Radioisotopes as political instruments, 1946-1953

Abstract

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.

Global perspectives on science diplomacy: Exploring the diplomacy‐knowledge nexus in contemporary histories of science

“…In the closing pages of Freedom's Laboratory, Audra Wolfe describes in detail the methods she used to build what she calls "a personalized database of the United States' attempts to use science as a form of cultural diplomacy during the Cold War." This "database," a massive, cross-referenced assembly of documents from the U.S. State Department and intelligence community, permitted Wolfe to detect crucial links between individuals, administrations, and institutions, and to construct a narrative of how scientists and the values 25 See, for instance, Creager (2009Creager ( , 2013; Doel & Harper (2006); Hecht (2011); Oreskes & Krige (2014); Rentetzi (2017a). 26 We would like to acknowledge the fruitful conversations organized in the context of the InSciDE project by Nina Wormbs and Katharina Paul, in which the possibility of the coproduction of this sort was voiced by a number of scholars.…”

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Strahlen im Kalten Krieg

“…von Schwerin 2015, bes. S. 305-338;Creager 2014;Creager 2013;von Schwerin 2012;von Schwerin 2010b;Boudia 2009;Creager 2009;Herran/Roqué 2009;von Schwerin 2009;von Schwerin 2008;Creager 2006;Gaudillière 2006;Rheinberger 2006b;Santesmases 2006;Creager 2004;Creager 2002;Rheinberger 2001. 34 Vgl.…”