| "Splitting Atoms, Fracturing Landscapes: Policymaking, Environmental Science, and the Nuclear Complex, 1945-1960" examines the implications of an expansive nuclear culture in the postwar United States. This dissertation probes the intersection of Cold War policymaking, environmental science, and the nuclear complex---a shorthand way of discussing the sum set of all nuclear technologies in conjunction with the societal structures and ideologies necessary to implement such technology. Studying a unified nuclear complex corrects for the limitations associated with studying all nuclear technologies as separate entities, something that has created fractured understandings of how splitting the atom affected both natural and human systems.;This dissertation shows how U.S. policymakers in the early Cold War interacted with the environment and sought to fulfill their charge to protect the United States and its people while still attempting to ensure future national prosperity. Thus the consideration of an holistic nuclear complex better explains how humans, policy, technology, and the environment intermingled during the Cold War and profoundly affected not only the natural world, but also the human relationship to it. Weather, agriculture, geology and other natural factors have too long been absent from histories of nuclear technologies, and thus we have missed what splitting the atom truly meant. Ultimately, "Splitting Atoms, Fracturing Landscapes" prompts us to employ a more nuanced understanding of the interaction between human societies, governmental mandates to protect citizens and lands, and the natural world. |
