Secrets of the Atomic City

Full version of the longread over at The Atavist Magazine, titled "Toxic Lies": https://magazine.atavist.com/2026/toxic-lies-radiation-paduc...

Earlier submission (4 points, 0 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49149056

If you want to learn about a slightly earlier Canadian equivalent, look up Port Hope, Port Radium, and Eldorado Resources. They mined and refined a large portion of the Uranium for the Manhattan project. The people involved had no clue how to handle things safely and Port Hope is still remediating the contamination that resulted.

Worked side by side with these folks the facts are really skewed in the article, Fowler worked in training, never entered a Contamination Area to my knowledge, he worked out of a trailer located outside the security area. They don't mention how Fowler spent hours bragging about how he scammed Wal-Mart over buying meat that was puchased at midnight of the expiration date and then threatening to sue them for selling out dated merch, The guy was only happy when he was trying to get something for free. Yes the plant screwed up a lot, but these guys were not heros

"Safe, clean, too cheap to meter"

More?

> We Almost Lost Detroit"- Wikipedia

> a 1975 Reader's Digest book by John G. Fuller,[1] presents a history of Fermi 1, America's first commercial breeder reactor, with emphasis on the 1966 partial nuclear meltdown. ISBN 0883490706

There is something uniquely sad and frustrating in how the victims of this story - the plant workers - were so resistant to the idea of the contamination being dangerous.

Lockheed and Union carbide already had very poor track records in this regard.