Conscience on Atomic Jobs: The Manufacturers of Nuclear War

Abstract

Through examples and testimonies spanning different contexts of World War, Cold War, and peace, this article confronts the experiences and memories of individuals across the spectrum of bomb-making, from participants in the Manhattan Project to the technicians assembling nuclear weapons during the US-Soviet arms race. Two installations have been selected for this analysis: the Los Alamos laboratory in northern New Mexico, where the atomic bomb was born, and the Pantex plant in northwest Texas, where nuclear weapons are assembled and disassembled. Los Alamos and Pantex were both born in war and funded by the federal government on astronomical budgets; they have equally attracted the admiration and gratitude of nuclear deterrence supporters as the ire of peace advocates and antinuclear activists. Likewise, the people who work behind the gates have been in turn celebrated as protectors of democracy and vilified as makers of doom. This text centres on the moral and ethical questions raised by these people’s line of occupation to identify throughlines, be they in terms of rhetoric, emotional reaction, or concrete action. What inner struggles do nuclear weapons workers express and how do they address them? From the bomb’s creators to the anonymous workers on the nuclear assembly line, this article examines the moral strategies scientists, engineers, and technicians have developed to rationalise their jobs and the role they played in the atomic age in various capacities and at various levels of responsibility.

Keywords

• nuclear weapons
• manhattan project
• cold war
• los alamos
• pantex