Excursion types can be classified into four categories depicting

2318-410: A visual blue glow/spark sensation. It is a coincidence that the color of Cherenkov light and light emitted by ionized air are a very similar blue; their methods of production are different. Cherenkov radiation does occur in air for high-energy particles (such as particle showers from cosmic rays ) but not for the lower energy charged particles emitted from nuclear decay. Some people reported feeling

2440-452: Is called one dollar of reactivity . The lifetime of delayed neutrons ranges from fractions of seconds to almost 100 seconds after fission. The neutrons are usually classified in 6 delayed neutron groups. The average neutron lifetime considering delayed neutrons is approximately 0.1 sec, which makes the chain reaction relatively easy to control over time. The remaining 993 prompt neutrons are released very quickly, approximately 1 μs after

2562-448: Is extremely dangerous to any unprotected nearby life-form. The rate of change of neutron population depends on the neutron generation time , which is characteristic of the neutron population, the state of "criticality", and the fissile medium. A nuclear fission creates approximately 2.5 neutrons per fission event on average. Hence, to maintain a stable, exactly critical chain reaction, 1.5 neutrons per fission event must either leak from

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2684-804: Is influenced by a range of parameters noted by the mnemonics MAGIC MERV (mass, absorption, geometry, interaction, concentration, moderation, enrichment, reflection, and volume) and MERMAIDS (mass, enrichment, reflection, moderation, absorption, interaction, density, and shape). Temperature is also a factor in criticality. Calculations can be performed to determine the conditions needed for a critical state, e.g. mass, geometry, concentration etc. Where fissile materials are handled in civil and military installations, specially trained personnel are employed to carry out such calculations and ensure that all reasonably practicable measures are used to prevent criticality accidents, during both planned normal operations and any potential process upset conditions that cannot be dismissed on

2806-477: Is part, was authorized. The UNC Fuels Recovery Plant was a nuclear fuel recycling plant opened in April 1964. Four months after it began operation, on 24 July 1964 at 6:06pm a criticality incident occurred resulting in the death of the Production Operator, Robert Peabody, from acute radiation syndrome . Five other employees were in the facility at the time, however no other fatalities occurred. As

2928-458: Is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers , though each supported opposing sides in major regional conflicts known as proxy wars . Aside from the nuclear arms race starting in 1949 and conventional military deployment , the struggle for dominance was expressed indirectly via psychological warfare , propaganda campaigns , espionage , far-reaching embargoes , sports diplomacy , and technological competitions such as

3050-513: The Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic ". A week later, on 13 March, Stalin responded vigorously to the speech, saying Churchill could be compared to Adolf Hitler insofar as he advocated the racial superiority of English-speaking nations so that they could satisfy their hunger for world domination, and that such a declaration was "a call for war on the USSR." The Soviet leader also dismissed

3172-859: The Berlin Wall to prevent the citizens of East Berlin from fleeing to West Berlin , at the time part of United States-allied West Germany . Major crises of this phase included the Berlin Blockade of 1948–1949, the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1945–1949, the Korean War of 1950–1953, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Suez Crisis of that same year, the Berlin Crisis of 1961 ,

3294-758: The Cuban Missile Crisis began after deployments of U.S. missiles in Europe and Soviet missiles in Cuba; it is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear war . Another major proxy conflict was the Vietnam War of 1955 to 1975; the Soviets solidified their domination of Eastern Europe with operations such as the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Both powers used economic aid in an attempt to win

3416-719: The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and the Vietnam War of 1964–1975. Both superpowers competed for influence in Latin America and the Middle East , and the decolonising states of Africa , Asia , and Oceania . Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, this phase of the Cold War saw the Sino-Soviet split . Between China and the Soviet Union's complicated relations within the Communist sphere, leading to

3538-847: The Eastern Bloc . Cominform faced an embarrassing setback the following June, when the Tito–Stalin split obliged its members to expel Yugoslavia, which remained communist but adopted a non-aligned position and began accepting financial aid from the US. Besides Berlin, the status of the city of Trieste was at issue. Until the break between Tito and Stalin, the Western powers and the Eastern bloc faced each other uncompromisingly. In addition to capitalism and communism, Italians and Slovenes, monarchists and republicans as well as war winners and losers often faced each other irreconcilably. The neutral buffer state Free Territory of Trieste , founded in 1947 with

3660-511: The KGB and involved in its intelligence operations, adhered to Moscow's line, although dissent began to appear after 1956. Other critiques of the consensus policy came from anti-Vietnam War activists , the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament , and the anti-nuclear movement . In early 1947, France, Britain and the United States unsuccessfully attempted to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union for

