From Legacy to Heritage
Résumés
L’article étudie les efforts faits par la Russie postsoviétique dans le traitement des déchets nucléaires militaires qui se sont accumulés depuis l’avènement de l’ère nucléaire. L’auteure concentre son étude sur deux grandes régions affectées par une mauvaise gestion des déchets radioactifs, les vastes territoires de l’Oural pollués par le complexe nucléaire Majak et les poubelles nucléaires de l’océan Arctique. Elle retrace les débats publics sur le traitement des déchets qui se heurtèrent tout d’abord à la résistance de l’armée russe et des services de sécurité de l’État dans les années 1990 et montre la disparition progressive de cette résistance dans les années 2000 et 2010 lorsque le gouvernement commença à inventorier les déchets nucléaires de façon plus systématique, à évaluer leur coût environnemental et social et à chercher des méthodes de confinement. Parallèlement, la sémantique des déchets militaires a évolué. Tout d’abord legs toxique dont la découverte pouvait nuire à l’image internationale de l’URSS, les déchets radioactifs font maintenant partie du patrimoine national, à savoir le glorieux passé militaire de l’URSS et sa puissance nucléaire, toujours aussi grande. L’article décrit les modalités et les raisons de cette réinterprétation et montre comment elle a contribué à détourner l’attention des menaces du nucléaire sur la santé publique et l’environnement vers son histoire et sa signification pour la patrie.
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- 1 This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation pr (...)
- 2 For the first official publication on Kyshtym disaster at Maiak facility see B.V. Nikipelov, G.N. R (...)
1Since the dawn of the nuclear era, Russia has accumulated hundreds of millions of cubic meters of liquid and solid radioactive waste – more than half of the world’s total. Russia’s radioactive waste, most of which resulted from military nuclear production, is stored at overstretched and poorly maintained disposal sites or is lying out in the open at contaminated waste dumps1. In the wake of the liberalization and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet political regime, information came to light revealing the environmental impact of the state’s nuclear industry. The revelations exposed two major disaster areas: the vast territories in the Ural region polluted by the Maiak Production Association – the first Soviet plutonium production site – and the nuclear waste dumps in the Arctic.2 The news attracted international attention and prompted a series of debates and investigations involving scientists, NGO activists, and policymakers.
- 3 For a detailed report on the Nikitin case, including a collection of legal documentation, press rel (...)
2These debates and investigations were initially met with fierce resistance from the Russian military and state security. The most notorious case was the 1996 arrest of Aleksandr Nikitin, a former naval military officer, who had helped the Norwegian NGO Bellona gather information on military waste dumps in the Arctic using publicly available information.3 Charged with treason for his cooperation with Bellona, Nikitin would have to wait four years before finally being acquitted. In the second half of the 2000s, Russia took a more accommodating stance and begun working together with the international community to assess the state of various waste sites, to clean up the contamination in the Arctic and the Urals, and to better protect its population. As I will argue, however, these efforts were nevertheless accompanied by a gradual reframing of Russia’s nuclear waste problem, significantly changing its symbolic and political status. Radioactive waste went from being seen as a toxic legacy whose disclosure could damage the Russia’s international image to being considered a part of the national heritage recalling the country’s glorious military past and continued nuclear might. How and why did this reframing occur? What were the major consequences of redefining radioactive waste problems and the solutions proposed for them? Which aspects of these problems were emphasized? Which were obscured? To answer these questions this article draws on numerous primary sources: government and NGO reports, legislation, scientific literature, and interviews with nuclear officials and environmental activists. Ultimately, I show how the new semantics of military waste in the post‑Cold War period emerged after an era of secrecy and then evolved as the government began to inventory radioactive waste, assess its environmental and social costs, and find ways to contain it. Yet these shifting semantics also show how, for Russia, the disposal of radioactive waste not only posed technological challenges, but also created social and political ones.
Can the “legacy” of toxic waste be a “heritage” ?
- 4 United States Congress Office of Technology Assessment, Complex Cleanup : The Environmental Legacy (...)
- 5 National Research Council, Long‑Term Institutional Management of U.S. Department of Energy Legacy W (...)
3The Russian term “iadernoe (radiatsionnoe) nasledie” most likely first appeared as a translation of “nuclear (radiation) legacy.” The use of the English word “legacy” to identify radioactive waste in Western countries seems to be largely confined to the post‑Cold War era, although in the 1970s some specialists referred, vaguely, to the “legacy of radioactive waste.” In the late 1980s, the U.S. government, determined to clean up the country’s nuclear production facilities, the infamous Hanford site most of all, introduced “legacy waste” as a special category. For instance, an Office of Technology Assessment study from 1991 spoke of the “legacy of waste.”4 A U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Report from 2000 used the term “legacy waste.”5
- 6 Vladislav Larin, Kombinat “Maiak” – Problema na veka [The “Maiak” combine – Problems forever] (M. : (...)
4In Russia the term “legacy” began to be used to describe radioactive waste in the mid‑to‑late 1990s, a period of growing East‑West exchange in the environmental arena, often amid public criticism of radioactive waste handling. For example, the Greenpeace Nuclear Free Sea Campaign held a conference in Moscow in September 1991 called “Violent Peace, Deadly Legacy.” The historian and science journalist Vladislav Larin titled his series on the environmental impact of the Russian nuclear military program “The Russian Nuclear Legacy.” His first book, on the plutonium production facility Maiak, was written in 1996 and published in 2001.6
- 7 A.A. Iskra, S.N. Brykin, A.A. Burykin, O.G. Lebedev, V.K. Popov, and R.S. Churaev, “The Evolution a (...)
