Three Mile Island: Exposing the Government's Cover Up of Our Most Infamous Nuclear Accident
By Harvey Wasserman, AlterNet. Posted March 30, 2009.
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/134174/three_mile_island%3A_exposing_the_government%27s_cover_up_of_our_most_infamous_nuclear_accident/ (http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/134174/three_mile_island%3A_exposing_the_government%27s_cover_up_of_our_most_infamous_nuclear_accident/)
People died -- and are still dying -- at Three Mile Island.
As the world marked the thirtieth anniversary of America's most infamous industrial accident this week, we mourn the deaths that accompanied the biggest string of lies ever told in US industrial history.
As news of the accident poured into the global media, the public was assured there were no radiation releases.
That quickly proved to be false.
The public was then told the releases were controlled and done purposely to alleviate pressure on the core.
Both those assertions were false.
If there was a release there would be evidence on the ground today as there is in Russia. There is still evidence all over the U.S. from the atomic bomb tests in Nevada. You can find maps of the amount of fallout across the U.S. It smacks of ambulance chasing lawyers.
Last semester I did a research paper on nuclear energy. It was a pro-nuclear paper, and I'm pro-nuclear. One of my major points was about TMI and the "no one died" thing. I feel cheated. This is rather upsetting.
Quote from: lisagurl on March 31, 2009, 10:38:18 AM
If there was a release there would be evidence on the ground today as there is in Russia. There is still evidence all over the U.S. from the atomic bomb tests in Nevada. You can find maps of the amount of fallout across the U.S. It smacks of ambulance chasing lawyers.
Well, a lot of possible problems like this seem to get that response from you. Lisa. Not to say you're wrong. But is it always the ambulance-->-bleeped-<-s out to win a case? In this instance, the suits aren't being allowed. I'm not sure how anyone is going to make money from them given that.
Perhaps we can all eat radiation and never die. Although the history of Earth (geoplogical and anthropological) would tend to make that seem not true. Life rose after the radiation was mostly gone, until, that is, we brought it forth again.
Perhaps the stacks at Limerick (also on the Susquehanna) are safe as the day is long. Perhaps not. They are quite ... imposing, dwarfing things around them for miles, visible from great distances, miles and miles. Is there reason to be watchful and fearful?
Have corporate boards allowed damaging things to occur to people and denied they ever have happened or that there is any danger at all? Perhaps not. But I wonder why Phillips-Morris no longer advertises in many places.
Nichole
Hey, I worked for Bechtel Power Corp, and we built Limerick, and its built very well, and at any rate, the threat is not the cooling towers, which are kinda cool in their own way. Matter of fact, the critical different between TMI and Chernobyl is how well, or poorly, those reactors were designed and built. TMI has a containment structure that kept all that from spreading and blowing up like Chernobyl did.
But make no mistake about it, as I said, I worked for Bechtel, we built more nuclear power plants than any other company, and after TMI (which we did not build) Bechtel was hired to go in and figure out how to clean it up. They basically said "can't do it." TMI is going to sit there because there is absoluty no safe way to do a damn thing about it. Just like Chernobyl, except Chernobyl took out an area equal to 1/3 of the state of Iowa.
But the reactor core melted. MELTED. That's a very serious problem. There is no getting around that. And there is no way to deal with that either. Not for a few thousand years, at least.
Quote from: tekla on March 31, 2009, 12:31:23 PM
Hey, I worked for Bechtel Power Corp, and we built Limerick, and its built very well, and at any rate, the threat is not the cooling towers, which are kinda cool in their own way.
Yes they are, quite lovely in a rather gigantic and ominous way -- so tall, so wide. Quite amazing actually.
I try to separate my knowledge from my experience of seeing them. That helps in seeing what you, rightly I think, call their beauty. Bechtel never had an accident, did they. Too bad about ... Westinghouse?
Didn't you tell me once that Cheney was a Westinghouse guy? :laugh:
Nichole
Bechtel only built them, we never ran them. It's the operator who gets credit for an 'accident' - but no, other than TMI, and Fermi in Detroit back in the very early days - nuclear power has a great safety record, its just that when things do go wrong, they go wrong on a catastrophic level.
And Westinghouse is more into the turbines end of things. For all its 'new fangled' allure, a nuke works just like any other power plant, using steam to turn turbines that turn generators. We'd get sets of binders with all the stuff/information/maintenance issues/specs about Your New G.E. Turbine. And, oddly enough or not, they pretty much start off just like the manual for your toaster. . . . . Thank You for buying a G.E. Trip Turbine, with proper maintenance it should bring you years of happy power generation.
