User:Waterfox1

Welcome to Waterfox1, my base page for editing Wikipedia topics. I am a retired nuclear physicist who can now contribute more time to public education on technical issues.

My primary expertise comes from working for about 40 years at Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois, gaining hands-on experience in experimental, analytical, and managerial work on a wide range of nuclear topics, including reactors, electronics, data collection, and arms control.

With three colleagues from the United States and Russia, we have written a two-volume book Nuclear Shadowboxing: Contemporary Threats from Cold War Weaponry. More information on the book is available at our web site NuclearShadowboxing.INFO. We are nuclear physicists and engineers with substantial professional experience in nuclear technology, arms control, and/or nuclear weapons.

We also represent appropriate personal background in writing about the Cold War: one of us was born in the United States; one in Canada, becoming an American citizen; another born in the Soviet Union, becoming naturalized as an American citizen; and the fourth born and worked in the Soviet nuclear complex. All of us worked for government-funded agencies and at national nuclear laboratories, and two of us served in our respective military forces.

We are trying to keep the two volumes up-to-date, so updates are posted for our Nuclear Shadowboxing book title on Google Book Search.

We also have a blog where current nuclear issues were posted. You don't have to be a registered member to gain access to the postings and resource pages. However, that blog is now dormant, and has been succeeded by a series of Knols that are more universally available. To find my topical Knols on technical issues, insert DeVolpi after accessing knol.google.com. Also there under my name is a detailed professional and personal biography.

As of 30 Nov. 2006 I started editing the Wikipedia topic Cold War paragraph-by-paragraph. However, I had to take three years off in order to finish my book trilogy: Nuclear Insights: The Cold War Legacy: Volume 1: Nuclear Weaponry (An Insider History), Volume 2: Nuclear Threats and Prospects (A Knowledgeable Assessment), and Volume 3: Nuclear Reductions (A Technically Informed Perspective). All three volumes were published in 2009 and are available on Amazon.com. Each of these books includes additional details about my technical experience and specialties.

My next contribution has been under the Main Article Cold War to augment the subsection Legacy with six subtopics: radiation, nuclear, military, security, institutional, and economic. At present, the contribution has been relegated to the "See Also" section which has the link Cold War Legacies. In my opinion, in order to be consistent with other supplementary topics in Cold War, it should be a "main article" listed in the subsection Legacy.

The submitted material on Cold War Legacies has been largely derived from Volume 2 of the book noted above, which contains a compilation of tangible and institutional legacies. (Volume 1 is a history of the Cold War, and Volume 3 advises how to go about making nuclear reductions.)

--Alex DeVolpi, PhD (name sometimes indexed as De Volpi, with the space between)

waterfox 16:01, 30 Nov 2006 (UTC); revised 7 Jan 2010; 17 Jan 10; 7 Mar 10; 21 Mar 10

/Sandbox /Cold War Legacies