the physicists’ early success in taming the power of the peaceful atom made them dangerously overconfident. They began using gamma rays to extend the shelf life of chicken and strawberries, they built mobile nuclear reactors mounted on tank treads or designed to float around the Arctic, and, like their US counterparts, they designed atomic-powered aircraft. But they also used nuclear weapons to put out fires and excavate underground caverns, restricting the size of their explosions only when the seismic shock began to destroy nearby buildings.
