{"title":"Dreams of Declassification: The Early Cold War Quest for Nuclear Knowledge in The Netherlands and Norway","authors":"Machiel Kleemans","doi":"10.1007/s00016-023-00305-2","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This article seeks to explore the relation between nuclear physics and secrecy in early Cold War Europe. After World War II, nuclear physics re-emerged from the Manhattan Project as a largely classified field. Over time, the boundary between secret and unclassified information set by the United States moved due to both political and scientific developments. This shifting boundary of secrecy is taken as a place to investigate power relations in the context of Cold War Science. The Netherlands and Norway are two countries with early nuclear programs that tried to move this boundary, in part by building a joint reactor in 1951. Whereas they requested classified information from the US in 1946, their programs developed to a point where the US made requests to classify nuclear information in Europe by 1960. Between 1954 and 1960, the joint reactor program became the site of a multilateral intelligence operation. Secrecy was used as an intelligence tool to spread nuclear disinformation to the Soviet Union. This history shows how (de)classification opened and closed windows of opportunity and sheds light on the effectiveness of classification.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":727,"journal":{"name":"Physics in Perspective","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00016-023-00305-2.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Physics in Perspective","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00016-023-00305-2","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article seeks to explore the relation between nuclear physics and secrecy in early Cold War Europe. After World War II, nuclear physics re-emerged from the Manhattan Project as a largely classified field. Over time, the boundary between secret and unclassified information set by the United States moved due to both political and scientific developments. This shifting boundary of secrecy is taken as a place to investigate power relations in the context of Cold War Science. The Netherlands and Norway are two countries with early nuclear programs that tried to move this boundary, in part by building a joint reactor in 1951. Whereas they requested classified information from the US in 1946, their programs developed to a point where the US made requests to classify nuclear information in Europe by 1960. Between 1954 and 1960, the joint reactor program became the site of a multilateral intelligence operation. Secrecy was used as an intelligence tool to spread nuclear disinformation to the Soviet Union. This history shows how (de)classification opened and closed windows of opportunity and sheds light on the effectiveness of classification.
期刊介绍:
Physics in Perspective seeks to bridge the gulf between physicists and non-physicists through historical and philosophical studies that typically display the unpredictable as well as the cross-disciplinary interplay of observation, experiment, and theory that has occurred over extended periods of time in academic, governmental, and industrial settings and in allied disciplines such as astrophysics, chemical physics, and geophysics. The journal also publishes first-person accounts by physicists of significant contributions they have made, biographical articles, book reviews, and guided tours of historical sites in cities throughout the world. It strives to make all articles understandable to a broad spectrum of readers – scientists, teachers, students, and the public at large. Bibliographic Data Phys. Perspect. 1 volume per year, 4 issues per volume approx. 500 pages per volume Format: 15.5 x 23.5cm ISSN 1422-6944 (print) ISSN 1422-6960 (electronic)