Review of Fat Man and Little Boy (1989) by Rich B — 18 Aug 2007

Fat Man and Little Boy (1989): "Where the hell is that music coming from?" - Groves.

Paul Newman plays General Leslie Groves and Dwight Schultz plays Dr. J. Robert Oppenheiner in a film about the Manhattan Project: the race to solve the atomic bomb (before the war ended) and the inevitable moral morass that swirled around the project.

Groves and Oppenheimer had just 19 months to move from the theoretical to a bomber fitted with the gadget. In the rush to create the bombs, whole towns were dislocated. Manufacturing facilities and the property they were built on became highly contaminated. The Cold War and the subsequent building of the nuclear stockpile drove even further environmental damage.

Nevada, Washington, New Mexico and Tennessee hosted various scientific and manufacturing facilities involved. Sixty-years later, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is host to leaking underground tanks filled with contaminated liquid waste, and long trenches of poorly contained radioactive materials.

I'm seriously considering an offer to join the team that is cleaning up the Hanford Nuclear Reservation: A $12-billion project to process the hazardous waste and prepare it for shipment to Yucca Mt. It seems to be just the sort of noble adventure I've been looking for.