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The Road to Trinity

1987

Synopsis

This account details the author's involvement in the development of the first atomic bomb, his contributions to international control of atomic weapons and his role in the early development of atomic military doctrine during the Cold War. Nichols was wartime district engineer for the Manhattan Project, general manager of the Atomic Energy Commission and, for three decades, a consultant in the atomic power industry. A Pentagon official in 1952 who advocated the use of atomic weapons in Korea, he is in favor of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, andin the nonmilitary realmsupports the use of nuclear energy as less expensive, less dangerous and less damaging to the environment thanother methods of generating electricity. As a member of the official investigating committee, he offers an enlightening analysis of the Three Mile Island incident. Comparing it to the disaster at Chernobyl last year, Nichols flatly states that "there is nothing in the Chernobyl accident that gives cause to believe" that similar reactors in the U.S. "are less safe than we believed before the accident."

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