Mad on Radium: New Zealand in the Atomic Age

Description

In this engaging history, prize-winning author Rebecca Priestley reveals the alternative history of 'nuclear New Zealand' - a country where there was much enthusiasm for nuclear science and technology, from the first users of x-rays and radium in medicine; the young Kiwi physicists seconded to the Manhattan Project; support for British bomb tests in the Pacific; plans for a heavy water plant at Wairakei and a nuclear power station on the Kaipara Harbour; prospecting for uranium on the West Coast; and thousands of scientists and medical professionals working with nuclear technology. Priestley then considers the dramatic transition to the proudly 'nuclear-free New Zealand' policy in the 1980s. In the late 1970s, less than a decade before, New Zealand had been considering nuclear power to meet growing electricity demand. Following the nuclear-free policy, anything with nuclear associations came under suspicion: taxi drivers referred to a science institute using a particle accelerator as 'the bomb factory' and Jools Topp of the Topp Twins refused radiation therapy for cancer, telling the doctors 'I'm a lifelong member of Greenpeace, why would I let you irradiate me?' By uncovering the long and rich history of New Zealanders' engagement with the nuclear world and the roots of our nuclear-free identity, by leading us into popular culture, politics, medicine and science, Priestley reveals much about our culture's evolving attitudes to science and technology and the world beyond our shores.

Rebecca Priestley has a history of science PhD from Canterbury University. She is the co-author, with Veronika Meduna, of Atoms, Dinosaurs and DNA (2009 LIANZA Elsie Locke Award for Non-Fiction); the editor of The Awa Book of New Zealand Science (2009 Royal Society of NZ Science Book of the Year); and science columnist for the NZ Listener.