Yes, I knew that what's different is the heating element that makes the steam that drives the turbines that induces the current. My son was aghast on Saturday when we were about fifteen miles away (from Limerick) and he saw the steam from the cooling tower. "It remind's me of Sauron's Tower! Look at that smoke; what's in it do you suppose?"
"Just steam, luv. Just steam, water vapor." He seemed calmer after finding that out, but went on to quiz us about what happened at TMI. "The heat got hotter and hotter and they weren't able to cool it." "Now what do they do at TMI?" "Wait, wait for a couple of ... thousand? years to pass so they can approach it."
"Why would we want to have something that you can't touch for that long?" "Because most of the time you don't have to touch it love, everything works they way it was planned to work."
"But when it doesn't?" "Well, then ... then you hope. You just hope."
Yes, there aren't a lot of "minor" mistakes open to one when the reactors burn are there?
Nichole
The cooling towers, which are not at all plants, are just huge indoor waterfalls. That's just how hot the water is coming out of the turbines. Because nuclear power can heat water like nobodies business, super-heated steam as they call it in the power biz. But the water is too hot to stick back in the river, so you have too cool it down first.
My best understanding of TMI is its just going to sit there. At some point they might flood the containment vessel with concrete, but inside that structure is a very large pile of uranium and plutonium and we have no way to handle it in the first place, and in the second place, to do what with it? Move it somewhere else? Who would want it? Nah, its just going to sit till it cools off, a long, long time from now.
QuoteBut is it always the ambulance-->-bleeped-<-s out to win a case? In this instance, the suits aren't being allowed. I'm not sure how anyone is going to make money from them given that.
It is an honest judge throwing out a frivolous law suit. He should have been on the 54 million dollar pants suit.
Chernobyl was more or less destroyed on purpose.
They disabled safety measure to check if the next safety check worked, and kept going until there were none left. Why? Who knows, but that is what they did.
Quote from: lisagurl on March 31, 2009, 03:01:43 PM
It is an honest judge throwing out a frivolous law suit. He should have been on the 54 million dollar pants suit.
So, "honest judges" are basically those who have the same thoughts as you about the merits of a case? :)
There was an accident in Idaho at one the first experimental reactors. Most people never heard about that. A very good cover up. The radiation in the soil in southern Utah will take hundreds of years to clean up. All of the Super Fund money has been spent paying attorneys in law suits. A nuclear power barge called the USS Sturgeous while being towed to the east coast for storage offshore accidentally sunk in the Caribean Sea. The fuel was depleted and the barge would have required security guards for many years, so it sunk instead. Depleted uranium and plutonium can be used for a dirty bomb and is therefore very hazardous.
Quote from: Nichole on April 01, 2009, 07:34:58 AM
So, "honest judges" are basically those who have the same thoughts as you about the merits of a case? :)
QuoteThe radiation in the soil in southern Utah will take hundreds of years to clean up.
If there was a radiation leak there would be evidence today. you can measure it with over the counter equipment. No evidence no case. Our system is being destroyed by frivolous law suits and the judges have the power to stop them. Today we live in a strange world world where teachers can not touch children and they removed all the fun toys form play ground even dodge ball because of law suits. Insurance and time and money has to be spent on defending charges of any greedy person. It is one thing to seek damages on legitimate claims it is another dragging people to court over myths. Risk is a part of life. without risk is a nanny state.
The reactor meltdown in Idaho happened on Jan. 3,1961. It killed the three operators on site. SL-1 experimental reactor. That was a cover up.
Personally I hate the nanny state, and have great fun reading things from England (which is the worst) and cringing when I hear it in the US in all its forms, which include - but are not limited too - zero tolerance anything, mandatory minimum sentences, and government actions in places they should not ever go into, like say, bedrooms, or how many vibes you can buy.
That being said, I'd also have to say as a small 'd' democrat, that I do see a role for government in the modern world. And one of the governments jobs ought to be in taking steps to make sure that the 'public health' as broadly defined, is looked after.
Now, often that is a balancing act. The issues of public health rub up against economic development, and the need for energy (and, not to be forgotten in this conversation, issues of national security and national power in the form of nuclear weapons - all these nuke plants started out under a program called 'Atoms for Peace) and have to be balanced out.