- 8 International Atomic Energy Agency, Radiation Legacy of the 20th Century : Environmental Restoratio (...)
- 9 JSTOR searches from the 1960s to the present show that the number of articles referring to “radioac (...)
5The term “legacy” was quickly adopted by Russian officials and scientists. In 1995 the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) together with the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of the Russian Federation for Atomic Energy (Minatom), and the Russian Research Center Kurchatov Institute initiated the project “The Development of a Sophisticated Computer Data System for the Evaluation of the Radiation Legacy of the Former USSR and Setting Priorities on Remediation and Prevention Policy” (Radleg) with financial support from the European Union and Sweden.7 In 2000 the International Conference on Radiation Legacy of the 20th Century (Radleg 2000) was held at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Organized by Minatom in co‑operation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the European Commission, it focused on former Soviet countries, aiming to provide an overall assessment of contaminated sites and sources of potential contamination from both civil and military nuclear facilities.8 The conference followed a similar meeting that took place a year earlier in Arlington, Virginia, the International Symposium on the Restoration of Environments with Radioactive Residues. If specialists increasingly recognized the wide‑ranging problems associated with radioactive waste from the 1970s,9 then only the end of the Cold War, increased openness around nuclear issues, and U.S.–Russia cooperation on military waste enabled understanding of radioactive waste as a large‑scale “legacy,” one that urgently needed comprehensive international strategies for ensuring its safe handling. One can also argue that the term “legacy” has served to conceal or downplay the scale and severity of the effects of radioactive waste. It has come to serve as a kind of euphemism for the period when radioactive waste was stored or dumped haphazardly while the nuclear powers were preoccupied with the arms race and national security.
- 10 See, for instance, the recent book by the British social scientist and environmental activist Andre (...)
- 11 See, for example, the website of the Atomic Heritage Foundation at https://www.atomicheritage.org. (...)
- 12 Because of the double meaning of “iadernoe nasledie,” I use the formulation “legacy/heritage” to re (...)
6As this brief sketch shows, the English term “legacy” describes the accumulated negative effects of nuclear technology requiring remediation.10 “Heritage,” on the contrary, refers to something worth preserving such as history, memory, or artifacts.11 Unlike in English, there is no distinction in the Russian language between “legacy” and “heritage,” and both are translated as “nasledie.” In the late 2000s, the Russian nuclear “legacy” began to acquire the characteristics of “heritage.” This development provides a useful glimpse into the politics of military nuclear waste in Russia.12
- 13 Rodney Harrison, “Introduction,” in Rodney Harrison, ed., Understanding the Politics of Heritage (M (...)
- 14 See Rodney Harrison, Heritage : Critical approaches (New York : Routledge, 2013), 165.
- 15 For recent literature that makes the case for treating radioactive waste as “heritage,” see Corneli (...)
- 16 For some reflections on the distinctive features of atomic heritage from the perspective of heritag (...)
7Scholarly literature regards a culture’s heritage as the result of process of choosing what a society wants to preserve for future generations and what it wants to demolish and discard. This process often results in conflicts between official and unofficial (often local) visions about what is worth preserving.13 Moreover, the definitions of heritage and the values it encapsulates are not fixed; they are subject to constant renegotiation.14 Yet if heritage is supposed to be a positive feature of a community’s or a nation’s identity, the choice of what to preserve in the case of toxic substances or contaminated sites is tricky at best. These substances and sites may not be discarded and forgotten under any circumstance; they have to be properly and responsibly transmitted to the next generation for the sake of safety.15 As international criticism for its handling of military waste grew, Russia sought to reframe the problem. Starting in the 2000s, Russian discourse on its nuclear legacy/heritage portrayed radioactive waste as an important remnant of the Soviet effort to build nuclear weapons in response to the American threat. This reframing made radioactive waste more “positive” in two distinct senses: as a celebration of the nation’s scientific achievements and as a means to avoid a nuclear apocalypse to which the American nuclear bomb monopoly would necessarily have led.16
8Before exploring the reasons that contributed to the “heritagization” of military nuclear waste, I first look at the controversial case of radioactive dumping in the Arctic Ocean that became public in the 1990s. This dark “legacy” of Russia’s illegal and extensive dumping of radioactive waste in the region emerged under a strong international spotlight, with active involvement from foreign states and NGOs. These revelations were deeply humiliating for a Russian military and security establishment already facing great difficulties.
Radioactive wastes in the Arctic : Revelations of the 1990s
- 17 See United States Congress Office of Technology Assessment, Nuclear Wastes in the Arctic : An Analy (...)
- 18 See Olav Stokke, “Nuclear Dumping in Arctic Seas : Russian Implementation of the London Convention, (...)
- 19 Jacob D. Hamblin, Poison in the Well : Radioactive Waste in the Oceans at the Dawn of the Nuclear A (...)
9The first public disclosures of Arctic sea contamination from radioactive waste occurred in 1991, when Andrei Zolotkov, a Murmansk region deputy of the Congress of People’s Deputies of the Soviet Union and an engineer working for the Soviet nuclear fleet (Atomflot), presented a map of radioactive waste dumps sites near Novaia Zemlia at a Greenpeace conference in Moscow in 1991, a few months before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The map was later published in an Archangelsk newspaper.17 These revelations provoked international outrage since the dumping violated Soviet commitments to the 1972 Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution (London Convention).18 The USSR was, indeed, among the most fervent promoters of this Convention.19 In November 1991, during the 14th Consultative Meeting of the London Convention delegates demanded that Soviet representatives provide information on past dumping.
