Cold War period

Weapons materials from production reactors were accumulated during the Cold War period as a part of the U.S. defense program. Prominent were tritium, ie, hydrogen-3, having a of 12.3 yr, and plutonium-239, 1/2 = 2.4 X lO" yr. The latter constitutes a waste both as a by-product of weapons fabrication in a waste material called transuranic waste (TRU), and as an excess fissionable material if not used for power production in a reactor. 

Finally, the Cold War period witnessed a celebration of ethnic diversity as universalism in which conflations of difference and self-congratulation over the superior system of capitalist democracy were closely enmeshed, and the logic of this entire scheme was proved by a single anomaly the Negro. A complex system of races had given way to a strict scheme of black and white, which itself implied an absence of race on the... 

Another characteristic of the post-Cold War period, 1989 to abont now, bnt pre-September 11, is that corporate/nniversity partnerships were snpposed to... 

According to Christian belief these verses from the Bible are a direct reference to nuclear war - the kind of war expected in the Cold War period. The sixteenth-century prophet, Nostradamus, made reference to another kind of attack in one of his extracts The sky will burn at 45 degrees. Fire approaches the city. In an instant huge scattered flame leaps up. 90 Was this then a reference to napalm and chemical warfare -the reality of the Cold War period ... 

Advice to naval leadership on the chemical warfare (CW) and biological warfare (BW) threat can be traced to the Cold War period. As the Navy undertook a major force buildup in the early 1980s, a memorandum from committee member Joshua Lederberg to the CNO, Admiral James Watkins, USN, was instrumental in precipitating the decision to equip some new vessels with collective protection capabilities and improved chemical weapons detectors.1... 

The emphasis on production of pure plutonium for weapons continued throughout the Cold War period. The successful control of the chain reaction to power submarines to cruise underwater for weeks rather than hours for the diesel-electric powered substitutes opened up a new option. The contractors that built the nuclear reactors and steam turbines for submarines also served the electric power utilities. Extension of this nuclear technology to domestic electric power production was obvious. President Eisenhower s Atoms for Peace initiative in 1954 opened the way for the nuclear power plants that followed that currently supply about 20% of the electric power to the U.S. power grid. 

An initial approach to a more systematic investigation of the possibilities clearly is to look back at what was done in the Cold War period. It is important not to underestimate the scientific effort involved in that period. For example, a United States General Accounting Office report of 1994 noted ... 

That review of the Cold War period shows that muscarinic receptor systems in the brain could remain a target for new incapacitants. Beyond that, it suggests that the central mechanisms of interest are more likely to be higher brain functions. The newer neuropeptides and their roles could clearly be of interest to those with malign intent. However, we cannot make an adequate survey of the possibilities for malign misuse solely on the basis of what happened during the Cold War period. 

Accumulation of large amounts of chemical warfare agents during the cold war period, aggravated by aged container materials, has created a real threat of severe... 

During the cold war period, it was especially important to understand how various materials, especially electronic components withstood very high pulses of neutron and gamma radiations. To this end some pulsing reactors were especially built with large cavities for insertion of materials and components. 

With the close of activities devoted to the plutonium production for World War n, two activities have dominated waste management till the end of the Cold War Period, competition in nuclear weapons production and the growth of civilian use of nuclear energy. Wastes from civilian uses on a radioactivity scale were dominated by civilian nuclear power production while waste production from nuclear weapons systems was dominated by the rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States of America. 

Professor Herbert Walther from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (Fig. 14.11) was a frequent guest at the Institute of Spectroscopy, who was greatly interested in everything that was new there. He argued very much for the establishment of scientific contacts between West German and Soviet scientists during the Cold War period. Later on he was elected a foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 

The inclusion of forced migration as a security issue was also part of the conceptual debate in the late 1980s and early 1990s between Realist scholars and their critics on the fundamental question of what is security. For most of the Cold War period the broad consensus within Security Studies was that it should limit itself to the study of the threat, use, and control of military force (Walt 1991 212). In the post-Cold War era, economic, environmental, and identity security concerns were posited as of similar importance to the defence of state sovereignty and territorial integrity. Refugees and asylum seekers were proposed as potential threats to aU these new types of insecurity. 

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