When the Atoms for Peace program started, the power industry (the power companies themselves, the construction companies like Bechtel and KBR, the people building the components like Westinghouse) looked at building plants. Of course, in that process, they talked to the insurance companies (cause business don't do nothing without insurance) and the carriers looked at the plants, at the risk of failure, and the price of failure.
And the insurance companies came back and said - no can do. The cost of a catastrophic accident would be more then the company could absorb. Then the government got all the insurance companies together, and they ran the numbers and found out that the liability for a catastrophic accident would be more then they all had together. So, the government, under the guise of defense issues really, passed the Price-Waterhouse Act (I'm pretty sure of the name, real sure about the law) that basically exempted all that stuff from liability lawsuits. Sure, if you slipped on oil at the TMI plant (remember, the other reactor there is still running) you could sue, but if TMI 1 blows up, and you lose your house, farm, business, industry - you can not sue.
That seems like bad government to me.
What's a "nanny state?" I mean besides the latest dismissive trope from the Bill Kristols and other assorted pundits who would like nothing more than to try to convince everyone that they are somehow better than everyone else. Ya know, cream rising to the top and all?
Well, someone should point out to them that cream ain't all that rises to the top. So does crap. And the Ayn Rand mythos of the "hero against the world" is not only wrong and untrue, it's downright absurd and stoopid as well.
Please do not think I am saying that every law-suit that comes to court in America is worthy of being heard. There are many that aren't. And yes, those do expend money, effort and time that could perhaps be spent elsewhere it would do more good.
But neither is every lawsuit frivolous and bad. And there are distinctions. For every "$54M pant-suit" there are three or four "Brown V. Board of Education"s.
In an anything-goes-may-the-devil-take-the-hindmost social model like the darned neo-cons and Randists seem to desire only the most ruthless and heartless buzzard is going to survive. That pretty well erases any notion of a "social contract" or "government-protection" (even protection from the government) altogether, doesn't it?
Ya wanna eat radiation and see if it kills you? Be my guest. I'll take the evidence of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl to heart and just think that it does.
But the crap about "nanny states" is more attune to someone whose world is tightly bound within the aetherial planes of reading philosophy than actually being alive in the material world. A government that shows in it's action concern for the well-being of it's citizenry is hardly a "nanny." It might be a "comrade-state" or a "decent-person state." but a "nanny-state" is a figment of the demented dreams of morons who wish to ride roughshod over the lives of billions.
Nichole
There are good lawsuits and some dumb ones, but mostly there are misunderstood ones.
Our education system is failing because of law suits that limit teachers to the job of warden. People bring teachers to court over poor grades even stopping fights. There needs to be common sense and the judges are the ones we gave that power to. The judges are the ones to separate ridiculous and common sense. It is too bad few use that power.
Quote from: lisagurl on April 01, 2009, 01:29:58 PM
Our education system is failing because of law suits that limit teachers to the job of warden. People bring teachers to court over poor grades even stopping fights. There needs to be common sense and the judges are the ones we gave that power to. The judges are the ones to separate ridiculous and common sense. It is too bad few use that power.
Define common sense.
One third of the judges want to make a name for themselves, another third doesn't want to make any real decisions and the last third does their job. Worse than that, I don't think half of them know what common sense is and the other half has their hands tied by the law.
Quote from: Leslie Ann on April 01, 2009, 03:37:23 PM
Define common sense.
One third of the judges want to make a name for themselves, another third doesn't want to make any real decisions and the last third does their job. Worse than that, I don't think half of them know what common sense is and the other half has their hands tied by the law.
Sound judgment not based on specialized knowledge; native good judgment.
You are right about judges. We need an overhaul of the judical system.
http://commongood.org/ (http://commongood.org/)
Quote from: lisagurl on April 01, 2009, 03:51:39 PM
We need an overhaul of the judical system.
Would that take precedence over an overhaul of the financial system, an overhaul of the imperial presidency, an overhaul of the WPATH Standards of Care, an overhaul of the DSM, and an overhaul of our thinking about energy and its production? :laugh:
You forgot the tax system.
Then Roman Republic did not last either.
Quote from: Nichole on April 01, 2009, 04:50:06 PM
Would that take precedence over an overhaul of the financial system, an overhaul of the imperial presidency, an overhaul of the WPATH Standards of Care, an overhaul of the DSM, and an overhaul of our thinking about energy and its production? :laugh:
Viva La Revolution! ;D
Well, what the heck.