3782-518: The Kingdom of Greece in its civil war against Communist-led insurgents. In the same month, Stalin conducted the rigged 1947 Polish legislative election which constituted an open breach of the Yalta Agreement . The US government responded to this announcement by adopting a policy of containment , with the goal of stopping the spread of communism . Truman delivered a speech calling for

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3904-616: The National Priorities List , following investigations and minor cleanup efforts in the previous four years. In 1997, following their purchase by General Electric, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission fined UNC $ 100,000 for failing to set aside funds for the decommission of the site. In 2008, a five-year plan for the cleanup of contaminated uranium sites on the Navajo reservation, of which Church Rock

4026-569: The Sino-Soviet border conflict , while France, a Western Bloc state, began to demand greater autonomy of action. The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia occurred to suppress the Prague Spring of 1968, while the United States experienced internal turmoil from the civil rights movement and opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War . In the 1960s–1970s, an international peace movement took root among citizens around

4148-746: The Soviet boycott of the Allied Control Council and its incapacitation, an event marking the beginning of the full-blown Cold War and the end of its prelude, as well as ending any hopes at the time for a single German government and leading to formation in 1949 of the Federal Republic of Germany and German Democratic Republic . The twin policies of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan led to billions in economic and military aid for Western Europe, Greece, and Turkey. With

4270-608: The Space Race . The US and USSR were both part of the Allies of World War II , the military coalition which had defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. After the war, the USSR installed satellite governments in the territories of Eastern and Central Europe it had occupied, and promoted the spread of communism to North Korea in 1948 and created an alliance with the People's Republic of China in 1949. The US declared

4392-568: The Truman Doctrine of " containment " in 1947, launched the Marshall Plan in 1948 to assist Western Europe's economic recovery, and founded the NATO military alliance in 1949 (which was matched by the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact in 1955). Germany's split occupation zones solidified into East and West Germany in 1949. The first major proxy war of the period was the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, which ended in stalemate. In 1962,

4514-609: The Turkish Straits crisis and Black Sea border disputes were also a major factor in increasing tensions. In September, the Soviet side produced the Novikov telegram, sent by the Soviet ambassador to the US but commissioned and "co-authored" by Vyacheslav Molotov ; it portrayed the US as being in the grip of monopoly capitalists who were building up military capability "to prepare the conditions for winning world supremacy in

4636-515: The United Nations Security Council Resolution 82 and 83 backed the defense of South Korea, although the Soviets were then boycotting meetings in protest of the fact that Taiwan (Republic of China), not the People's Republic of China , held a permanent seat on the council. A UN force of sixteen countries faced North Korea, although 40 percent of troops were South Korean, and about 50 percent were from

4758-414: The infrared range. Only about 25% are in the visible range. Since the skin feels light (visible or otherwise) through its heating of the skin surface, it is possible that this phenomenon can explain the heat wave perceptions. However, this explanation has not been confirmed and may be inconsistent with the intensity of light reported by witnesses compared to the intensity of heat perceived. Further research

4880-562: The 1970s, the company saw a large expansion. In 1977, it opened its Church Rock uranium mill and moved to a new, larger Naval Products plant in Montville. In 1971, the company expanded into coal mining with the purchase of Plateau Mining. The company also entered a partnership with Gulf Oil to form the Gulf United Nuclear Fuels Corporation, although the company sold its interest to Gulf in 1973. By 1978,

5002-463: The Cold War was in its essence a war of ideas. The United States, acting through the CIA, funded a long list of projects to counter the communist appeal among intellectuals in Europe and the developing world. The CIA also covertly sponsored a domestic propaganda campaign called Crusade for Freedom . The rearmament of West Germany was achieved in the early 1950s. Its main promoter was Konrad Adenauer ,

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5124-465: The Cold War, preventing Western food, materials and supplies from arriving in the West Germany's exclave of West Berlin . The United States (primarily), Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and several other countries began the massive "Berlin airlift", supplying West Berlin with food and other provisions despite Soviet threats. The Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against

5246-777: The Communist governments militarily. The fall of the Iron Curtain after the Pan-European Picnic and the Revolutions of 1989 , which represented a peaceful revolutionary wave with the exception of the Romanian revolution and the Afghan Civil War (1989–1992) , overthrew almost all of the Marxist–Leninist regimes of the Eastern Bloc. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control in

