Kate Brown (1)
Auteur van Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters
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Over de Auteur
Kate Brown is an award-winning historian of environmental and nuclear history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her previous book, Plutopia, won seven academic prizes. She splits her time between Washington, DC, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Tagged
Algemene kennis
- Geslacht
- female
- Nationaliteit
- USA
- Opleiding
- University of Wisconsin (BA|1988)
University of Washington (MA|1993; PhD|2000) - Beroepen
- Associate Professor of Russian and Eastern European History
- Organisaties
- University of Maryland, Baltimore County
- Prijzen en onderscheidingen
- George Louis Beer Prize
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Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future door Kate Brown
Incredible book. Fascinating , thorough, deeply disturbing. While the book really strives to unlock the suppressed history of the Chernobyl accident, it reveals the world wide problem of motivated reasoning, and outright lying about nuclear fallout. From all of the bombs tested all over the world we are living in a minor nuclear disaster and have learned nothing to help us in the future. Also, don’t eat berries or mushrooms from Eastern Europe. At least not for the next few generations. Sigh.
A dense and detailed book about the "Plutopian" societies set up by the USA & the USSR to provide the plutonium for their atomic weapons, and the parallels between them. As you may imagine, it's not a fun read. There are many depressing threads to the book, but I guess the largest is the disregard for safety. Particularly for the poorest workers at the plants, but also, of course, the public living near the plant (memorably referred to as "downwinders").
Given the time - the tail end of the 2nd World War and the early years of the cold war - it is not surprising, perhaps justifiable, that corners were cut initially, but sadly that quickly became standard. The disregard for public safety is particularly horrifying - in the USA, a state of wilful ignorance was cultivated. Relevant studies on the effects of ingested radioactive materials were not done - even now, the book asserts, there are no studies on the effect on humans of ingesting the radioactive waste that leaves the plutonium factories (and that ignores the stuff that is not supposed to get out but does leak). The effects were at least acknowledged a little more in the USSR, although unfortunately that didn't translate into protection for the people around. In both countries, one of the difficulties in dealing with these health issues that were all too apparent is that they were classified as matters of national security.
On a slightly less horrifying note, the early communities set up around the plutonium factories were also very similar - affluent, and culturally homogeneous. And both were societies that were in contravention of their nation's stated ideals - in the USA's case the city (Richmond) was anything but a free society, but instead was heavily managed, with everyone renting their houses from the government/industry partnership that managed the plant and city. In the USSR, the residents of Ozersk were much better paid, and had access to amenities that others in the country could only dream about.
Throughout the book, I was assuming that these things are coming to light now partly because the problems have gone away. Sadly that isn't really the case. More money is being spent on nuclear weapon development now than at the height of the Cold War (although I assume that's not adjusted for inflation). The Fukushima reactors, which melted down so horrifically, were reactors designed for military purposes and then pushed into civilian use (as is the case in many other countries).
The author obviously has an opinion on these things - she wouldn't claim to be impartial - but she does aim for the factual, and the book is very extensively footnoted, giving her work considerable credibility.
As Lawrence R. Korb, Assistant Secretary of Defense under Reagan and Bush said, "The cold war is over, and the military-industrial complex has won".
… (meer)
Given the time - the tail end of the 2nd World War and the early years of the cold war - it is not surprising, perhaps justifiable, that corners were cut initially, but sadly that quickly became standard. The disregard for public safety is particularly horrifying - in the USA, a state of wilful ignorance was cultivated. Relevant studies on the effects of ingested radioactive materials were not done - even now, the book asserts, there are no studies on the effect on humans of ingesting the radioactive waste that leaves the plutonium factories (and that ignores the stuff that is not supposed to get out but does leak). The effects were at least acknowledged a little more in the USSR, although unfortunately that didn't translate into protection for the people around. In both countries, one of the difficulties in dealing with these health issues that were all too apparent is that they were classified as matters of national security.
On a slightly less horrifying note, the early communities set up around the plutonium factories were also very similar - affluent, and culturally homogeneous. And both were societies that were in contravention of their nation's stated ideals - in the USA's case the city (Richmond) was anything but a free society, but instead was heavily managed, with everyone renting their houses from the government/industry partnership that managed the plant and city. In the USSR, the residents of Ozersk were much better paid, and had access to amenities that others in the country could only dream about.
Throughout the book, I was assuming that these things are coming to light now partly because the problems have gone away. Sadly that isn't really the case. More money is being spent on nuclear weapon development now than at the height of the Cold War (although I assume that's not adjusted for inflation). The Fukushima reactors, which melted down so horrifically, were reactors designed for military purposes and then pushed into civilian use (as is the case in many other countries).
The author obviously has an opinion on these things - she wouldn't claim to be impartial - but she does aim for the factual, and the book is very extensively footnoted, giving her work considerable credibility.
As Lawrence R. Korb, Assistant Secretary of Defense under Reagan and Bush said, "The cold war is over, and the military-industrial complex has won".
… (meer)
My thoughts are mixed on this book. I really appreciate much of the book, but I can't quite fully buy into the author's conclusions regarding the wide-scale consequences of Chernobyl. I find the nuclear accident at Chernobyl fascinating and this book is not about what happened at the nuclear power plant, but rather the environment consequences of the accident. It's certainly interesting (although not nearly as good as Higginbottom's Midnight in Chernobyl, in my opinion), and Kate Brown has certainly dug into the archives and studies which surround Chernobyl. Still, after reading her descriptions of the problems surrounding Chernobyl scientific literature (and combined with other information on the health and environmental consequences I've encountered), I have trouble agreeing with the conclusions she draws.… (meer)
Investigation of the ways in which the longterm health consequences of Chernobyl were hidden—hundreds of thousands of people were affected, and mushrooms and berries being sold all over Europe are still highly contaminated.
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For Science! (1)
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