Lisa's point -- there'd be evidence -- is hard to dismiss. It's not like it's hard to measure radiation levels. Okay, maybe you can't go down to you local Walmart and pick up a geiger counter, but it's a little hard to believe that such a coverup is possible. Granted, it's not the same as underground nuclear tests which contaminate the soil and don't disperse, but it's hard to believe that a significant problem in the area wasn't seen and reported at the time if it was there. It's quite a bit easier to believe that a muckraking reporter dug up a bunch of anectodal evidence and a few crackpot dissenters to put toghether a story. (To be clear, I mean no disrespect toward muckrakers, anecdotes, or crackpots -- they're often what you need to break open a get to the truth when it's hidden by either laziness or a bona fide conspiracy.) Problems regarding handling of radioactive material have hardly been underreported in general in the U.S. There are plenty of stories about poor conditions of mines, the damage from nuclear testing, the utter disaster of the Rocky Flats plant, and, yes, TMI.
So I don't dismiss the possibility that there was a serious impact out of hand, but I'm quite doubtful.
But there is another side to the story: What are the alternatives? Nuclear power might have some health and safety impacts. Coal incontravertably does, and that's where we get most of our power today. Thankfully mines in America aren't as bad as they used to be and are today in China where about 5000 people die every year in coal mining accidents, but they're still dangerous. Mining still kills. And so does the pollution from mines. And so does the effect of the CO2 released when you burn it. Nuclear power is hardly a silver bullet (well, fission anyway -- workable fusion power would be a real breakthrough, but that's not going to be around for decades, if ever). So here's the question:
Given the risks and costs involved in every single type of power generation available today, which is the best choice? Regardless what happened at TMI, that's not an easy question to answer, and the correct answer varies strongly with personal values.
I often here people 'round these parts talk about how much we need to 'educate' (though I think they mean indoctrinate - not educate) people about trans issues as if, somehow, education will make everyone all happy. Nuclear power is one place where educating people - generations of them now - about nuclear power has only increased the resistance to the notion. Something to think on.
At any rate, sure coal is bad, and coal mines are bad, but isn't uranium mined too? Are there health risks associated with mining uranium? Yes, pretty much the same as coal, but with added lung problems - turns out there is something worse to breathe than coal dust, and its uranium dust.
Me, personally, always thought the chief problem with Nuke Power, is that its done on the same principals of economy of scale that everything else is, and perhaps that was not the best way to go. Perhaps rather than two huge reactors running two sets of turbines each powering a huge city, nuclear power might work better with very small reactors running for 5,000 or so households at a time. Accidents would be smaller, the effect of such accidents would be more containable, and the risk would be spread out and shared. The Navy has a better record with small power plants than the power companies both here and in the old Soviet Union had with the big ones.
Just sayin'.
The US has finished constructing a huge physics experiment aimed at recreating conditions at the heart of our Sun. Giant laser experiment powers up (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7972865.stm#id7970000/7973100/7973111-audio)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7972865.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7972865.stm)
Quote from: lisagurl on April 02, 2009, 12:02:32 PM
The US has finished constructing a huge physics experiment aimed at recreating conditions at the heart of our Sun. Giant laser experiment powers up (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7972865.stm#id7970000/7973100/7973111-audio)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7972865.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7972865.stm)
I think that the researches into laser and fusion are quite nice.
I suppose my sceptical nature makes me wonder ... so what kind of military usage is this gonna be put to?
I mean they always are aren't they, when they involve the generation of tremendous power? I'd be surprised if the local utility company in any locale was subsidizing the research for the purpose of generating cheap, cleaner and useful energy generation so people can light our homes and run appliances.
Of course, like I said, I'm sceptical.
Nichole
In the early 70's my roommate at college went to work for KMS fusion that makes the target spheres for laser fusion. At the time they had trouble with a ragged edge of the laser pulse that would not hit the sphere evenly and move it so it was difficult to implode. Now almost 40 years later that have not advanced much further. It will be at least another 100 years more before they have a workable generator.
QuoteI'd be surprised if the local utility company in any locale was subsidizing the research
EPRI is the research arm of utilities. Most do give research money but they also buy a vote into the areas that are funded. I am sure that government grants also support this project.
It's not just skepticism, Nichole, but the bias of where it's first aimed. You're scared of physicists, but nuclear weapons were the last energy frontier that was stable enough to keep around in a bomb. This kind of stuff? Fuggedaboutit. If you're worried about weapons research, get your House Rep. to complain about all the money being wasted on F-22's, SDI, and other space-age stuff that engineers (not physicists) are working on, that will never make a difference on a battlefield; or look at what the chemists or solid-state physicists are working on. If there's a military application, you'll probably find it somewhat benign, like more effective armor for Humvees or body armor. But as for physics, they got drafted in WWII to figure out how to blow up the world and end human civilization. You're really worried about something worse?
