Accidentally Nuking Canada

The Cold War between the United States, Soviet Union, and their allies was a period defined by two world-shaking technologies: high-powered rocketry and nuclear energy. The ultimate marriage of these technologies was the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, or ICBM, which made near-instant global annihilation a terrifying reality and forever changed the face of warfare and global politics. But nuclear power had other, less violent applications in space flight, with both superpowers experimenting with nuclear-powered rockets and actually launching a number of reactor-powered satellites between 1965 and 1988. But what goes up sometimes comes down, and in 1978 a Soviet nuclear-powered satellite tumbled out of the sky and scattered radioactive debris over a vast area of northern Canada, sparking an international incident and one of the largest cleanup operations in history. This is the story of Kosmos 954 and Operation Morning Light.

Image Sources:

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