Calendar

Plutonium was the first element to be manufactured by humans. What was considered a scientific triumph would lead to unimaginable destruction. Author and NSWA Steve Olson appears in a Town Hall Seattle livestream event with a dramatic story of human achievement and hubris, based on his book The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age.

In conversation with poet Kathleen Flenniken, he shows us how in the midst of a devastating and deadly world war, fearing that the Germans would be the first to weaponize the atom, the United States rushed to research a nuclear chain reaction with unimaginable explosive power. This led to the creation of the Hanford Nuclear Facility in Washington State, housing work by the likes of Glenn Seaborg and Enrico Fermi, and which would grow to encompass hundreds of thousands of physicists, engineers, laborers, and support staff. Olson asks us to consider why Hanford has been largely overlooked in histories of the Manhattan project. He invites us to explore the genesis of the atomic age and its impact on the nuclear situation of today.

Steve Olson is a Seattle-based writer and author of several books, including Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens and Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins. His work has been featured in Atlantic Monthly, Science, the Smithsonian, and others. He is a consultant writer for the National Academy of Sciences.

More details and registration at: https://townhallseattle.org/event/steve-olson-with-kathleen-flenniken-livestream/