No, it's not weapons research that's making the energy companies fund some alternative energy research. Partly it's because they want to be positioned for when oil become too expensive (i.e. on the off chance we start taxing it like we should). But mainly it's marketing. "Beyond Petroleum" -- yeah, right -- that's what you should be skeptical about.
Quote from: Alyssa M. on April 02, 2009, 11:13:02 PM
It's not just skepticism, Nichole, but the bias of where it's first aimed. You're scared of physicists, ...
...
No, it's not weapons research that's making the energy companies fund some alternative energy research. Partly it's because they want to be positioned for when oil become too expensive (i.e. on the off chance we start taxing it like we should). But mainly it's marketing. "Beyond Petroleum" -- yeah, right -- that's what you should be skeptical about.
Well, perhaps you should stick to the things you know about. And it's rather obvious that I am not among those things.
No, I'm not "scared" of physicists, not at all. The ones I know at the Institute of Advanced Studies are not the most easily approachable people I know, but they are pretty nice and hardly monsters of any sort. They also appear to have the moral capacity to understand that some of their work might well go toward things they would rather not have it go toward. So physicists seem just fine to me.
Now, military people and civilian governmental officials? Those are a different set of people entirely.
And what makes the companies chip in something is that it makes it so much easier if they do that to have the government sign over the research to them, afterall, they paid for it. Private industry is given, basically, a lot of government, mainly, funded discoveries to sell as they wish. That IS what I am sceptical about as well.
Nichole
Oh, for heaven's sake, I was just trying to make a point, not attacking you. The "bias" thing came off wrong. All I meant was that there are different ways to be skeptical, different things one tends to be skeptical about. I was unclear, and I'm sorry about that.
Look: I hear people all the time asking me about the military applications of things like neutrino physics. Neutrinos. Yes, that's something I know more about than the average bear. And none of the working physicists I know worry about the military aspects of basic research at high energies or high plasma densities and so on, because there is no military application that we don't already have.
As to you, well, no I don't know a damned thing about you, and I've never claimed to. You might take your own advice about that, though: it's rather obvious that I'm "not among the things you know about," either.
I really don't get what your big beef with me is. But please drop it, all right?
QuoteNow, military people and civilian governmental officials? Those are a different set of people entirely.
Profiling? There are many whistle blowers and moral ethical people in government employ. In fact just like teachers they want to make the world a better place. However there are also opportunists that use unethical practices to rise to power.
If you are familiar of the way most research is funded you will understand that it is a collaborated effort. But there is also very large companies that control their own show like drugs and food. Even partnerships to achieve benefit for non competing companies.
A lot of government money is going into efforts of economic development. Many times the government gives its research money away in the hopes of long term economic growth.
Part of my job working for the government was to represent the government as they buy into rights of collaborated research. It is a big step from the lab to the production floor. Research does not do any good if it is not used.
Encouraging companies to use new ideas is a selling job. It is putting risk and reward into light.
Quote from: lisagurl on April 03, 2009, 09:33:10 AM
... Research does not do any good if it is not used.
And I suppose that is where my sceptism arises. Research if it's viable generally becomes part and parcel of what the engineers put together. And very often, I can't think of a time that this hasn't occurred yet from the Egyptians and Hittites right down to Great Britain, USSR/Russia and USA, powerful technologies are used as instruments of projecting national power.
Like I know a lot of Americans seemed to think that back in those long-lamented Cold War days that people were just plain stoopid to think America's government would use the nuclear technology transferred to weaponry first.
Yet, it seems a bit stoopid to me to NOT see that America's government had already done that! Twice, on population-centers causing a huge number of civilian deaths and very little damage to what was left of the Japanese "war effort."
And the "saved lives" that were used to justify those actions were only saved because of some notion that the Imperial goverment would go down to the last man similar to what had occurred in Europe with Germany. Seems like a huge stretch to think that. I mean, let's be real here: Tojo was not Hitler and hadn't his motivations of being some sort of Siegfried who was going to Ragnarok on a pyre.
The controlling myths that moved those fellows and the ministers and other power people around them were completely of a different order and accent. Did the imperial wars and expansions look very similar, especially in terms of China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Korea, Burma and Czecho-slovakia, Poland, Russia? Yes, they did.
