A nuclear war between Russia and the United States, even after the arsenal reductions planned under New START, could produce a nuclear winter. Hence, an attack by either side could be suicidal, resulting in selfassured destruction. Even a ÒsmallÓ nuclear war between India and Pakistan, with each country detonating 50 Hiroshima-size atom bombsÑonly about 0.03 percent of the global nuclear arsena...

Beta activity of particulate matter in both air and precipitation for 1968 at Los Alamos, New Mexico, is reported. The declining activities for January through April seem to be residual fallout from the 1966 foreign nuclear weapons tests, and the December hi~h seems due to late 1967 tests. The May through September increases reflect the increasing rainfall o:f that period.

To improve long-term radioecological impact assessment for the contaminated ecosystem of Bylot Sound, Greenland, U and Pu containing particles have been characterized with respect to particle size, elemental distribution, morphology and oxidation states. Based on scanning electron microscopy with XRMA, particles ranging from about 20 to 40 microm were isolated. XRMA and mu-XRF mapping demonstra...

Deep fear of nuclear radiation is widespread, yet research on radiation’s biological effects finds that the level of alarm far exceeds the actual danger. This “radiophobia” has roots in the fear of nuclear weapons, but has been significantly reinforced and inflamed by accidents at nuclear power plants. Radiophobia does far more harm to human health than the radiation released by nuclear acciden...

The nuclear weapons testing programme of the USA has released radionuclides to the subsurface at the Nevada Test Site. One of these tests has been used to study the hydrological transport of radionuclides for over 25 years in groundwater and the deep unsaturated zone. Ten years after the weapon's test, a 16 year groundwater pumping experiment was initiated to study the mobility of radionuclides...

The generation of cells in the human body has been difficult to study, and our understanding of cell turnover is limited. Testing of nuclear weapons resulted in a dramatic global increase in the levels of the isotope 14C in the atmosphere, followed by an exponential decrease after 1963. We show that the level of 14C in genomic DNA closely parallels atmospheric levels and can be used to establis...