- 20 President of the Russian Federation, “Ob obrazovanii pravitel´stvennoi komissii po voprosam, sviaza (...)
- 21 Aleksei Iablokov et al., Fakty i problemy sviazannye so sbrosom radioaktivnykh otkhodov v moria, pr (...)
10International pressure prompted Russian President Boris Yeltsin to form the Commission on Matters Related to the Disposal of the Radioactive Waste at Sea.20 It was chaired by the famous Russian scientist and environmental activist Aleksei Iablokov and included 15 high‑ranking Russian officials from different ministries. In early 1993 the commission delivered a report presenting an inventory of submarine reactors, spent fuel, and other liquid and solid radioactive waste that had been dumped between 1959 and 1992, including data declassified for this purpose.21
- 22 See the report of the first three years of the group’s work and joint expeditions to the site dumps (...)
- 23 Kirsti‑Liisa Sjoeblom and Gordon S. Linsley, “The International Arctic Seas Assessment Project (IAS (...)
- 24 Office of Technology Assessment, Nuclear Wastes in the Arctic.
11The disclosures of Soviet waste dumping practices in the Barents and Kara Seas triggered extensive international activity across the Arctic and beyond, including by the Joint Russian‑Norwegian Expert Group for Investigation of Radioactive Contamination in the Northern Areas established in 199222 and the closely related International Arctic Seas Assessment Project (IASAP), which was launched in 1993 by IAEA in cooperation with the Russian and Norwegian governments to address the potential impacts of the dumped radioactive wastes and propose remedial actions.23 This project was carried out as part of the IAEA’s responsibilities arising from the London Convention. In the U.S., the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment also published the 1995 study Nuclear Wastes in the Arctic.24
- 25 Lasse Ringius, Radioactive Waste Disposal at Sea (Cambridge : MIT Press, 2001), 152.
- 26 Ibid., 150–52.
12NGOs helped raise public awareness of radioactive waste in the Arctic. Greenpeace played a crucial role in the establishment of an international regime limiting and then prohibiting radioactive waste dumps at sea. It publicized the problems of waste dumps to the members of the London convention during its 1991 and 1992 meetings. In October 1993, Greenpeace “exposed a Russian warship dumping nearly 900 metric tons of liquid low‑level radioactive waste into the Sea of Japan.”25 The Russian navy explained it did not have capacity to store the waste on land. The exposure led Russia to cancel plans to dispose of another 700 tons, and Japan responded by announcing it supported a nuclear dumping ban at the 1993 meeting of the London Convention. The U.S. followed suit in November, although the Department of Defense, and in particular the U.S. Navy, did not support the decision. Denmark had announced in July that it would call for formal action permanently banning radioactive waste disposal in the ocean. Thirty‑seven countries voted for the ban, and not one against; five (Britain, France, Belgium, the Russian Federation, and China) abstained. Yet these countries, with the exception of Russia, stated they would support the ban.26
- 27 Thomas Nilsen and Nils Bøhmer, Sources to Radioactive Contamination in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk Cou (...)
13The Norwegian NGO Bellona Foundation, established in 1986, played a pivotal role in inventorying nuclear wastes in the Arctic region (both dumped in the sea and stored haphazardly along Arctic shores), and in facilitating international cooperation for remediating the problem from the 1990s to the present. In 1994 it published its first report, followed by another one in 1996 and a third one in 2001.27
14All of these reports revealed that dumping included low‑, intermediate‑ and high‑level waste, both solid and liquid, as well as entire reactor vessels and spent fuel. The waste extended from dumping areas in the Kara Sea to the east and north, and to dumping areas in the shallow fjords of Novaia Zemlia to several harbors and inlets on the Kola Peninsula that were mostly associated with the Soviet northern fleet. The vast majority of waste was military in origin, but there was also waste from the Murmansk Shipping Company associated with nuclear ice breakers and support vessels, the Poliarnye Zory nuclear power station with its four reactors, and various ancillary waste producers (hospitals, industry, research centers). It has been difficult to determine the extent and precise location of all of this waste because informing pertaining to it was largely secret in the Soviet era. Even after the Iablokov report, there has been concern about the incompleteness of the data.
- 28 Dale Herspring, The Kremlin and the High Command (Lawrence, KS : University Press of Kansas, 2006).
15These intensive international scrutiny and criticism of Russia’s nuclear waste dumps also coincided with, and were in some sense facilitated by, the weakness of Russia’s military, which under Gorbachev and especially during the Yeltsin years lost not only much of its funding but also its political prestige. The 1990s was a period of strong disillusionment in the military and state security circles.28 The publicity around the nuclear waste dumps and, more generally, around the poor state of some military and naval sites and installations, just added insult to injury. Several high‑profile treason cases against Russian activists are indirect expressions of this humiliation. The most notorious one was the Nikitin affair (Delo Nikitina).
The Nikitin affair : A turning point in the official treatment of the nuclear legacy
- 29 Thomas Nilsen, Igor Kudrik, and Alexandr Nikitin, The Russian Northern Fleet : Sources of Radioacti (...)
