Nuclear technoaesthetics: Sensory politics from trinity to the virtual bomb in Los Alamos

In this article I investigate the politics of nuclear weapons production by examining how weapons scientists have experienced the exploding bomb at the level of sense perception through three experimental regimes: underground testing (1945–62), aboveground testing (1963–92), and stockpile stewardship (1995–2010). I argue that, for weapons scientists, a diminishing sensory experience of the exploding bomb has, over time, allowed nuclear weapon research to be increasingly depoliticized and normalized within the laboratory. The result is a post–Cold War nuclear project that assesses the atomic bomb not on its military potential as a weapon of mass destruction but, rather, on the aesthetic pleasure afforded by its computer simulations and material science.