Mad on Radium

New Zealand in the Atomic Age

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 and a nuclear power station; prospecting for uranium on the West Coast of the South Island; and thousands of scientists and medical professionals working with nuclear technology.

She 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, the country 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 entertainer Jools Topp refused radiation therapy for cancer, telling the doctors “I’m a lifelong member of Greenpeace, why would I let you irradiate me?”

By uncovering this long and rich history of engagement with the nuclear world and the roots of New Zealand’s nuclear-free identity, by leading her readers into popular culture, politics, medicine and science, Priestley reveals much about a culture’s evolving attitudes to science and technology and the world beyond its shores.

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