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The Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first spacecraft, on October 4, 1957.
Two months earlier the Soviet Union had fired the first intercontinental
ballistic missile (ICBM). (An ICBM can be launched from one continent, pass
through the atmosphere into space, and then re-enter the atmosphere over its
target on another continent.) Both events shocked Americans because the Soviets
had surpassed the United States in missile technology. The British Ambassador
to the United States reported, "The Russian success in launching the satellite
has been something equivalent to Pearl Harbor. The American cocksuredness is
shaken." The Soviet Union launched Sputnik II in November 1957.
Although the United States still led the Soviets in other weapons, Americans
began to speak of a "missile gap." The Gaither Report
, a Ford Foundation Commission Study, fed popular fears that the United States
was behind the Soviet Union and urged a large military buildup.
The United States launched its first satellite, Explorer I, in January 1958.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was formed in July
1958 to continue development of spacecraft.
Sputnik also jolted the American education system. The United States felt
Soviet students must have been getting a better science and math education than
were American students. Congress passed the National Defense Education Act in
September 1958 to fund new science, math, and foreign language programs in
American schools. One college president in the 1960's declared that colleges
and universities had become "bastions of our defense, as essential as ...
supersonic bombers."
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was formed to promote the
peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to provide international safeguards and an
inspection system to ensure nuclear materials aren't diverted from peaceful to
military uses. IAEA is authorized to buy and sell nuclear materials and provide
its member nations with technical assistance for non-military uses of nuclear
energy. The IAEA also administers the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In
signing the treaty, nations agree to certain safeguards, including IAEA
inspections to monitor the flow of weapons-grade nuclear fuel. The inspections
make sure that the fuel is not used for nuclear weapons.
Radiation was released when the graphite core of the Windscale Nuclear Reactor
in England caught fire. The first British plutonium production reactor,
Windscale's Number 1 Pile began operating in October 1950; Windscale's second
reactor began eight months later. On October 8, 1957, a physicist operating
Number 1 Pile accidentally let the core temperature rise to a point where the
fuel began to melt. Forty-two hours later, instruments showed that radiation
was being released. The reactor core was on fire. The fire was put out by
flooding the reactor with water and sealing it off. The fire released a large
amount of radioactive iodine and polonium, with half-lives of 8.05 days and
138.4 days respectively, into the atmosphere. (A half-life is the time it takes
a radioactive substance to lose half of its radioactivity.) Approximately
528,000 gallons of milk from farms within 200 miles of Windscale were
destroyed. The extent of the radiation's effect on residents is still not fully
known. A 1983 study by the Radiological Protection Board of Great Britain
concluded two hundred and sixty cases of thyroid cancer were attributable to
the release of radioactive iodine. Other forms of cancer, such as leukemia,
have also been reported in the vicinity.
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