Stewart Udall Quotes
The Atomic Age was born in secrecy, and for two decades after Hiroshima, the high priests of the cult of the atom concealed vital information about the risks to human health posed by radiation. Dr. Alice Stewart, an audacious and insightful medical researcher, was one of the first experts to alert the world to the dangers of low-level radiation.
Udall, Stewart L. Foreword. The Woman Who Knew Too Much: Alice Stewart and the Secrets of Radiation, by Gayle Greene, University of Michigan Press, 1999, p. vii.
Within a few months 11,021 scientists, of forty-nine countries also signed the appeal.
This was a political use of sarcasm and irony. Oak Ridge was the site of the largest facility for producing fissionable material in the world as the result of the Manhattan Project. And yet the problem of what to do with the radioactive waste has never been resolved. So Oak Ridge was producing more and more radioactive uranium in the area without a resolution in sight. The “joke” was that the people in the area were immune, so production could continue without a solution to radioactive waste.
The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb. In the development of the atomic bomb there was a hypothetical possibility that the Earth as we know it might be destroyed. Robert Oppenheimer the scientist who directed the bomb development and his staff framed the question which Oppenheimer presented to Arthur Compton. The decision was that Oppenheimer’s team would calculate every possibility and make sure that such a catastrophe was not within the realm of possibility. They did all the calculations, concluded that there was no possibility, the bomb was exploded, and the question was then finally answered in the negative.
During the meltdown of the Japanerse nuclear reactors at Fukashima, American sailors were deployed to provide critical assistance fram an American aircraft carrier in the area. They played a significant role in getting the reactors under control. Many of the Japanese at the emergency area had suffered serious illness from the radiation exposure abd a number died. The crew of the aircraft carrier had developed a highly unusual prevelance of serious illness assocated with radiation exposure. The U. S. Defense Department was "styding the matter" but had not decided that the unusual illness patern was related to their assignment assisting in th emergency. A number of the sailors had come to japan and asked for damages from the Raactor company which like most American Corporations would not do or say anything. The Japanese government also was silent on the issue when the sailors came to Japan, However, this former prime minister felt so strongly that he visited the Sailors and took up their cause in letting the Japanese public know what had happened and how the government and the electic company were acting. This was Koizumi's tearful response to the press covering the saolors and their request.
Stewart Lee Udall was an American politician and later, a federal government official. After serving three terms as a congressman from Arizona, he served as Secretary of the Interior from 1961 to 1969, under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