- 30 Danielle Gordon, Bartosz Weglarczyk, and Linda Rothstein, “Just Like the Bad Old Days,” Bulletin of (...)
16Aleksandr Nikitin, a former naval officer, worked for the Safety Inspectorate of the nuclear installations in the Soviet and later Russian Defense Ministry from 1987 to 1992. In 1994 Nikitin began to cooperate with the Bellona Foundation to document Soviet nuclear waste dumping practices in the Arctic Ocean. This resulted in the foundation’s second report study, which provided a detailed overview of the “sources of potential releases of radioactivity that could harm the public health and the environment,” especially nuclear waste and non‑operating submarines from the Cold War.29 The FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Agency), which had been monitoring Nikitin and Bellona, raided his home and the Bellona office in Saint Petersburg in 1996 after the Bellona report was published. Soon FSB agents arrested him and confiscated his work and papers. They also searched the home of his son‑in‑law, Igor´ Kudrik, who worked at Bellona.30
- 31 Jon Gausllaa, “Nikitin Application Admissible,” Bellona (November 23, 2003), at http://bellona.org/ (...)
- 32 Bellona, “Aleksandr Nikitin : Nashei tsel´iu byla likvidatsiia na Severe Rossii iadernoi svalki [Al (...)
17Though the report relied on public documents dating from the Soviet period, Nikitin was charged with treason. He spent 10 months in pre‑trial detention in Saint Petersburg. He was later ordered to be released, but then faced several more trials. He was acquitted in 1998, 1999, and 2000, and each time the government tried to prosecute him again. The Supreme Court eventually rejected further prosecution and Nikitin was finally fully acquitted.31 Commenting on his protracted legal battle, Nikitin said that “our goal was the liquidation of nuclear dumps in Northern Russia.”32 He became the head of the Saint Petersburg Environmental Rights Center, a branch of the Bellona Foundation that opened in 1998 and included environmentalists, lawyers, and journalists. To this day, Nikitin continues to work with Bellona in shedding light on the legacy of Soviet nuclear waste.
- 33 Jon Gauslaa, “The Case of Grigory Pasko,” Bellona (April 23, 2002), at http://bellona.org/news/russ (...)
18Nikitin is the only person in post‑1991 Russia to be acquitted of espionage charges. Other individuals who have been involved in disclosures about radioactive waste mismanagement have not fared as well. In 2001, the Environmental Rights Center provided legal support for Grigorii Pas´ko, a naval officer and a journalist who in a 1993 video recorded the dumping of radioactive waste in the Sea of Japan and sent it to the Japanese broadcaster NHK. As a result, Pas´ko was charged with espionage and sentenced to three years in prison. During a retrial in 2001, he was acquitted on nine of the ten charges, but he was still sentenced to four years in a labor colony for handing over sensitive information to the Japanese media.33
- 34 Lina Zernova, “Yury Schmidt : A Nation Where Law Enforcement Run Unchecked is Doomed to See Its Civ (...)
19Reflecting on the prosecutions of Nikitin and Pas´ko a decade later, Yury Schmidt, a prominent Russian lawyer who defended Nikitin, insisted that the Russian security services’ main goal in fabricating the case was not to prevent information about nuclear waste from being disclosed. Rather, it was meant as a provocation to undermine the post‑Cold War improvement in Russia’s relationship with the West. Indeed, Nikitin’s first trial coincided with the official visit of Russia’s foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev to Norway to sign a cooperation memorandum addressing nuclear waste remediation, among other subjects. The purpose of Nikitin’s prosecution was to undo the achievements of the memorandum and maintain tensions between the two countries.34
- 35 Dale Herspring, The Kremlin and the High Command (Lawrence, KS : University Press of Kansas, 2006).
20Nikitin’s final acquittal signaled a turning point in Russia’s stance toward its nuclear military waste. It went from resisting important disclosures on the extent of the problems to helping solve them, even embracing the publicity that surrounded them. These changes are likely related to several domestic and international political developments that marked Vladimir Putin’s first two terms of presidency. First of all, the new president sought to restore the military’s prestige and Russia’s superpower status by increasing the military budget.35 Second, a number of institutional reforms re‑centralized the nuclear industry and placed it under a powerful state nuclear corporation known as Rosatom.
- 36 Aleksandr Nikitin, “Grazhdane veriat antiatomnym insinuatsiiam bol´she, chem slovam uchënykh, glava (...)
21The first head of Rosatom, a young politician widely seen as liberal, Sergei Kirienko, came in with a professional PR team dedicated to Western‑style strategies that contrasted with the secrecy and adversarial approach in the USSR. Among his team’s first initiatives was to contact several anti‑nuclear opponents whose expertise might complement their work, and to ask them to help solve such problems as the safe removal of radioactive waste from crumbling facilities in the Murmansk and Arkhangelsk regions. In 2006, Kirienko created Rosatom’s public council, and invited Aleksandr Nikitin to join it. Although only a handful of the council members have been active in environmental protection, and as an advisory body it never stood a chance of determining the nuclear policies of Rosatom, one must appreciate its role in the Russian context, where interaction between the industry and environmental activists is rare. The council has been an important platform for raising issues at the highest levels related to radioactive waste, and it arguably has helped international cooperation in areas where the industry itself was looking for solutions, such as the remediation of nuclear waste problems in the Russian Arctic.36
- 37 European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, “NDEP Nuclear Window,” at https://www.ebrd.com/wh (...)
