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After a tsunami destroyed the cooling system at Japan's Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, triggering a meltdown, protesters around the world challenged the use of nuclear power. Germany announced it would close its plants by 2022. Although the ills of fossil fuels are better understood than ever, the threat of climate change has never aroused the same visceral dread or swift action. Spencer Weart dissects this paradox, demonstrating that a powerful web of images surrounding nuclear energy holds us captive, allowing fear, rather than facts, to drive our thinking and public policy.Building on his classic, Nuclear Fear, Weart follows nuclear imagery from its origins in the symbolism of medieval alchemy to its appearance in film and fiction. Long before nuclear fission was discovered, fantasies of the destroyed planet, the transforming ray, and the white city of the future took root in the popular imagination. At the turn of the twentieth century when limited facts about radioactivity became known, they produced a blurred picture upon which scientists and the public projected their hopes and fears. These fears were magnified during the Cold War, when mushroom clouds no longer needed to be imagined; they appeared on the evening news. Weart examines nuclear anxiety in sources as diverse as Alain Resnais's film Hiroshima Mon Amour, Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road, and the television show The Simpsons.Recognizing how much we remain in thrall to these setpieces of the imagination, Weart hopes, will help us resist manipulation from both sides of the nuclear debate.

Antinuclear movement --- Nuclear energy --- Radiation --- Physics --- Radiology --- Atomic energy --- Atomic power --- Energy, Atomic --- Energy, Nuclear --- Nuclear power --- Power, Atomic --- Power, Nuclear --- Force and energy --- Nuclear physics --- Power resources --- Nuclear engineering --- Nuclear facilities --- Nuclear power plants --- Anti-nuclear movement --- Antinuclear protest movement --- Nuclear freeze movement --- Protest movement, Antinuclear --- Social movements --- Nuclear disarmament --- History. --- Psychological aspects. --- Public opinion

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Democracy --- Peace --- War --- History.

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Business economics. --- Organization theory.

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Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences is a continuing series of volumes comprising articles that elucidate the intellectual and social history of the physical sciences from the eighteenth century to the present. The articles offered in Volume 5 share a common theme: a concern with modern physics and its relation to other scientific disciplines and to its cultural and material context.Originally published in 1975.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Physics --- Natural philosophy --- Philosophy, Natural --- Physical sciences --- Dynamics --- History. --- History