A naval surface-to-air missile launcher graces the entrance of the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History, which reopened this spring in a new location in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The development of nuclear weapons and peacetime uses of nuclear reactions for food irradiation, medicine, and energy are featured at the expanded museum. Among the artifacts on view are a sample of ekanite, a gemstone high in radioactive thorium; the 1942 Packard limousine that transported J. Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists to and from Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project; and casings for the nuclear material from the Little Boy and Fat Man atomic bombs the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.
Uranium mining is the focus of one exhibition. In another, visitors can juggle the proportions of nuclear, coal, wind, solar, and other forms of energy to see the effects on the cost of electricity and...