5368-585: The Health Physics Research Reactor and located in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory , the reactor was completed on 31 May 1963. It was the first of its kind to depart from an unalloyed uranium metal assembly. In 1963, the company purchased its first uranium mill, Ambrosia Lake. In 1964, it built a nuclear fuel recycling plant. The company experienced its first nuclear accident when a recycling plant worker

5490-400: The KGB (1973–1979), described active measures as "the heart and soul of Soviet intelligence ." During the Sino-Soviet split , "spy wars" also occurred between the USSR and PRC. In September 1947, the Soviets created Cominform to impose orthodoxy within the international communist movement and tighten political control over Soviet satellites through coordination of communist parties in

5612-428: The Marshall Plan, seeing it as an effort by the US to impose its influence on Europe. In response, the Soviet Union established Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) to foster economic cooperation among communist states. The United States and its Western European allies sought to strengthen their bonds and used the policy of containment against Soviet influence; they accomplished this most notably through

5734-514: The Russian Civil War further complicated relations, and although the Soviet Union later allied with Western powers to defeat Nazi Germany , this cooperation was strained by mutual suspicions. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, disagreements about the future of Europe, particularly Eastern Europe , became central. The Soviet Union's establishment of communist regimes in the countries it had liberated from Nazi control—enforced by

5856-481: The Soviet Union and its communist party , which had an influence across the Second World and was also tied to a network of authoritarian states. The Soviet Union had a command economy and installed similarly communist regimes its in satellites. United States involvement in regime change during the Cold War included support for anti-communist and right-wing dictatorships , governments, and uprisings across

5978-467: The Soviet Union was used to monitor dissent from official Soviet politics and morals. Although to an extent disinformation had always existed, the term itself was invented, and the strategy formalized by a black propaganda department of the Soviet KGB. Based on the amount of top-secret Cold War archival information that has been released, historian Raymond L. Garthoff concludes there probably

6100-572: The Soviet Union, which at the time was undergoing the Era of Stagnation . This phase saw the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introducing the liberalizing reforms of glasnost ("openness") and perestroika ("reorganization") and ending Soviet involvement in Afghanistan in 1989. Pressures for national sovereignty grew stronger in Eastern Europe, and Gorbachev refused to further support

6222-558: The Soviet Union. A number of self-proclaimed Marxist–Leninist governments were formed in the second half of the 1970s in developing countries , including Angola , Mozambique , Ethiopia , Cambodia , Afghanistan , and Nicaragua . Détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. Beginning in the 1980s, this phase was another period of elevated tension. The Reagan Doctrine led to increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on

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6344-643: The Soviets accumulated after broken promises by Stalin and Molotov concerning Europe and Iran. Following the World War II Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran , the country was occupied by the Red Army in the far north and the British in the south. Iran was used by the United States and British to supply the Soviet Union, and the Allies agreed to withdraw from Iran within six months after the cessation of hostilities. However, when this deadline came,

6466-425: The Soviets agreed to withdraw from Iran after persistent US pressure, an early success of containment policy. By 1947, US president Harry S. Truman was outraged by the perceived resistance of the Soviet Union to American demands in Iran, Turkey, and Greece, as well as Soviet rejection of the Baruch Plan on nuclear weapons. In February 1947, the British government announced that it could no longer afford to finance

6588-404: The Soviets had permitted to retain democratic structures. The public brutality of the coup shocked Western powers more than any event up to that point, set in motion a brief scare that war would occur, and swept away the last vestiges of opposition to the Marshall Plan in the United States Congress. In an immediate aftermath of the crisis, the London Six-Power Conference was held, resulting in

6710-426: The Soviets remained in Iran under the guise of the Azerbaijan People's Government and Kurdish Republic of Mahabad . Shortly thereafter, on 5 March, former British prime minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous " Iron Curtain " speech in Fulton, Missouri . The speech called for an Anglo-American alliance against the Soviets, whom he accused of establishing an "iron curtain" dividing Europe from " Stettin in

6832-455: The Truman Doctrine marked the beginning of a US bipartisan defense and foreign policy consensus between Republicans and Democrats focused on containment and deterrence that weakened during and after the Vietnam War , but ultimately persisted thereafter. Moderate and conservative parties in Europe, as well as social democrats, gave virtually unconditional support to the Western alliance, while European and American Communists , financed by

6954-417: The U.S Navy. In 1979 Combustion Engineering applied to decommission the site, however the proposal was rejected because decontamination and disposal activities were not included in the plan. Following this, several surveys were conducted during the 1980s to document the area's radiation exposure. The most notable of these was conducted in 1983 by the Radiation Management Corporation with the goal of discovering

