The British were determined to become a nuclear power following the end of WWII but without the cooperation of the United States they had to "go it alone," even though the American success with the atomic bomb was at least partially due to the wartime assistance of the British. Britain created the infrastructure to make bombs but needed someplace to test them. Canada was considered, but then dropped. Australia wound up being the test site for the UK's atomic bomb.
Primarily this book is about the "atomic colonialism" of Britain towards Australia, although Australia's political leadership seems to have helped the British enthusiastically. The writing in the book gets a bit annoying as the author seems to think that the sole purpose of detonating the bombs was to impress the world, but having watched films related to the tests it was clear that the British were also interested in scientific testing which would lead to better protective gear and civil defense measures. With that being said, there can be no doubt that the British misled the Australians concerning the last series of "non-fission" tests for the purposes of establishing safety measures to prevent accidental detonation of atomic weapons. These tests certainly created unprecedented plutonium contamination, which the British later sought to downplay.
The book is rather redundant in places and for some reason does not include photos of the tests nor of some of the key people involved in the tests.
No comments:
Post a Comment