- 38 Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, “About the Glob (...)
22Third and last, in the international arena a “détente” of the 2000s manifested fully in the remediation of Cold War nuclear waste in Russia. The efforts of individual states to come to grips with the problem became international, based on cooperative research, clean up and other efforts, and recognition of the high costs of the endeavor and the fact that virtually all of the legacy had transboundary impacts. An important step in Russia’s cooperation with the international community came at the June 2002 G8 summit, which established a Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction.37 The nations agreed to raise “up to $ 20 billion over a period of 10 years through the ‘10 plus 10 over 10’ initiative,” with the U.S. to contribute half of that for nonproliferation projects (nuclear, biological, and chemical) and for assisting work in Russia. The Partnership was renewed in 2011, and Russian President Putin “agreed to provide contributing States the same privileges it accords the United States, namely access to sites, tax exemptions, and liability protection.” But after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the G8 expelled Russia. This, coupled with shortfalls in funding commitments, inadequate coordinating mechanisms, and the absence of a clear plan, crippled the program.38
- 39 NDEP, “Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership” at https://ndep.org/ ; NDEP, “History,” at htt (...)
- 40 Ibid.
23The Global Partnership came to focus on the environment generally, and, through its Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership (NDEP), on Arctic waste in particular. The latter partnership established the Nuclear Window with the objective “of delivering environmental improvements and a reduction of risks associated with the nuclear legacy in northwest Russia.”39 Through this Nuclear Window, the European countries helped fund the “Strategic Master Plan for the Management of the Retired Nuclear Fleet and the Environmental rehabilitation of its Supporting Infrastructure in Northwest Russia” between 2003 and 2006, in which leading Russian scientific institutions and international consultants where involved.40 In this context, the problem of military nuclear waste started to become reframed in the public sphere as a “heritage,” one that, while still requiring funding for public safety and environmental protection, was also a reminder of the glorious nuclear past of the Soviet Union.
Inventorying waste, remembering nuclear might
- 41 Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development (OECD)/Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), Radioact (...)
24The changing official attitudes to the problem of nuclear waste manifested not only in increased international cooperation, but also in the development of policies and scientific approaches at the national level, sometimes with international funding. In the early 2000s the Russian government and industry began to encourage scientists, industry, state institutions, and NGOs to create an inventory of radioactively contaminated military objects and sites and to propose solutions. This support led to two big programs funded by the government called “Nuclear and Radiation Safety of Russia.” One ran from 2008 to 2015; the second began in 2016 and is forecast to end in 2025. Over 50% of the 2008–2015 program funds were allocated to address existing radioactive waste.41 These programs were preceded by yet another federal program, which lasted from 2001–2006 but was seriously underfunded.
- 42 Public Council of the State Corporation “Rosatom,” Radioaktivnye otkhody : ot obrazovaniia do izoli (...)
25Unsurprisingly, the task of inventorying and investigating military nuclear waste was daunting. An official brochure on Russian radioactive waste states, somewhat euphemistically, that “in some cases, because of remoteness in time and the specificity of the works on the sites of preservation of the ‘historical’ waste, there is a lack of information about the concrete quantity of radioactive waste, its physical‑chemical state and isotopic composition, and the state of the structures and the hermeticity of the buildings in which it is stored.”42 What this means in practice is that there are significant quantities of waste buried on different sites that are not clearly identified and, once identified, much research is needed to assess their state, composition, and associated risks. Much waste has been dumped into underground depots or pumped into uncovered holding pools where they pose a continued environmental and health threat.
- 43 E.V. Evstratov et al., eds., Problemy iadernogo naslediia i puti ikh resheniia [Problems related to (...)
- 44 Evstratov et al., Problemy iadernogo naslediia, 9–10.
- 45 Ibid., 79.
26Some Russian officials and researchers took on the task of inventorying this nuclear waste with something approaching pride. The work of the Nuclear Safety Institute (IBRAE) of Russian Academy of Sciences, the leading institution for the scientific inventorying and assessing legacy objects, is instructive. The institute published three big volumes titled “The Nuclear Legacy and Paths to Remediation.”43 The publication was presented itself as the first attempt “to comprehensively examine the problems of nuclear legacy/heritage and its scope,” as well as “the potential danger of postponing solutions in this area.” It criticized the previous work on the subject as “unprofessional” or “superficial,” or marred “with a taint of populism, which leads, as a rule, to the intimidation of the reader.”44 In an attempt to preserve Russia’s national pride, these and similar publications go to great lengths to make sure that the reader understands that nuclear waste was an unavoidable price to pay for an exceptionally urgent, important, and successful military program. The second chapter of the first IBRAE volume, “Impact of the Initial Stages of Nuclear Defense Programs,” reminds the reader about the atmosphere of urgency and the expectation of an imminent nuclear attack from the U.S.: “The elimination of the U.S. monopoly on nuclear weapons, and then the achievement of nuclear parity became the main objective of the thousands of scientists, engineers, and organizers of domestic production. The priority of achieving this goal overshadowed other conditions, including those related to safety.”45
- 46 See, for example, N.N. Bogunenko, A.D. Pelipenko, G.A. Sosnin, eds., Geroi atomnogo proekta [Heroes (...)