7076-401: The UNC facility. UNC operated two facilities for the fabrication of nuclear products for the U.S Navy over its life. The original facility, located in New Haven , Connecticut , was built and operated by Olin Mathieson Chemicals from 1956 until 1961, when the newly formed UNC took over operations. It moved to a new facility in Montville in 1974 and decommissioned the original plant. Following

7198-434: The US assistance, the Greek military won its civil war . Under the leadership of Alcide De Gasperi the Italian Christian Democrats defeated the powerful Communist – Socialist alliance in the elections of 1948 . All major powers engaged in espionage, using a great variety of spies, double agents , moles , and new technologies such as the tapping of telephone cables. The Soviet KGB ("Committee for State Security"),

7320-476: The US government gave to Western European countries over $ 13 billion (equivalent to $ 189 billion in 2016) to rebuild the economy of Europe . Later, the program led to the creation of the OECD . The plan's aim was to rebuild the democratic and economic systems of Europe and to counter perceived threats to the European balance of power , such as communist parties seizing control through revolutions or elections. The plan also stated that European prosperity

7442-419: The US was trying to buy a pro-US re-alignment of Europe. Stalin therefore prevented Eastern Bloc nations from receiving Marshall Plan aid. The Soviet Union's alternative to the Marshall Plan, which was purported to involve Soviet subsidies and trade with central and eastern Europe, became known as the Molotov Plan (later institutionalized in January 1949 as the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance ). Stalin

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7564-424: The USSR. In this way, this US would exercise " preponderant power ," oppose neutrality, and establish global hegemony . In the early 1950s (a period sometimes known as the " Pactomania "), the US formalized a series of alliances with Japan (a former WWII enemy), South Korea , Taiwan , Australia , New Zealand , Thailand and the Philippines (notably ANZUS in 1951 and SEATO in 1954), thereby guaranteeing

7686-412: The United Nations, was split up and dissolved in 1954 and 1975, also because of the détente between the West and Tito. The US and Britain merged their western German occupation zones into " Bizone " (1 January 1947, later "Trizone" with the addition of France's zone, April 1949). As part of the economic rebuilding of Germany, in early 1948, representatives of a number of Western European governments and

7808-445: The United States a number of long-term military bases. One of the more significant examples of the implementation of containment was the United Nations US-led intervention in the Korean War . In June 1950, after years of mutual hostilities, Kim Il Sung 's North Korean People's Army invaded South Korea at the 38th parallel . Stalin had been reluctant to support the invasion but ultimately sent advisers. To Stalin's surprise,

7930-401: The United States announced an agreement for a merger of western German areas into a federal governmental system. In addition, in accordance with the Marshall Plan , they began to re-industrialize and rebuild the West German economy, including the introduction of a new Deutsche Mark currency to replace the old Reichsmark currency that the Soviets had debased. The US had secretly decided that

8052-579: The United States. Criticality incident A criticality accident is an accidental uncontrolled nuclear fission chain reaction . It is sometimes referred to as a critical excursion , critical power excursion , divergent chain reaction , or simply critical . Any such event involves the unintended accumulation or arrangement of a critical mass of fissile material, for example enriched uranium or plutonium . Criticality accidents can release potentially fatal radiation doses if they occur in an unprotected environment . Under normal circumstances,

8174-450: The Warsaw Pact's primary function was to safeguard Soviet hegemony over its Eastern European satellites, with the pact's only direct military actions having been the invasions of its own member states to keep them from breaking away; in the 1960s, the pact evolved into a multilateral alliance, in which the non-Soviet Warsaw Pact members gained significant scope to pursue their own interests. In 1961, Soviet-allied East Germany constructed

8296-423: The Western agencies paid special attention to debriefing Eastern Bloc defectors . Edward Jay Epstein describes that the CIA understood that the KGB used "provocations", or fake defections, as a trick to embarrass Western intelligence and establish Soviet double agents. As a result, from 1959 to 1973, the CIA required that East Bloc defectors went through a counterintelligence investigation before being recruited as

8418-402: The accusation that the USSR was exerting increasing control over the countries lying in its sphere. He argued that there was nothing surprising in "the fact that the Soviet Union, anxious for its future safety, [was] trying to see to it that governments loyal in their attitude to the Soviet Union should exist in these countries." Soviet territorial demands to Turkey regarding the Dardanelles in

