Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters

Kate Brown has opened a new world that was right there and one that we never knew about.The history of the American and Soviet nuclear programs have been obfuscated and hidden in plain sight for years.She has brought the information to light for anyone who wants to learn just how horrible our governments and large companies such as Dupont, GE and others acted in their own self interests in the name of defense of our country.I would never have believed that our government would have done this so willingly to it's own citizens. The toxicity of the areas discussed, due to the contaminants and effluents that were all radioactive will continue to harm lives for millennia!. We have all been poisoned in one way or another and the toll this waste takes on us will continue.The book is well written and researched. Also in the same vein is "Manual for Survival" by the same author about the Chernobyl explosion and is another worthy read.If you read this book and are not incensed, there is a problem somewhere...

In the long annals of Cold War history, amidst the myriad tales of espionage, subversion, dirty deals and treachery, none is more sordid than this tale of two supposedly diametrically opposed ideological systems mirroring each other in terms of deception, denial, disinformation and prosperity-induced blindness. In their parallel obsessive paranoias, the USSR and the USA decided to create artificial communities designed to hermetically produce plutonium for the nuke arms race; Ozersk in Siberia for the Maiak plant and Richland, Washington, for the Hanford facility. In both cases it was the state that supported these communities of plant workers, eventually insulating them from the unpleasant realities of the post war world, like minorities, village peasants, hard to find goods, lack of affordable housing, dangerous streets, etc. In Richland the US government generously supplied the funds to turn the sleepy town of Richland into a well organized suburbia that would eventually festoon the American landscape, isolated communities where blacks an Mexicans need not apply, where you could leave your doors open at night and every face was that of a God fearing WASP. Ironically, most of Richland's inhabitants were bedrock conservatives who normally would rail at such unwarranted government largesse at taxpayer's expenses, but, as this book so well illustrates, principles and high sounding ideals usually take a back seat to creature comforts provided for free by someone else. Even in supposedly egalitarian Russia, the inhabitants of Ozersk quickly assumed that the rights and privileges to enjoy benefits not available to other Soviet citizens was something intrinsic to their worth defending the motherland. In many cases those that abandoned the comforts of Ozersk soon found themselves imploring to return to the cocoon provided by the state. But as we know, Faustian bargains, while pleasant in the short term, usually have long term consequences. The exigencies of the Cold War, coupled with the profits sought by bonus seeking American contractors or corrupt Soviet officials, made safety a tangential concern at best. Adding to that, of course, was the nascent beginnings of radiation science, which quickly found itself politicized. The meager research data on safe exposure levels that existed was usually cherrypicked, manipulated if not outright falsified to paint a rosy picture of work in a non-hazardous environment. But with each discharge of radioactive waste, with every accident, with every concealment of exposure downwind, Faust's payments came due. Cancers, autoimmune disorders, birth defects, dying livestock, all began to accumulate in the statistical forest growing around both sites, though admittedly the Soviet's disregard for even nominal safety precautions beggars belief. But to the Russian;'s credit they at least attempted to remove populaces away form the most contaminated sites, something the US never attempted to do, preferring to litigate, litigate, litigate, deny, deny, deny until all the victims died off or settled for pittances. Indeed, reading this, it was hard to distinguish who was Russian and who was American in this book, as the Americans made very effort to out-Soviet the Soviets in terms of surveillance, intimidation and harassment of those who whistle blew about the numerous safety violations at Hanford. Ms Brown even relates how the US government willfully exposed many people to high doses of radiation without their victim's knowledge in order to assess biological damage. That's the kind of things the Nazis did and were called war criminals for. But Americans called it all part of national security, thus whitewashing all sins. Seems lime we're hearing a lot of that these days also. She describes how the mounting evidence of incompetence at Hanford appeared to doom the plant to oblivion, until reprieves from the governor arrived in the form of the ex-California-governor-turned President Reagan reviving the Cold War. Nowadays Richland, at one point fearful of losing all their government goodies due to Hanford's proposed closing, is poised to make hay for decades to come as the laborious process of cleaning up the millions of curies of radioactive waste created by 50 years of MAD paranoia. The book concludes with a startling statistic, that cancer rates in the US in the period 1950-2001 have increased 85 %. She makes no attempt to blame radiological contamination as the sole cause, correctly pointing it that the complex biological synergism of chemicals, radiation, dietary and social factors all contribute. She could have added microwave and electric transmission line radiation to that list, known biological hazards that receive little attention because of the grave threat negative statistics would pose to the telecommunication and electric utility industries. For anyone who thinks nuclear power has any future, this book is a stark reminder that dealing with Faust is usually not good for your health. Highly recommended.

This book is well-researched and written. It is a rather long read, but the parallels between the US and Russia development of making plutonium for atomic bombs is so interesting. The history of the companies in the US that managed the plant in Hanford, WA is also enlightening. This book depicts a lot of racism and disregard for human life, so that might bother some readers. I still have many pages to read, but feel the book will remain interesting to the end. I highly recommend this book for those that know little about the production of plutonium here in the US and in Russia during the 1940s to early 1950s.

