The Nuclear Age: the question B Reactor's history room leaves you with

One panel in the history room at the B Reactor, part of Manhattan Project National Historical Park, is called The Nuclear Age. It asks what came after the bomb: what the world did with the knowledge, and what it still has to decide.

What the panel shows

• The Genbaku Dome in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. It was the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, and the only structure left standing near the hypocenter of the "Little Boy" bomb — its brick walls burned and broken, its dome reduced to a metal skeleton.
• The Simca Fulgur, a 1958 concept car. In the atomic fervour after the war, carmakers drew up cars meant to run on nuclear power; the Fulgur was also to be driven by voice command. None was ever built.
• A 2008 map of nuclear-armed states, colour-coded: recognised nuclear-weapon states that have signed arms treaties; states with weapons that have not signed; and countries that once had nuclear weapons and gave them up.

The argument

The discovery of the neutron started a chain of findings that led to the nuclear age. The post-war dreams — atomic cities, cars and aircraft — never arrived, but real advances did:

The Manhattan Project's legacy, the panel says, still shapes world politics, science and military power, and will affect everyone alive for generations to come.

The question it leaves

The panel ends by asking visitors a question: how can we use this history to manage the opportunities, and the dangers, of nuclear technology responsibly? Visitors can type an answer on the typewriter in the room, or write one, and leave it in the desk's in-box.

Visiting

The B Reactor can be visited only on guided tours run by the Department of Energy, as part of Manhattan Project National Historical Park.

Sources

Written from "B Reactor History Room: The Nuclear Age," Manhattan Project National Historical Park, National Park Service, which describes an exhibit panel at the reactor; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The panel's photograph is not reproduced here: its images carry their own credits.