Mad On Radium New Zealand In The Atomic Age Rebecca Priestley by Rebecca Priestley 9781869407582, 186940758X instant download after payment.

Priestley then considers the transition to 'nuclear-free New Zealand' policy in the 1980s. The change was dramatic: in the late 1970s, less than a decade before becoming so proudly nuclear-free, New Zealand was considering nuclear power to meet growing electricity demand in the North Island & the government was supporting a uranium prospecting programme on the West Coast of the South Island. But following the nuclear-free policy, anything with nuclear associations came under suspicion: taxi drivers referred to a science institute using a particle accelerator as 'the bomb factory' & Jools Topp of the Topp Twins refused radiation therapy for cancer, telling the doctors 'I'm a lifelong member of Greenpeace, why would I let you irradiate me?' 

By uncovering the long & rich history of New Zealanders' engagement with the nuclear world & the roots of our nuclear-free identity, by leading us into popular culture, politics, medicine & science, Priestley reveals much about our culture's evolving attitudes to science & technology & the world beyond New Zealand's shores.

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Rebecca Priestley is a winner of the Royal Society of New Zealand Science Book Prize (2009) & the Prime Minister’s Science Communication Prize (2016). She is the author of 15 Million Years in Antarctica (2019).