Israel has the bomb, and last summer rivals India and Pakistan tested devices, too. 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.
Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer puffs on a pipe during an interview at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., April 5, 1963. Oppenheimer, who directed the Manhattan Project that developed the first atom bomb, regretted his participation in the program in his later years. 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.