8540-432: The allocation of $ 400 million to intervene in the war and unveiled the Truman Doctrine , which framed the conflict as a contest between free peoples and totalitarian regimes. American policymakers accused the Soviet Union of conspiring against the Greek royalists in an effort to expand Soviet influence even though Stalin had told the Communist Party to cooperate with the British-backed government. Enunciation of

8662-405: The basis of negligible likelihoods (reasonably foreseeable accidents). The assembly of a critical mass establishes a nuclear chain reaction, resulting in an exponential rate of change in the neutron population over space and time leading to an increase in neutron flux . This increased flux and attendant fission rate produces radiation that contains both a neutron and gamma ray component and

8784-482: The bureau responsible for foreign espionage and internal surveillance, was famous for its effectiveness. The most famous Soviet operation involved its atomic spies that delivered crucial information from the United States' Manhattan Project , leading the USSR to detonate its first nuclear weapon in 1949, four years after the American detonation and much sooner than expected. A massive network of informants throughout

8906-716: The chancellor of West Germany, with France the main opponent. Washington had the decisive voice. It was strongly supported by the Pentagon (the US military leadership), and weakly opposed by President Truman; the State Department was ambivalent. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 changed the calculations and Washington now gave full support. That also involved naming Dwight D. Eisenhower in charge of NATO forces and sending more American troops to West Germany. There

9028-515: The communist party. Radio and television organizations were state-owned, while print media was usually owned by political organizations, mostly by the local communist party. Soviet radio broadcasts used Marxist rhetoric to attack capitalism, emphasizing themes of labor exploitation, imperialism and war-mongering. Along with the broadcasts of the BBC and the Voice of America to Central and Eastern Europe,

9150-422: The company failed to record or disclose specific information about the location, size, or makeup of the burials. In 1971, the facility was sold to the newly formed Gulf United Nuclear Fuels Corporation, a partnership between UNC and Gulf Oil . The site was sold to General Atomics in 1974, and again sold later that year to Combustion Engineering , who repurposed it into an enriched uranium fuel production plant for

9272-461: The company was the nation's largest independent producer of uranium. The next year, 1979, saw the company's second nuclear incident, when a dam at their Church Rock mine broke, leaking radioactive waste into a tributary of the Puerco River. In 1984, following the decline of the uranium industry near the end of the cold war, the United Nuclear Corporation rebranded to "UNC" and transitioned over

9394-563: The context of production and testing of fissile material for both nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors . The table below gives a selection of well documented incidents. There was speculation although not confirmed within criticality accident experts, that Fukushima 3 suffered a criticality accident. Based on incomplete information about the 2011 Fukushima I nuclear accidents , Dr. Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress speculates that transient criticalities may have occurred there. Noting that limited, uncontrolled chain reactions might occur at Fukushima I,

9516-497: The country and was banned following the 1991 Soviet coup attempt that August. This in turn led to the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and the collapse of Communist governments across much of Africa and Asia. The Russian Federation became the Soviet Union's successor state, while many of the other republics emerged from the Soviet Union's collapse as fully independent post-Soviet states . The United States

9638-420: The criticality accidents with eyewitness accounts indicates that the heat waves were only observed when the fluorescent blue glow (the non-Cherenkov light, see above) was also observed. This would suggest a possible relationship between the two, and indeed, one can be potentially identified. In dense air, over 30% of the emission lines from nitrogen and oxygen are in the ultraviolet range, and about 45% are in

9760-533: The deal was terminated. In 1968, the company became publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange . Although, the company had previously been an OTC stock . Later in 1968, Combustion Engineering purchased 22% of UNC despite the majority opposition of the UNC board. In response, UNC brought an antitrust suit against CE. As a result, NE was forced to divest themselves of the company stock. During

9882-454: The end of the cold war, the Montville facility was also shut down in 1990, with decontamination being completed in 1994. UNC owned and operated the Hematite, Missouri reactor fuel production plant between 1961 and 1971. The facility was inherited from Mallinckrodt, one of three companies making up UNC. During its tenure, the company buried small quantities of uranium on the property; however

10004-626: The facility was completed in 2016. Cold War The Cold War was a period of global geopolitical tension and struggle for ideological and economic influence between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc , that started in 1947, two years after the end of World War II , and lasted until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war

10126-463: The fall of the communist governments of Europe from 1989, which concluded with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Western Bloc included the US and a number of First World nations that were generally capitalist and liberal democratic but tied to a network of often authoritarian Third World states, most of which were the European powers' former colonies . The Eastern Bloc was led by