27This discourse echoes recent Russian historical writing on the military atom. A large number of memoirs and commemorative brochures, books, photo albums, exhibitions, and so on have been dedicated to this history since 1990s, especially since the establishment of Rosatom, the reinforcement of the nuclear industry, and the increase of the military’s budget. These publications tend to emphasize that the USSR had to develop nuclear weapons very quickly because after Hiroshima and Nagasaki Soviet leaders feared that the USSR would be the next target of a nuclear attack.46
- 47 Paul Josephson, Fish Sticks, Sports Bras, and Aluminum Cans (Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University P (...)
- 48 Museum and Exhibition Association Manege, “70 let atomnoi otrasli. Tsepnaia reaktsiia uspekha [70 y (...)
28This change in the way nuclear military history and its waste legacy/heritage were treated in the official discourse is closely connected to the Russian state’s efforts to bolster the national self‑image and international reputation by restoring the country’s scientific, technological, and military prowess. These efforts included the rejuvenation of the nuclear industry, the expansion of the military, renewed attempts to claim, control, and protect Arctic areas, massive investments in the aeronautical industry, and so on.47 Russians have been encouraged to celebrate such Soviet military achievements as the “Tsar Bomba,” the largest thermonuclear device ever detonated. Tested in 1961, the Tsar Bomba was the central piece of a September 2015 exhibition at Manege Exhibition Hall close to the Kremlin (Muzeino‑Vystovochnoe Ob´´iedinenie Manezh) on the 70th anniversary of Russia’s nuclear industry.48 The waste produced by the nuclear military program acquired a symbolic status as the nuclear legacy/heritage of the heroic Soviet effort to produce a “nuclear shield” (iadernyi shchit) in the Cold War. This symbolic importance was also reflected in a special legal definition of some of this waste, according to new legislation in 2011.
The special legal status of nuclear waste
- 49 State Duma of the Russian Federation, “Ob obrashchenii s radioaktivnymi otkhodami i o vnesenii izme (...)
29As defined in official documents and scientific literature, the Russian nuclear legacy/heritage comprises all the accumulated waste before new legislation governing radioactive waste was enacted. The most crucial part of the new legislation is a law on the handling of radioactive waste.49 Created in consultation with environmental activists and independent experts and adopted in 2011 by the Duma, the law led to the creation of a national operator, which in October 2013 published a list of 30 potential sites for long‑term repositories and temporary waste storage facilities to be built by 2025.
- 50 Public Council of “Rosatom,” Radioaktivnye Otkhody, 23.
- 51 These estimations do not take into account the radioactive waste located in the deep disposal facil (...)
- 52 See Evstratov et al., Problemy iadernogo naslediia, 96.
- 53 See Aleksandr Nikitin, “Zakon o RAO : itogi pervoi piatiletki [The law on radioactive waste : Resul (...)
30The 2011 law allowed the creation of a special legal status for most of nuclear waste. The law groups already accumulated waste (nakoplennye otkhody) into “special waste” (osobye otkhody) and “removable waste” (udaliaemye otkhody). “Special waste” is waste for which the costs and risks of waste extraction and transport are higher than those of isolating it in its current location.50 In other words, special waste is waste too difficult and too costly to be removed safely. According to scientists from the Nuclear Safety Institute, more than 99.9% of all accumulated liquid radioactive waste and more than 82% of solid radioactive waste by volume was classified as special waste in 2015.51 Among the sites placed in this category are the highly polluted areas around Maiak and its extensive radioactive waste storage facilities. These sites include Lake Karachay and three other lakes, and four artificial reservoirs in the Techa cascade that were transformed into radioactive waste dumps starting in the late 1940s. (An Institute for Nuclear Safety study described such practices as “simplified schemes for the management of radioactive waste” in response to “an acute shortage of resources and time.”52) Radioactive waste in these areas is dispersed in such a way that it can only be buried or isolated on the spot; its excavation and transfer is extremely costly and dangerous. What makes this waste even more exceptional is that the procedure of classifying it as “special” is done without public consultations and hearings. That means that the contaminated sites become final waste repositories without local communities being able to voice their objections.53
- 54 Russian State Duma, “Ob obrashchenii,” art. 3.
- 55 Nikitin, “Zakon o RAO,” 8.
- 56 Yannick Barthe, Le pouvoir d’indécision : La mise en politique des déchets nucléaires (P. : Ed. Eco (...)
31The storage sites for special waste also have special characteristics. Natural objects may serve as repositories for special waste provided that they create an efficient barrier against the release of radioactivity. In this case, sites of “placement” (razmeshenie) may be redesignated as sites of “conservation” (konservatsiia). And if those barriers are deemed to be sufficiently stable for the entire period that the radioactive waste is harmful, then the site becomes a “disposal” facility (punkt zakhoroneniia).54 However, the decision‑making process with regard to identifying the sites of “placement” and then assessing them as suitable for “conservation” or even “disposal” is not only very slow; in many cases all decisions are “deferred” indefinitely.55 The “politics of indecision”56 have become another way of managing nuclear waste in Russia. Even the not so special label “special waste” represents an important step towards recognizing its existence as waste.
32What were the political consequences of this “heritagization” of nuclear waste? By reframing waste as a problem connected to the nation’s might and international history, heritagization effectively shifted attention away from damage to humans and the environment. The plight of local communities living close to the Techa River and the notorious Maiak facility, along with the repurposing of local natural objects into “almost legal” waste storage sites, are telling manifestations of this shift.
The Techa River basin : Nuclear legacy wastelands
- 57 V.A. Kostiuchenko, “Sostoianie radioaktivnogo zagriazneniia reki Techa [The state of radioactive co (...)
