WASHINGTON, October 8 (RIA Novosti) – A Cold War-era physicist who helped develop America’s nuclear arsenal and later persuaded US officials to buy bomb-grade uranium from Russia to mitigate the risk of nuclear conflict has died at age 92, The New York Times reported.
Harold M. Agnew joined the team developing America’s atomic bomb in 1942 and was “the last surviving major figure to have been present at the birth of the nuclear age” before his death from chronic lymphocytic leukemia on Sept. 29, the Times reported.
Agnew was among just a few dozen people to witness the splitting of the atom in 1942 and three years later was aboard a US bomber accompanying the Enola Gay when the latter dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima at the end of World War II, according to the Times.
He went on to become head of the weapons division at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the cradle of America’s nuclear weapons program, and later served as director of the top-secret laboratory. Agnew was also accused of being a war criminal by leftist activists.
In the 1980s, Agnew served as US President Ronald Reagan’s scientific adviser, and in 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union, he encouraged the US government to buy uranium from scrapped Soviet weapons, the Times reported.
He hoped the plan would inject much-needed cash into post-Soviet Russia’s troubled economy while also diminishing the likelihood of theft or accidents involving the uranium, or even the outbreak of nuclear war, according to the Times.
The White House adopted the idea and in August 1992 announced its plan to buy a minimum of 500 metric tons (550.14 tons) of bomb-grade uranium in a deal worth billions of dollars. The uranium was converted into fuel for nuclear reactors, generating electricity instead of destroying cities, the Times reported.