10248-554: The fission chain reaction to become self-sustaining within the mass of material. In other words, in a critical mass, the number of neutrons emitted over time, exactly equals the number of neutrons captured by another nucleus or lost to the environment. If the mass is supercritical, the number of neutrons emitted per unit time exceeds those absorbed or lost, resulting in a cascade of nuclear fissions at increasing rate. Criticality can be achieved by using metallic uranium or plutonium, liquid solutions, or powder slurries. The chain reaction

10370-417: The fission event. In steady-state operation, nuclear reactors operate at exact criticality. When at least one dollar of reactivity is added above the exact critical point (where the neutron production rate balances the rate of neutron losses, from both absorption and leakage) then the chain reaction does not rely on delayed neutrons. In such cases, the neutron population can rapidly increase exponentially, with

10492-401: The formation of NATO , which was essentially a defensive agreement in 1949. The Soviet Union countered with the Warsaw Pact in 1955, which had similar results with the Eastern Bloc. As by that time the Soviet Union already had an armed presence and political domination all over its eastern satellite states, the pact has been long considered superfluous. Although nominally a defensive alliance,

10614-440: The immediate area, the critical mass formed would not be capable of producing a massive nuclear explosion of the type that fission bombs are designed to produce. This is because all the design features needed to make a nuclear warhead cannot arise by chance. In some cases, the heat released by the chain reaction will cause the fissile (and other nearby) materials to expand. In such cases, the chain reaction can either settle into

10736-471: The initial prompt-critical excursion. The longest of the 22 process accidents occurred at Hanford Works in 1962 and lasted for 37.5 hours. The 1999 Tokaimura nuclear accident remained critical for about 20 hours, until it was shut down by active intervention. The exponential excursion is characterized by a reactivity of less than one dollar added, where the neutron population rises as an exponential over time, until either feedback effects or intervention reduce

10858-529: The kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of "cold war" with its neighbours. In The Observer of 10 March 1946, Orwell wrote, "...after the Moscow conference last December, Russia began to make a 'cold war' on Britain and the British Empire." The first use of the term to describe

10980-477: The lower containment sections of three of the Fukushima I reactors, including reactor three. The melted material was not expected to breach one of the lower containers, which could cause a massive radioactivity release. Instead, the melted fuel is thought to have dispersed uniformly across the lower portions of the containers of reactors No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3, making the resumption of the fission process, known as

11102-402: The loyalty of non-aligned countries , such as India . By the 1970s, Japan and Western Europe rebuilt their economies, allowing them more diplomatic independence. After the Sino-Soviet split between the USSR and China in 1961, the U.S. initiated contacts with China in 1972 . In the same year, the US and USSR signed a series of treaties limiting their nuclear arsenals, which eased tensions for

11224-414: The most prominent architects of America's early Cold War strategy, especially those who believed that the Cold War would eventually be fought by political rather than military means, such as George F. Kennan. Soviet and Eastern Bloc authorities used various methods to suppress Western broadcasts, including radio jamming . American policymakers, including Kennan and John Foster Dulles , acknowledged that

11346-407: The nature of the evolution over time: The prompt-critical excursion is characterized by a power history with an initial prompt-critical spike as previously noted, which either self-terminates or continues with a tail region that decreases over an extended period of time. The transient critical excursion is characterized by a continuing or repeating spike pattern (sometimes known as "chugging") after

11468-449: The next decade into a business aviation and jet engine service provider. With the purchase of Garrett Aviation Services in 1996, UNC controlled 52% of the business aviation services market and saw annual revenues of close to $ 1 billion. The next year, in 1997, General Electric acquired the company and its debts for $ 330 million, with The Carlyle Group purchasing its military contract services division, UNC Aviation Services. Ambrosia Lake

11590-671: The policy change. Once again, the East Berlin communists attempted to disrupt the Berlin municipal elections , which were held on 5 December 1948 and produced a turnout of 86% and an overwhelming victory for the non-communist parties. The results effectively divided the city into East and West, the latter comprising US, British and French sectors. 300,000 Berliners demonstrated and urged the international airlift to continue, and US Air Force pilot Gail Halvorsen created " Operation Vittles ", which supplied candy to German children. The Airlift

11712-441: The political decision-making level on either side. Similarly, there is no evidence, on either side, of any major political or military decision that was prematurely discovered through espionage and thwarted by the other side. There also is no evidence of any major political or military decision that was crucially influenced (much less generated) by an agent of the other side. According to historian Robert L. Benson, "Washington's forte