33A short history of the Techa River helps us understand the sheer extent of the problem of radioactive waste and the environmental impact of Soviet nuclear weapons production. The Techa, a small river that flows 240 kilometers through the eastern foothills of the Ural Mountains, has gained notoriety because of its use as a radioactive waste dump in the late 1940s and early 1950s, which had terrible effects on the river and the roughly 40 villages along its shores, which at one time were home to 28,000 inhabitants – farmers, fisherman, trappers, and their families. Twenty‑four of the villages relied on the Techa for water. The entire basin is roughly 2,900 km2.57 The Techa flows through a slightly elevated plain with a large number of interconnected lakes and bogs, which make up the Techa‑Iset´‑Tobol‑Irtysh‑Ob´ River system and the Kara Sea basin.
- 58 Dmitriy Evlanov, “The Techa River : 50 Years of Radioactive Problems,” in International Youth Nucle (...)
- 59 See Cochran, Norris, and Suokko, “Radioactive Contamination,” 511.
34In 1948, the Soviets finished the construction of the Maiak facility in the Techa River basin, along with a secret military city known as Chelyabinsk‑40. (In 1991, it was renamed Ozersk.) The purpose of the facility was to produce plutonium for the first Soviet atomic bomb. The first production reactor (reactor A) went into operation in June of 1948. Several nuclear waste disasters, both chronic and catastrophic, occurred at the site. Beginning in 1948 the authorities started dumping waste into the source of the Techa, Kyzyltash Lake, and into the Techa itself, using the river, in the words of Evlanov, of the Ozersk Technological Institute, as “a gutter.”58 From 1949 to 1956 Maiak dumped an estimated 76 million m3 of radioactive wastewater into the Techa, a cumulative dispersal of 2.75 MCi (102 PBq) of radioactivity.59
- 60 On this early acknowledgment of the human impact of radioactive waste from Maiak, see Kate Brown, P (...)
- 61 William J.F. Standring, Mark Dowdall, and Per Strand, “Overview of Dose Assessment Developments and (...)
- 62 Zhores Medvedev, “Two Decades of Dissidence,” New Scientist, 1972 (November 4, 1976) : 264–67. He f (...)
- 63 Medvedev, Nuclear Disaster ; Diane Soran and Danny Stillman, An Analysis of the Alleged Kyshtym Dis (...)
- 64 Nikipelov et al., “Ob avarii.”
35The initial dumping of waste led to serious radioactive exposure among the local populations, and ten of the villages along the river had to be relocated.60 Afterwards, high‑level waste was stored mostly in tanks. On September 29, 1957, a chemical explosion in a radioactive waste storage tank at Maiak released 20 MCi (740 PBq) of radionuclides into the environment. This accident, named after the nearest non‑secret city, Kyshtym, occurred when the cooling system failed and a radioactive waste tank exploded. The waste spread over an area of 20,000 km2 forming what would be known as the East Urals Radioactive Trace (EURT) – home to more than 270,000 people.61 Since virtually all of the information about waste and its disposal in USSR was secret until the 1990s, rumors and speculation about the accident persisted until 1976, when Zhores Medvedev mentioned the disaster almost in passing in New Scientist.62 Doubts about Medvedev’s conclusions were still strong in the early 1980s with some scientists convinced that it was industrial pollution, not an accident, even after Medvedev published a second article and a book in 1979.63 It was not until 1989 that Soviet authorities officially confirmed the disaster.64
- 65 A. Aarkrog, J. Simmonds, P. Strand, G. Christensen, B. Salbu, Radiological Assessment of Past, Pres (...)
- 66 Kostiuchenko, “Sostoianie radioaktivnogo zagriazneniia.” See also N.V. Shagina, “Reconstruction of (...)
- 67 Evlanov, “The Techa River.”
36The Maiak facility eventually halted the release of high‑ and intermediate‑level waste into the river, placing it instead in a number of natural lakes and artificial ponds referred to as “reservoirs” (vodoemy). The natural bodies of water included Lake Karachay (Reservoir 9), Lake Tatysh (Reservoir 6), and Lake Kyzyltash (Reservoir 2). The main artificial ponds were the Old Swamp (Staroe Boloto, Reservoir 17) and the reservoirs forming the so‑called Techa Cascade of Reservoirs (TCR, Techenskii kaskad vodoemov), constructed in the upper reaches of the river between 1956 and 1965. It included the reservoirs that existed before Maiak was built (Reservoirs 3 and 4) and the artificial reservoirs created by damming the Techa River (Reservoirs 10 and 11). By‑pass channels at the head of the Techa River were also built in order to reduce the amount of contamination entering the main river. The Techa was thus transformed into a large‑scale industrial site for dumping toxic wastes from nuclear weapons production.65 The canals and dams filtered the water through the sedimentation of radionuclides in the silts and soils on the right and left side of TCR.66 While the system of ponds and canals slowed the spread of radioactivity, it did not prevent it. Also, even if the creation of the Techa cascade solved some problems it created many new ones related to the remediation and stabilization of closed ponds.67
- 68 Nuclear Engineering International, “Russia’s Mayak Continues Clean‑Up of Lake Karachai” (November, (...)
- 69 Cochran, Norris, and Suokko, “Radioactive Contamination.”
- 70 Nuclear Engineering International, “Russia’s Mayak.”