But the impetus was way different. The justification was tied into them being the same. They weren't.
So, yes, I'll remain sceptical about the uses that derive from very unmilitaristic research.
Nichole
A lot of 'dual use' technology simply wound up being military weapons given to civilian police forces, thus making lots and lots of paramilitary SWAT units in places that never needed them.
QuoteAnd the "saved lives" that were used to justify those actions were only saved because of some notion that the Imperial government would go down to the last man similar to what had occurred in Europe with Germany. Seems like a huge stretch to think that. I mean, let's be real here:
My father was one of those who fought Island to Island. Yes they did fight to the last man as they did invent suicide bombings. War is hell and everyone loses just some more than others.
The technology used in the laser fusion is not new. We already have lasers that can shoot down rockets and satellites. What is new is the precision in which the leading edge of the laser pulse is square and flat. I can not think of this helping shoot down anything any better than we have now.
Quote from: lisagurl on April 03, 2009, 02:54:05 PM
My father was one of those who fought Island to Island. Yes they did fight to the last man as they did invent suicide bombings. War is hell and everyone loses just some more than others.
The technology used in the laser fusion is not new. We already have lasers that can shoot down rockets and satellites. What is new is the precision in which the leading edge of the laser pulse is square and flat. I can not think of this helping shoot down anything any better than we have now.
Yeah, so did mine. According to my partner's dad the Chinese fought that way in Korea and we are all rather familiar with Vietnam, no? And does one suppose that Grant must have been perplexed at the willingness to fight on for months in an untenable situation at Peterburg.
Would they have fought down to the last individual in the home islands had the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima not taken place? I suppose we'll never know.
What we do know is that the entire Siegfried mythos that inspired Hitler and the Nazis and the willing destruction of Germany "because it is not good enough to go on after me" was NOT the guiding mythos of the Japanese High Command. In fact we do know that there was increasing powerful dissent about not surrendering taking place in Japanese councils. So the surrender might well have occurred before there was an invasion past Okinawa.
Had the invasion of the home islands taken place would more U.S. soldiers have died? Well, of course they would have. That's what happens when a war continues rather than stops, more people/soldiers die. Does that justify the destruction of over 1/2 million civilians in two medium-sized cities?
What is certainly not justified is the aftermath in which the truth of the matter was deftly converted for Americans into "why would anyone ever believe that we'd use nuclear weaponry unilaterally and to further our own ends and to use it first?"
There's a rather simple and obvious answer to that question. "Because you have already done that twice."
I cannot argue over what "might have happened if." Why would either of us? Obviously there's no answer forthcoming to that question because there's no event to analyze.
Nichole
QuoteWhat is certainly not justified is the aftermath in which the truth of the matter was deftly converted for Americans into "why would anyone ever believe that we'd use nuclear weaponry unilaterally and to further our own ends and to use it first?"
But many have that power now.
QuoteWar is hell and everyone loses just some more than others.
It would not take a fancy delivery system to to wipe out the U.S. Smuggled in Nuclear weapons could be planted in all the big cities. There are plenty of corrupt people that would sell the technology. But it would not be long before they would lose all their relatives also. Kind of a stalemate no one wants to happen.
Since you asked me to talk about things I know ... well, the Manhattan project is something I know about. It's history is part of the culture of modern physics. You learn about it in a lot of different ways from a lot of different primary sources.
We got into the business because we were afraid the Germans would get it -- it had nothing to do with the Japanese. People worked their buts off to get it working, because that was their contribution to the war effort. They continued once it was clear that the Germans were done for, and even after VE Day basically from inertia, and were too caught up in the moment to question the rationale. And the same applies to the military and political leaders who authorised the use. There was no real understanding until after the fact. Only a few dozen people had seen the Trinity test. The sense of horror at what the bomb meant didn't hit home until after the surrender. Sure it killed a lot of people. But the firebombings of Tokyo killed more. More died in the rape of Nanjing. I mean civilians, not soldiers. It wasn't seen as anything more than another means to the same awful, bloody end.
After the war was over, people realized that it was different.
Okay, granted, that was the point of view of many who worked on the Manhattan Project; politicians and military leaders probably didn't have the same perspective -- but the point is that even the people who knew best what was going on and the implications of the bomb weren't able to see clearly what it really meant. It's very hard to draw any conclusions from decisions made in the ignorance of the time.
And would the Japanese fight to the last? Well, I don't know ... according to Churchill, the British sure would have, so I can't see why not the Japanese.