11834-479: The presence of the Red Army —alarmed the US and UK. Western leaders saw this as a clear instance of Soviet expansionism, clashing with their vision of a democratic Europe. Economically, the divide was sharpened with the introduction of the Marshall Plan in 1947, a US initiative to provide financial aid to rebuild Europe and prevent the spread of communism by stabilizing capitalist economies. The Soviet Union rejected

11956-475: The reactivity. The exponential excursion can reach a peak power level, then decrease over time, or reach a steady-state power level, where the critical state is exactly achieved for a "steady-state" excursion. The steady-state excursion is also a state which the heat generated by fission is balanced by the heat losses to the ambient environment. This excursion has been characterized by the Oklo natural reactor that

12078-543: The releases are localized. Nonetheless, fatal radiation exposures have occurred to persons close to these events, resulting in more than 20 fatalities. In a few reactor and critical experiment assembly accidents, the energy released has caused significant mechanical damage or steam explosions . Criticality occurs when sufficient fissile material (a critical mass ) accumulates in a small volume such that each fission, on average, produces one neutron that in turn strikes another fissile atom and causes another fission. This causes

12200-627: The sites Mallinckrodt and UNC had used to dispose of nuclear waste. The report found soil contamination at 40 times higher than the NRC's guidelines allow, and contamination in the ground water 1 to 12 times higher than the EPA allows. Despite this, the survey was unable to identify all burial sites. The site was purchased in 2000 by the Westinghouse Electric Company and closed the next year. The decontamination and decommissioning of

12322-469: The source of the term, Lippmann traced it to a French term from the 1930s, la guerre froide . The roots of the Cold War can be traced back to diplomatic and military tensions preceding World War II. The 1917 Russian Revolution and the subsequent Treaty of Brest-Litovsk , where Soviet Russia ceded vast territories to Germany, deepened distrust among the Western Allies. Allied intervention in

12444-463: The specific post-war geopolitical confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States came in a speech by Bernard Baruch , an influential advisor to Democratic presidents, on 16 April 1947. The speech, written by journalist Herbert Bayard Swope , proclaimed, "Let us not be deceived: we are today in the midst of a cold war." Newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann gave the term wide currency with his book The Cold War . When asked in 1947 about

12566-409: The system or be absorbed without causing further fissions. For every 1,000 neutrons released by fission, a small number, typically no more than about 7, are delayed neutrons which are emitted from the fission product precursors, called delayed neutron emitters . This delayed neutron fraction, on the order of 0.007 for uranium, is crucial for the control of the neutron chain reaction in reactors . It

12688-411: The world, while Soviet involvement in regime change included the funding of left-wing parties , wars of independence , revolutions and dictatorships. As nearly all the colonial states underwent decolonization and achieved independence in the period from 1945 to 1960, many became Third World battlefields in the Cold War. At the end of World War II, English writer George Orwell used cold war , as

12810-486: The world. Movements against nuclear weapons testing and for nuclear disarmament took place, with large anti-war protests . By the 1970s, both sides had started making allowances for peace and security, ushering in a period of détente that saw the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the 1972 visit by Richard Nixon to China that opened relations with China as a strategic counterweight to

12932-505: Was 'signals' intelligence - the procurement and analysis of coded foreign messages." leading to the Venona project or Venona intercepts, which monitored the communications of Soviet intelligence agents. Moynihan wrote that the Venona project contained "overwhelming proof of the activities of Soviet spy networks in America, complete with names, dates, places, and deeds." The Venona project

13054-412: Was a strong promise that West Germany would not develop nuclear weapons. Widespread fears of another rise of German militarism necessitated the new military to operate within an alliance framework under NATO command. In 1955, Washington secured full German membership of NATO. In May 1953, Lavrentiy Beria , by then in a government post, had made an unsuccessful proposal to allow the reunification of

13176-569: Was a uranium mine and mill built in 1957 and operated by the Phillips Petroleum Company until it was purchased by UNC in 1963. Shortly after, UNC ceased milling operations at the site, although they retained ownership of the property. The Church Rock uranium mine and mill, located in McKinley County , New Mexico , first began exploration in 1968 as the company looked to expand its operations to meet demand. The mill

13298-567: Was also fearful of a reconstituted Germany; his vision of a post-war Germany did not include the ability to rearm or pose any kind of threat to the Soviet Union. In early 1948, following reports of strengthening "reactionary elements", Czech Communists executed a coup d'état in Czechoslovakia (resulting in the formation of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (9 May 1948)), the only Eastern Bloc state that

