Technology In the Shadow of Nuclear Fission

Just prior to the arrival of our two young guests from the Chernobyl area in June, I was reading Pedro Arrupeā€™s memoir of the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. The nuclear disaster at Chernobyl has certain obvious things in common with the devastation of Hiroshima, even if the purpose of the human endeavor manifested in each case remain radically different. Both the accidental explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor and the intentional exploding of the first atomic bomb in the skies over Hiroshima were products of the modern technological inno...