Ambitious powers in the world's toughest neighborhoods are elbowing into the exclusive nuclear club. Still more insidious dangers revealed themselves. Thousands have been exposed unknowingly to test-related radioactive fallout. Uranium miners were poisoned. The number is to be reduced under disarmament agreements to fewer than 3,000.
Scientists still proclaim the power of the atom to transform our everyday lives in benign ways.
Scanning microscopes allow researchers to examine the atomic structure cells and viruses, and build new industrial materials. Doctors infuse patients with weak radioactive cocktails to illuminate from within an array of illnesses. In many cases, especially cancer, they use higher doses of radiation to treat the illnesses, too. Chernobyl in 1986 demonstrated that combining human operators and complex systems can result in radioactive catastrophe. Wastes from civilian reactors must be stored for thousands of years.