13420-548: Was as much a logistical as a political and psychological success for the West; it firmly linked West Berlin to the United States. In May 1949, Stalin backed down and lifted the blockade. In 1952, Stalin repeatedly proposed a plan to unify East and West Germany under a single government chosen in elections supervised by the United Nations, if the new Germany were to stay out of Western military alliances, but this proposal

13542-679: Was contingent upon German economic recovery. One month later, Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 , creating a unified Department of Defense , the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Council (NSC). These would become the main bureaucracies for US defense policy in the Cold War. Stalin believed economic integration with the West would allow Eastern Bloc countries to escape Soviet control, and that

13664-472: Was kept highly secret even from policymakers until the Moynihan Commission in 1995. Despite this, the decryption project had already been betrayed and dispatched to the USSR by Kim Philby and Bill Weisband in 1946, as was discovered by the US by 1950. Nonetheless, the Soviets had to keep their discovery of the program secret, too, and continued leaking their own information, some of which

13786-464: Was killed by a criticality incident . In 1965, UNC won a contract from the Atomic Energy Commission to operate the reactor and fuel fabrication facilities at the AEC's plant. The company also attempted to merge with Pan American Sulphur, however the deal never came to fruition. The next year, in 1966, Cities Services Co attempted to enter the nuclear market through purchasing UNC, however, yet again,

13908-506: Was left as the world's sole superpower. In February 1946, George F. Kennan 's " Long Telegram " from Moscow to Washington helped to articulate the US government's increasingly hard line against the Soviets, which would become the basis for US strategy toward the Soviet Union for the duration of the Cold War. The telegram galvanized a policy debate that would eventually shape the Truman administration 's Soviet policy. Washington's opposition to

14030-659: Was naturally produced within uranium deposits in Gabon , Africa about 1.7 billion years ago. A Los Alamos report recorded 60 criticality accidents between 1945 and 1999. These caused 21 deaths: seven in the United States, ten in the Soviet Union, two in Japan, one in Argentina, and one in Yugoslavia. Nine have been due to process accidents, and the others from research reactor accidents. Criticality accidents have occurred in

14152-545: Was now restricted to the island of Taiwan , the nationalist government of which exists to this day. The Kremlin promptly created an alliance with the newly formed People's Republic of China. According to Norwegian historian Odd Arne Westad , the communists won the Civil War because they made fewer military mistakes than Chiang Kai-Shek made, and because in his search for a powerful centralized government, Chiang antagonized too many interest groups in China. Moreover, his party

14274-554: Was operational from June 1977 to May 1982. At around 5:30am on 16 July 1979, a 20ft breach opened in the south cell of the facility's uranium mill tailings pond, releasing 1,000 tonnes of solid radioactive mill waste and 93 million US gallons acidic, radioactive tailings solution into Pipeline Arroyo, a tributary of the Puerco River . In 1983 the site was added to the Environmental Protection Agency 's

14396-403: Was parity in the quantity and quality of secret information obtained by each side. However, the Soviets probably had an advantage in terms of HUMINT (human intelligence or interpersonal espionage) and "sometimes in its reach into high policy circles." In terms of decisive impact, however, he concludes: We also can now have high confidence in the judgment that there were no successful "moles" at

14518-411: Was said to be a sign of high ambient radioactivity by Chernobyl liquidators . This blue flash or "blue glow" can also be attributed to Cherenkov radiation , if either water is involved in the critical system or when the blue flash is experienced by the human eye. Additionally, if ionizing radiation directly transects the vitreous humor of the eye, Cherenkov radiation can be generated and perceived as

14640-494: Was still useful to the American program. According to Moynihan, even President Truman may not have been fully informed of Venona, which may have left him unaware of the extent of Soviet espionage. Clandestine atomic spies from the Soviet Union, who infiltrated the Manhattan Project at various points during WWII, played a major role in increasing tensions that led to the Cold War. In addition to usual espionage,

14762-655: Was turned down by the Western powers. Some sources dispute the sincerity of the proposal. Britain, France, the United States, Canada and eight other western European countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty of April 1949, establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). That August, the first Soviet atomic device was detonated in Semipalatinsk , Kazakh SSR . Following Soviet refusals to participate in

14884-487: Was weakened during the war against Japan . Meanwhile, the communists told different groups, such as the peasants, exactly what they wanted to hear, and they cloaked themselves under the cover of Chinese nationalism . Confronted with the communist revolution in China and the end of the American atomic monopoly in 1949, the Truman administration quickly moved to escalate and expand its containment doctrine. In NSC 68 ,

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