Hiding in Plain Sight: Uncovering Nuclear Histories

Nuclear histories are global yet worryingly incomplete. Linking a plutonium refinery in Washington, a uranium mine in Saskatchewan, a tsunami at Fukushima, a nuclear bomb test site in Rajasthan, a reactor ‘accident’ at Chernobyl, a shipping accident in the English Channel, and a president-to-prime-minister confrontation over the US-Canada frontier, these quasi-autobiographical essays prove the importance of public archives, personal files with fragments, oral histories, and private recollections. This is the social history, business history, environmental history, labour history, scientific and technological history, and indigenous history of the twentieth century. Hiding in Plain Sight offers everyone an entry to the irregularities of our ‘disorderly nuclear world’, and offers other researchers crucial insights to what richness lies within.

“Post-Quantal Garden” Annotated

The Post-Quantal Garden is a work of speculative fiction based on J.G. Ballard’s short story “The Terminal Beach” first published in 1964. Set within Donna Haraway’s climate-changed Chthulucene, the work is intended as an elliptical rumination on the history of nuclear testing in the Pacific, bio-hacking, tropicality, and apocalyptic narrative. Moving between historical fact and speculative fiction, the story takes the form of a scholarly introduction to and contextualization of fictional passages from an imaginary journal supposedly found during the very real radiological clean-up of Enewetak Atoll. Enewetak, an atoll in the Marshall Islands group, was used by the US for nuclear testing and was the site of operation Ivy-Mike, the first fusion bomb test, and is the setting for Ballard’s Terminal Beach.

Accidental synthesis of a previously unknown quasicrystal in the first atomic bomb test

The first test explosion of a nuclear bomb, the Trinity test of 16 July 1945, resulted in the fusion of surrounding sand, the test tower, and copper transmission lines into a glassy material known as “trinitite.” Here, we report the discovery, in a sample of red trinitite, of a hitherto unknown composition of icosahedral quasicrystal, Si61Cu30Ca7Fe2. It represents the oldest extant anthropogenic quasicrystal currently known, with the distinctive property that its precise time of creation is indelibly etched in history. Like the naturally formed quasicrystals found in the Khatyrka meteorite and experimental shock syntheses of quasicrystals, the anthropogenic quasicrystals in red trinitite demonstrate that transient extreme pressure–temperature conditions are suitable for the synthesis of quasicrystals and for the discovery of new quasicrystal-forming systems.

The age of adult pilocytic astrocytoma cells

Adult pilocytic astrocytomas (PAs) have been regarded as indistinguishable from pediatric PAs in terms of genome-wide expression and methylation patterns. It has been unclear whether adult PAs arise early in life and remain asymptomatic until adulthood, or whether they develop during adulthood. We sought to determine the age and origin of adult human PAs using two types of “marks” in the genomic DNA. First, we analyzed the DNA methylation patterns of adult and pediatric PAs to distinguish between PAs of different anatomic locations (n = 257 PA and control brain tissues). Second, we measured the concentration of nuclear bomb test-derived 14C in genomic DNA (n = 14 cases), which indicates the time point of the formation of human cell populations. Our data suggest that adult and pediatric PAs developing in the infratentorial brain are closely related and potentially develop from precursor cells early in life, whereas supratentorial PAs might show age and location-specific differences.

The nature and extent of bomb tritium remaining in deep soils

<p>Understanding the movement of water in soils is important for estimating subsurface water reserves. Despite the advances made in understanding water movement, very few tools can directly ‘follow the water’. Tritium, a tracer that decays with time and resides within individual water molecules, is one such tool. Some tritium is produced naturally, others result from the nuclear bomb test era of the 1960s. Since the atmospheric nuclear tests ended following the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, however, the amount of tritium in soil water has declined, putting into question the usefulness of the environmental tritium method for tracking water movement in future studies. Our study explores the usefulness of the tritium method. Our results highlight the narrow window of time, over the next 20 years depending on the model used, within which the tritium method may still be applicable. We call on scientists to now take full advantage of the environmental tritium method in places where the tool may still be applicable. A richer understanding of water movement in soils is ultimately critical for ecosystem services and water resources management, particularly in semi-arid environments with deep soils.</p>

Effect of aging process on combustion and mechanical performance of nitroguanidine propellants

The effect of different aging times (1 day, 3 days, 5 days and 7 days) on the combustion performance and mechanical properties of nitroguanidine propellants was studied.Through the mechanical properties test of impact and compression and closed bomb test of the prepared propellants, it was found that the relative steepness of the propellants aged for 3 days under normal and low temperature conditions was all less than 1;Under normal and low temperature conditions, the impact strength of propellants aged for 5 days was the largest;Propellants aged for 7 days had the highest compressive strength at low temperatures and propellants aged for 1 day had the highest compression rate at low temperatures.Comprehensive research results show that aging time of three days has a better improvement in the combustion performance and mechanical properties of the propellants.