The Bomb's lethal legacy

1990 · WGBH (Television station : Boston, Mass.), Documentary Guild. · [Boston, Mass.] : WGBH Educational Foundation

Forty years ago, at the dawn of the nuclear age and in the name of 'national security,' the U.S. government created the Hanford Nuclear Reservation to generate plutonium for nuclear weapons. Among its legacies is an enormous volume of radioactive waste--enough to cover Manhattan Island to a depth of 40 feet--and a disastrous release of radioactive iodine-131 which affected over 20,000 children. The program attempts to shed light on the early days of the nuclear age, on the complex mix of hopes and fears that were attached to nuclear technology, on the options available for cleaning up contaminated nuclear facilities, on the conflict between national security and public accountability, and on the role of science in resolving that conflict.