The production of plutonium is a oft-forgotten piece of the global conflicts which have long shaped multiple societies. In this refreshing inquisitive work, Kate Brown illustrates that the tragedy and ingenuity wrapped up in this colossally dangerous process should never depart from any related narrative.The book carries an activistic tone, but at the same time reliably articulates the histories of two (surprisingly similar) communities, Richland in Washington State, and Ozersk in the Ural mountains. Brown intricately illustrates how, as radiation mutated bodies and landscapes, the production of plutonium mutated cultures.Brown constructs local histories which weave together into an intriguing global tapestry. Well worth reading.

Both the United States and the Soviet Union built Plutonium manufacturing plants and their supporting cities. This book talks about the building of these plants, the elite way of life of the scientists and technicians that lived in these cities compared to their other country men, the nuclear accidents and disasters that contaminated the surrounding countrysides, and the long term adverse effects still taking place today.

Kate Brown has done the almost impossible, using vast files of information long classified in America and the former USSR to plumb the depths of the secrecy and the cover-ups involved in the pursuit of plutonium for weapons production. While some Americans as well as Russians dispute the accidents and cover-ups, one can only surmise that they were so patriotically blinded by their participation as to deny anything which besmirched their remembrances of the programs and their lives in the secret cities. Some of the evidence, to be sure, is anecdotal, however Brown has managed to document her assertions and is to be commended as a brave historian for attacking an investigation into a part of history that many would wish to remain unknown. Having spent a good part of the past 20 years traveling in Russia and seeing the fear of contemporary Russians that the walls still "have ears" demonstrates the degree of difficulty Brown must have had to gain the confidence of people there in telling this story, not to mention similar challenges in the U.S., particularly among people still residing in and near Hanford.

Prof Kate Brown is a historian, and that is both the strength and weakness of this book. Tracking events in both the USA and USSR gave the book a balanced view and compelling structure. It is clearly carefully researched and uncovers some events little documented elsewhere (other sections may be familiar e.g. Chernobyl).Another reader criticised it for having an agenda... I don't think the book ever claims to represent an unbiased account. It is revealing a number of problems, so in that sense it is very negative about the nuclear industry - but that's what the book is about (the clue is in the title, specifically the word "disasters").There were some errors in the description of nuclear physics. I suspect this could be because the author is a historian and not a nuclear physicist. For the average reader this probably won't matter since most of it is correct. On balance this is recommended reading.

This is excellent account of the US and USSR's quest to harness the atom and the cities they created to do so. Be aware that it gets quite technical and what is missing is a better accounting of those who lived in these cities. You get a high-level account of the residents but little on how the survived the isolation etc.

A very disturbing work. I was aware of the contamination from the heydays of the atmospheric tests but the extent of pollution around Hanford and Ozersk is truly shocking, also the way workers and people living around these place were and are treated. This book will have you wide eyed and slack jawed in places. The plutonium genie is out of the bottle and it's never going back in.

“Plutopia” was a required reading in one of my graduate history of technology classes. Every student of history, science, and engineering must read and learn from this work.Kate Brown managed to write a book that is simultaneously gripping, moving, informative, and sobering. Reading “Plutopia” is like watching a film while sitting next to the director and hearing their live commentary; students of history will find her approach insightful and unique. Rather than dropping a ‘finished’ narrative on the reader’s lap, Brown takes the reader through her journey and research, through her dilemmas and analyses in the face of contradictory, surprising, or incomplete historical evidence.The book tells the story of largely unheard-of nuclear disasters. It is an important work not only because these disasters are unknown, but also because they affect so many lives and because Brown exposes the inadequacy of simplistic scientific methodologies. Philosophers of science will also benefit from this reading.

I am interested in nuclear history and nuclear biology, although they are completely unrelated to my field of study and work. This book by a historian is very informative, well researched, objective, but reads easier than your regular history book. Kate Brown shows in beautiful writing an interwoven world of history, politics, physics, chemistry, biology and the communities they created; sacrifices that were made knowingly or unknowingly, wittingly or unwittingly in the name of social security, management of nuclear crises, the human drama of communities tied to and dependent on contaminated landscapes in the Soviet Union and the USA. Ultimately I think this book should be read by progenies of both sides of the Cold War if they really want to understand their past.

A fascinating read, with so many interesting facets

Reading the university credentials of Kate Brown, I thought I was buying an objective assessment of the plutonium production during the cold war period.Reading the book Plutopia, I discovered that I had bought a political manifesto, based on anecdotic.Kate Brown doesn’t take the trouble to explain the basics of plutonium production nor the associated radiological risks.She simply knows that the plutonium production during the cold war period was a disaster and she illustrates this with anecdotes.The Plutopia text is clearly written by someone who lacks basic knowledge about radiation protection and who, for instance, mixes up irradiation and contamination.On p 312 of Plutopia, Kate Brown has the audacity to state that anecdotic is more reliable than an objective analysis by scientists.This is a statement that fits in a political manifesto but is incompatible with an objective assessment of reality.