Military nuclear relations between the United States and Great Britain under the terms of the McMahon Act, 1946–1958

Ball, Simon

doi:10.1017/s0018246x0001949x

Cited by 16 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…And it increased after the United States Congress had passed the MacMahon Act (1946), which cut off Britain from vital American nuclear data. 73 With negotiations on international control dragging on in the UNAEC until May 1948, the issue remained high on the ASA's agenda. 74 ASA members Chadwick, Cockcroft, Massey, Oliphant, Peierls, and Thomson sat on Chatham House's Atomic Energy Study Group.…”

Section: The Asa and The International Control Of Nuclear Energy 194mentioning

confidence: 99%

Transnational Professional Activism and the Prevention of Nuclear War in Britain

Laucht¹

2017

Journal of Social History

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While anti-nuclear weapons activism in Britain and other nations has received considerable historiographical attention, its transnational professional dimensions have so far been neglected. This article thus introduces the concept of "transnational professional activism" to describe the ways in which scientific and medical professionals, driven by professional ethos and etiquette, and based on their self-fashioned expert identities, organized themselves into national interest groups situated within wider transnational networks in order to act against the perceived threat that nuclear war posed to human society. Through a comparative analysis of the activism of two key groups of atomic scientists and medical professionals at two key moments of the Cold War in Britain, the first Western European nation to acquire nuclear arms, this study examines shifts in the nature of transnational professional activism. The Atomic Scientists' Association, with its promotion of the international control of nuclear energy from 1945 to 1948, and the Medical Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons, which analyzed the anticipated medical effects of nuclear war in the years from 1980 to 1985, are at the center of this analysis.

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Section: The Asa and The International Control Of Nuclear Energy 194mentioning

confidence: 99%

Transnational Professional Activism and the Prevention of Nuclear War in Britain

Laucht¹

2017

Journal of Social History

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“…While the close nuclear collaboration between Britain, the United States and Canada had led to the development of the first atomic bombs in the Manhattan Project, the Attlee government now found itself excluded from access to vital nuclear information. 9 Alongside the disintegration of the British Empire, the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as dominant superpowers in the years following 1945 intensified Britain's loss of influence in world affairs. Historian Margaret Gowing argued that the Attlee government's decision to pursue its independent nuclear arms programme was irrational and emotionally motivated to make up for the country's decreasing world role.…”

Section: Writing British Nuclear Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: British nuclear culture

Hogg¹,

Laucht²

2012

Br J Hist Sci

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In the extended introduction to this special issue on British nuclear culture, the guest editors outline the main historiographical and conceptual contours of British nuclear scholarship, and explore whether we can begin to define 'British nuclear culture' before introducing the contributors to this special issue, whose work we have organized into three broad areas. The first part is devoted to three articles that offer explicit and extended attempts to reconceptualize British nuclear culture, illuminating the complex links between nuclear science, the state and the individual citizen. The second part of this issue is devoted to three articles that concentrate on aspects of the history of nuclear science -focusing particularly on intellectuals, nuclear scientists and enthusiasts -alongside analysis of the popularization of nuclear science as well as the relationship between the state and nuclear science and its practitioners. In the third part, four articles examine the diverse ways in which 'official' narratives of the atomic age can be questioned, disrupted or enhanced by analysing the significance of journalistic, anti-nuclear and fictional narratives to the development of nuclear culture in Britain.In the last decade or so, humanities-based nuclear scholarship has expanded and diversified significantly, and there has been steady refinement of the conceptual and methodological frameworks used in the field. This applies to British nuclear scholarship too. To help explain this trend in the British context, we can look to the increased interest in cultural studies of the Cold War era, the continued release of official documentation under the Freedom of Information Act (2005), the emergence of new and varied source materials, the expansion of research possibilities opened up by digital archiving, and the influence of the imaginative and ambitious insights of nuclear scholars worldwide. Most recently, the aftermath of the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan in March 2011 saw the re-emergence of global nuclear 'motifs' such as that of Ulrich Beck's 'risk society'. 1 Aligned with continuing uncertainty over nuclear proliferation, this special issue on British nuclear culture seems especially timely in a period when nuclear debates are being revisited.But what precisely is 'British nuclear culture'? This question lies at the heart of this special issue, which brings together specialists from various fields, including the history of science and technology, cultural and social history, political and diplomatic history,

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“…However, Truman’s administration viewed the sharing of technical information as antithetical to the American aim of maintaining a nuclear monopoly. The U.S. Congress overwhelming agreed: the McMahon Bill that President Truman signed into law on August 1, 1946 forbade the government “to share information about nuclear technology with any other power.”10…”

Section: The Politics Of Foreign Distribution Of ‘American’ Isotopesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radioisotopes as political instruments, 1946-1953

Creager

2009

Dynamis

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The development of nuclear “piles,” soon called reactors, in the Manhattan Project provided a new technology for manufacturing radioactive isotopes. Radioisotopes, unstable variants of chemical elements that give off detectable radiation upon decay, were available in small amounts for use in research and therapy before World War II. In 1946, the U.S. government began utilizing one of its first reactors, dubbed X-10 at Oak Ridge, as a production facility for radioisotopes available for purchase to civilian institutions. This program of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission was meant to exemplify the peacetime dividends of atomic energy. The numerous requests from scientists outside the United States, however, sparked a political debate about whether the Commission should or even could export radioisotopes. This controversy manifested the tension in U.S. politics between scientific internationalism as a tool of diplomacy, associated with the aims of the Marshall Plan, and the desire to safeguard the country’s atomic monopoly at all costs, linked to American anti-Communism. This essay examines the various ways in which radioisotopes were used as political instruments—both by the U.S. federal government in world affairs, and by critics of the civilian control of atomic energy—in the early Cold War.

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Military nuclear relations between the United States and Great Britain under the terms of the McMahon Act, 1946–1958

Cited by 16 publications

References 4 publications

Transnational Professional Activism and the Prevention of Nuclear War in Britain

Transnational Professional Activism and the Prevention of Nuclear War in Britain

Introduction: British nuclear culture

Radioisotopes as political instruments, 1946-1953

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