Richard Rhodes
"Hanford, the vast complex that bred plutonium for the first atomic bombs on the banks of the mighty Columbia River in eastern Washington, has never had its full story told. Steve Olson now meets that challenge in a lively, dramatic, thrilling narrative of wartime crisis and scientific brilliance."
Blaine Harden
"A compulsively readable blend of science and storytelling…The Apocalypse Factory is a carefully researched tale of inventive genius, state-authorized mass murder, and the supertoxic legacy of a federal bomb-making mess that will never be cleaned up."
Cynthia C. Kelly
"The Apocalypse Factory traces the pathway from the discovery of plutonium to the rise of immense production facilities in Washington State to fuel the US nuclear arsenal, with riveting details about the nearly aborted mission to bomb Nagasaki…Steve Olson leaves much to ponder, and he calls on our collective ingenuity to address the threat that nuclear weapons pose today."
Marcia McNutt
"A gripping story of a time when the fate of the world lay on the line as the United States and Germany raced to translate scientific discoveries into decisive weapons of war. Anyone who has questioned whether investment in science matters must read this book. Anyone who hasn’t will want to."
Seattle Times - Michael Upchurch
"Olson writes lucidly, making even the most recondite details of the science involved clear to a nonscientist. And he’s eloquent in his chronicling of the lives affected — and sometimes destroyed — by the invention and use of the world’s most deadly weapon… [A] deft, informative, sometimes terrifying book."
New York Times - Denise Kiernan
"Olson is a crisp writer who brings clarity to complex subject matter...[he offers] hope based on his faith in human brilliance, tenacity and ingenuity to meet our challenges — the kind of traits and talents that made the Manhattan Project possible in the first place."
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2020-03-29
How Americans made the plutonium that went into the first atomic bomb.
Beginning a captivating, unnerving history, Seattle-based journalist Olson emphasizes that while uranium gets the headlines, plutonium makes up almost all of the thousands of bombs in arsenals around the world. In 1943, everyone in an immense southern Washington area received orders to move out within a month. Tens of thousands of workers poured in to build entire cities and infrastructure and then three nuclear reactors to produce plutonium and three huge factories to extract it. Olson delivers gripping accounts of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation’s construction, the iconic summer 1945 test in New Mexico, and the bombs’ destruction of Japanese cities. Hanford’s output peaked in the 1960s before obsolescence and overproduction took its toll. By the 1970s, most reactors had shut down. With the project’s declassification, the first historical accounts extolled its immense effort, technical accomplishments, and ultimate triumph, but time has produced more unsettling information—especially regarding the health effects, given that “Hanford had released far more radioactivity into the air, water, and soil than outsiders had known.” Until Hanford, no one had handled radioactive material on an industrial scale, and readers will be dismayed as Olson describes the results. In addition to the problems associated with radioactive gas, cooling water and factory chemicals flowed into the nearby Columbia River. Radioactive solid waste lay in open dumps until experts decided that this was a bad idea; then it was collected in huge steel containers with a predicted lifetime of 20 years, after which someone would surely find a better way to deal with it. Most are still there, corroded and leaking. Billions of dollars have been spent in a cleanup, but a huge area remains poisoned. If it’s any comfort, Kate Brown’s superb Plutopia (2013) reveals that the Soviet Union’s version of Hanford was worse.
A riveting history of a lesser-known Manhattan Project triumph that, like so many wartime triumphs, has lost its luster. (32 illustrations)
