Plutopia
In Plutopia, Brown draws on official records and dozens of interviews to tell the stories of Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia-the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium. To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias--communities of nuclear families living in highly-subsidized, limited-access atomic cities. Brown shows that the plants' segregation of permanent and temporary workers and of nuclear and non-nuclear zones created a bubble of immunity, where dumps and accidents were glossed over and plant managers freely embezzled and polluted. In four decades, the Hanford plant near Richland and the Maiak plant near Ozersk each issued at least 200 million curies of radioactive isotopes into the surrounding environment--equaling four Chernobyls--laying waste to hundreds of square miles and contaminating rivers, fields, forests, and food supplies. Because of the decades of secrecy, downwind and downriver neighbors of the plutonium plants had difficulty proving what they suspected, that the rash of illnesses, cancers, and birth defects in their communities were caused by the plants' radioactive emissions. Plutopia was successful because in its zoned-off isolation it appeared to deliver the promises of the American dream and Soviet communism; in reality, it concealed disasters that remain highly unstable and threatening today. --from publisher description
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What Hacker News says
- This is really interesting, from what the first part describes, the design and operation of "factory 404" has a lot in common with similar facilities built in the US and Russia. The US built the Hanford/Richland site in the desert of eastern Washington, and Russia built Mayak/Ozyorsk in an isolated part of the Urals. They're all versions of this project to build a self-contained 'utopia' city in the wilderness, dedicated to secret work on nuclear technology. There's also the same social tension between highly skilled workers, transient unskilled workers, and the military/political leadership. (For anyone interested, Plutopia by Kate Brown is a good read on the subject)
I wonder if this site in the Gobi ended up having the same problems with radioactive contamination from accidents and unethical experiments that Hanford and Mayak had?
- Not so long ago I read an excellent book, Plutopia [0], which went into detail about the development and management of Hanford. Alongside that story, it tells a parallel narrative about Ozersk -- a similarly polluted nuclear town in Russia. The book does an impressive job at building an intuition to the dangers of radioactive waste for non-technical readers. At the same time, it is not terribly uplifting to realize that environmental destruction was/is treated as an afterthought.
- The Hanford site is one of the most polluted places in the country, due to the plutonium production reactors and processing facilities which dumped open waste years before environmental concerns were on the table. They also ran production reactor water straight out into the river and contaminated areas downstream.
The authoritative book on Hanford[0] is published by the DOE. Another excellent book on Hanford and its "sister city" in Russia is Plutopia[1].
[0] https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc737111/
- I'm not sure that is true. When I read Arlie Hochschild's Strangers in Their Own Land it focused on a largely white community in Louisiana, where practically everyone had first-hand experience of harms to people and the environment from local chemical industry pollution. The town and its leaders were nonetheless very supportive of the old polluting businesses and their new expansion plans. The residents also opposed federal regulations that would limit industrial pollution more than Louisiana's extremely lax state laws.
In Washington state, the Hanford facility that made plutonium for weapons was also largely staffed by prosperous white workers. Before the end of the Cold War, that community of workers knew better than anyone the risks that they and sometimes neighboring communities were exposed to by time pressures and lack of oversight. That same community was also fiercely protective of their employers and resisted health/environmental oversight by "outsiders." (See Kate Brown's Plutopia for a fascinating history.)
- Thanks. Adding that book to my list.
Two other good books about early nuclear weapon manufacturing: “Plutopia” and “Making a real killing: Rocky flats and the nuclear west”. Plutopia focuses on Hanford and is quite eye opening. It also compares and contrasts the early American and Soviet programs
- Semi-related: If you're interested in the topic, I highly recommend "Plutopia" [1] book which describes in great detail the history of plutonium production, and the consequences of it, near Richland, Washington and Ozyorsk (Russia).
It significantly changed my view on the nuclear energy. Not necessarily because it's inherently bad, but when big money is at stakes and you have incompetent people managing stuff, things can go pretty wild.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Plutopia-Families-American-Plutonium-...
