Customer Reviews

On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dr. Gerber reduced the thousands of documents, memos, and misc data declassified reguarding the Hanford Area and the surrounding region from the very beginning of the Manhattan Project. Having lived there for a majority of my life in what was once the "Richland Village" and going to a high school with a mascot of the Bombers, this book was particularly interesting to me. It also allowed me to carry intelligent conversation with my grandfather (who worked there from the 50's till the 80's). Highly technical in parts but with some explaination, I reccommend you read a bit about radioactivity and geology to assist your understanding of the content.

I grew up in Richland and went to Hanford High School during the Reagan/Bush years. I found her book interesting, but it seemed to lack the details I was trying to learn more about, primarily the role of HEAL and other citizen action groups to promote more honesty about the dangers of plutonium production. Growing up around "the Area" I found not a lot of awareness about these issues and even found myself avoiding them for the last twenty years of my life! Her book brought back to me the mindset of the area that allows that kind of cloud. She gives only one or two sentences each for HEAL and the Downwinders, without whose work she would not have had the material for her book. None at all to the incredible journalism of Steele at the Spokesman Review and no mention of the whistle blower Casey Ruud. I found that lapse pretty typical of Hanfordization. I remember my Physics teacher telling our class that automobile engines were more dangerous than spent uranium fuel which could be used to power everything in the future. I guess he didn't really consider the use of dirty bombs, <sigh> . . . I found the book Atomic Harvest more informative.