Abstract
The few publications or documentaries on the Soviet nuclear program that we have seen in the West are the stuff of horror movies. There has not been a single monograph in English that attempted to pull together all aspects of the program and analyze its strengths and weaknesses, its history and its personalities. In Red Atom, Paul R. Josephson, a fellow at the Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University, uses his fluency in Russian and his background as the son of a nuclear physicist to produce a remarkable study that encompasses the ambitions and folly of the Russian nuclear industry.
The book's organization is not always easy to follow. Josephson understandably wished to avoid writing a mere chronology, but the book occasionally jumps around in time in a confused fashion. We have to wait until the epilogue, for example, to read about the 1993 explosion at the Tomsk-7 chemical combine or the 1957 disaster at Kyshtym (often regarded as “the prelude to Chernobyl”) when an explosion at a nuclear waste dump spread two million curies over 20,000 square kilometers.
Josephson uses documents from the Russian archives, conversations with prominent individuals, Russian newspapers and journals, and Western secondary works. The book's eight chapters and epilogue focus on different aspects of the nuclear program and are tied together by the underlying theme of the destruction of nature and the blinkered nature of “atomic-powered communism.”
The early chapters examine the origins of the industry, from the building of the first reactor at Obninsk in 1954 to the 1970s vision of constructing massive nuclear centers with numerous reactors. Josephson highlights the role of the South Ural Construction Trust during this period, which used gulag conscripts and German prisoners of war to build the first plutonium reactor at Chelyabinsk. Early working conditions at the two Chelyabinsk nuclear cities were dire and the death toll among workers high. A key problem was the shortage of concrete—a subject of some fascination to the author—which became even worse in later years after “slave labor” ended and nuclear workers required apartments.
Atommash, the giant factory that produced atomic machinery, is one of the first disaster stories recounted by the author. Built near the city of Volgo-donsk, the plant was located too close to the shores of a lake and slowly sank into the ground. The authorities, oblivious to this failure, subsequently built a nuclear power station at nearby Rostov on water-saturated ground. When the Rostov and Atommash facilities eventually closed, writes Josephson, it resulted in “rampant unemployment, followed by a crime wave of unheard-of proportions.”
The central chapters of the book describe various initiatives of the nuclear program—including the construction of portable reactors that would be transported on railway cars, food irradiation, and fusion power. In general, the author depicts the 1950s and 1960s as a period of optimism. But by the 1970s and 1980s, optimism had turned to gloom as it became clear that the ambitious goals of the nuclear program could not be reached. Skilled workers were lacking and there was a shortage of housing and other essential facilities. Deprivation was the general condition of workers in the highly secretive Soviet nuclear industry.
The book includes numerous biographical sketches of the leading personalities. Though fascinating, the sketches tend to detract from the author's central theme. The book covers scientists already well known to Western readers—including Igor Kurcha-tov and Andrei Sakharov—and other less well known figures. Vladimir Ma-lykh, Anatoli Aleksandrov, Lev Artsi-movich, Lev Landau, and Kirill Sinel-nikov are nuclear pioneers discussed in the book who have long been heroes in their homeland but virtually unknown outside it.
The Cold War was the principal catalyst for many Soviet nuclear programs. In some areas, the Soviet Union was ahead of the field. Joseph-son describes the pride with which the Soviets launched the Lenin nuclear-powered icebreaker in 1959, which was regarded in the Soviet Union as a technical achievement on par with the launching of Sputnik. These achievements led to the highly misleading impression among Soviet and Western citizens that the Soviet Union had taken the lead in the arms race. Yet Kurchatov and Sakharov both supported the Atoms for Peace programs and recognized the futility of the arms buildup. And the Soviets lagged far behind the West in computer technology.
The intense drive to be “first in the world” in all things nuclear resulted in numerous disasters: the reactor meltdown on the Lenin icebreaker in 1966 that led to the deaths of 33 people, various catastrophes in the Soviet navy involving nuclear-powered submarines, and “peaceful” nuclear explosions that shattered the landscape of several regions. During a visit to Yakutsk two years ago, I learned about 12 explosions in the giant autonomous republic of Sakha that contaminated the local water supply and forced aboriginal families to abandon their homelands.
The impact of the nuclear indus-try—both military and civilian—on the landscape has been disastrous. But Josephson reserves his most damning condemnation for Chernobyl, which he views as the end result of Soviet faith in technological infallibility. He writes that after Chernobyl, “any belief that an authoritarian garrison state was prepared for nuclear war or any other disaster ended on the spot.” But Chernobyl did not immediately transform Soviet thinking regarding nuclear power. Although it ended the construction of RBMK-type reactors, the building of the sarcophagus over the destroyed reactor was rushed to bring the other two Chernobyl reactors back into service as soon as possible.
The book is a useful antidote to the view that the problems at Chernobyl have ended. According to Josephson, the situation could hardly be worse. Mosses, lichens, and compost in pine forests have retained radioactive particles, which have been spread by fires since 1993. And people living in the area are plagued with worsening health problems.
The former republics continue to operate reactors—RBMKs and VVERs— that have become more dangerous since the accident. Many of these countries are dependent on nuclear power and have no other option but to keep the reactors running. This is the case with Lithuania's RBMK reactor at Ignalina, which provides more than 80 percent of the country's electricity. It is also the case in Ukraine—home to one-third of all Soviet reac-tors—where Chernobyl continues to function.
Today, nuclear energy accounts for 45 percent of Ukraine's electricity, but dilapidated buildings, a shortage of safety inspectors, and reactors operated by unskilled workers who remain unpaid for months have made the country once again a focus of international concern.
Topping Josephson's list of “hobby horses” is nuclear waste. Russia has failed miserably to find a solution to this problem. Today, he writes, “nuclear specialists wear historical blin-ders”—few lessons have been learned and the demise of the Soviet Union has failed to dispel illusions about nuclear power.
This bold volume shows that 14 years after the Chernobyl accident a dangerous complacency reigns in the Russian scientific establishment. Could there be another Chernobyl? The same combination of errors and circumstances that led to that disaster is unlikely. But another major accident seems only a question of time. Red Atom is both a history and a warning— and a bitter indictment of an industry that was once thought to be the “radiant” path to the future.