THE PHANTOMS OF RADIOLOGICAL PROTECTION: A Whole-Body Counter for Spain in the Cold War
Year: 2025
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: This paper tells the story of a very expensive instrument (its shipping, assembling, calibration and use) that was said to have been brought from the US to Spain to measure something that it could not measure at the time, and would not be able to measure in its lifetime. I explore how Cold War dynamics, diplomatic strategy, the nuclear enterprise, anti-nuclear and health movements can help us understand events that may seem nonsensical. The local framework was the vast plutonium contamination at a little village in the South of Spain caused by a four US nuclear bombs accidentally dropping in 1966. The global framework was the need to attain (convenient) data on the consequences of living with exposure to low doses of plutonium and to establish radiation protection standards for this element, in view of a growing number of workers and civilians exposed to it.
Author: Clara Florensa
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7116432007