On the evening that Salvador Iturralde-renowned for his skills and vast knowledge of underground mining-came home to his family, his wife knew something was terribly wrong. Salvador confirmed it when he told her that he and the other miners in his crew had been handling a radioactive poison-uranium ore, essential to America's nuclear arsenal-in one of the first uranium mines in Grants, New Mexico. No one had warned the miners of the hazards of uranium and radium poisoning, and when the dangers were finally revealed, it was too late for the miners, haulers, millers, and lab workers-or their...