37The Maiak facility became the site of another infamous disaster in 1967. In September 1951, the Soviets stopped discharging diluted high‑level radioactive waste directly into the Techa and instead diverted it into Lake Karachai, which served as an open‑air liquid waste dump. According to the estimates of Russian authorities, it accumulated 600m curies of radioactive waste. By comparison, the Soviet authorities estimated that 50m curies radiation was released by the Chernobyl disaster.68 In 1967, the water of the lake partially dried out, and radioactive dust from its bed was blown into the air, contaminating thousands of square kilometers around the site, including the reactor site and 63 villages, some of which had already suffered from the Kyshtym disaster, and affecting 41,500 people.69 After this accident, the nuclear authorities tried to prevent the spread of waste through various techniques, none of them effective. Beginning in 1980 the reservoir was filled with rock using hollow concrete blocks. The final backfilling of Karachai Lake took place in late 2015 when it was covered with rock and dirt.70 Because of these measures, however, the radioactive materials trapped under several layers of soil may further contaminate groundwater in the vicinity.
38Even if the contaminated territories of the Southern Ural region have received less international attention than the Arctic Sea, there is reason for serious concern that the Techa River will contaminate the Kara and Barents Seas. As with Arctic nuclear waste, the 1990s saw numerous revelations about the extent of the nuclear pollution at the Maiak site and in the surrounding area. It was followed, in the 2000s, by a change in waste politics. The Russian state accepted some responsibility for remediation but it also “normalized” the contamination and re‑framed it as a “heritage” of the crucial effort to achieve nuclear parity with the U.S. What is different in this case, is the high visibility of local communities and activists who have challenged the official normalization policies that dissimulated the inadequacy of the Maiak clean‑up.
Normalizing contamination : The Techa River and other “natural” waste storage sites at Maiak
- 71 For one of the first important analyses of the nuclear contamination at the Maiak facility, see Joi (...)
- 72 REFNews, “Akademik Leonid Bol´shov : IBRAE RAN zalozhil nauchnye osnovy strategicheskogo planirovan (...)
39Since 1990, when the delegation of International Union of Radioecologists (IUR) first visited Maiak, the site has been subject to intense research and monitoring activities involving Western institutions and laboratories, with Northern countries, first among them Norway, taking the lead.71 During the intervening years, the possibility of new disasters along the Techa River began to loom. The water table had begun to rise rapidly, perhaps due to the shutdown of reactors or changing weather patterns, increasing the risk that polluted waters would flood the Techa. From 2003 until 2015 the Russian nuclear industry commissioned a number of projects dealing with the stabilization and remediation of the Techa River basin including the Techa Cascade of Reservoirs (TCR), carried out under the direction of scientists from IBRAE. IBRAE developed a “Complex Plan for Solving the Ecological Problems of Maiak” (2003–2015) and a “Strategic Master Plan to Solve the Problem of the TCR.” The implementation of the plans, which were designed to strengthen infrastructure, improve filters, and the like, is supposed to have helped the TCR reach a state that the Russian regulatory body Rostekhnadzor deemed stable and to have modernized the water works. Scientists involved in these projects projected that in some two hundred years reservoirs V‑10 and V‑11 will be considered “normal” bodies of water, while the Techa River outside of the Maiak area will be available for all “economic” uses.72
- 73 Federal State Unitary Enterprise, “Maiak Production Association,” Otchet po ekologicheskoi bezopasn (...)
- 74 For the reference to this decision see, Maiak Production Association, Otchet po bezopasnosti, 34–35
- 75 Andrei Talevlin, “Techenskii kaskad vodoëmov bol´she Shershnevskogo vodokhranilishcha v dva raza” [ (...)
40Yet, many other nuclear waste problems at the Maiak site and on the Techa River were “normalized” through legal and rhetorical fixes, similar to the 2011 law that established the category of “special waste.” This was also the case for the special reservoirs of liquid waste at the Maiak site. According to Maiak’s 2018 “Report on Ecological Safety,” eight of the reservoirs mentioned above were in use in 2017.73 These reservoirs, including the TCR, have a curious legal status, as has been pointed out by both scientists and activists. According to current environmental legislation, these reservoirs cannot be used to store radioactive waste. To make things even more confusing, a 2010 joint decision of Rosatom, the Ministry of Environment, and Rostekhnadzor designated them as “special industrial reservoirs” (spetsial´nye promyshlennye vodoemy). As such, they became “objects of nuclear energy use” (ob´´ekty ispol´zovaniia iadernoi ènergii): storage facilities for liquid radioactive waste.74 Yet, as the lawyer and activist Andrei Talevlin, who visited the TCR in 2016 with the working group of Rosatom’s public council, points out, by transforming natural objects into “objects of nuclear energy use,” Rosatom has effectively legalized its waste dumps because it is illegal to discharge radioactive waste into the environment.75
- 76 S.V. Kazakov and S.S. Utkin, “Legal Aspects of the Safety of the Techa Cascade of Reservoirs - Liqu (...)
41Specialists from the Russian Academy of Sciences participating in inventorying and remediation acknowledge this legal ambiguity, and recognize that the reservoirs “are non‑isolated from the environment” and “constitute a serious potential menace.” They point out, however, that “bringing the TCR up to the standards that meet the legislative requirements…is economically ineffective and, moreover, impossible.” The least costly solution was to treat these sites as facilities for “special waste” storage that can be transformed into sites of “conservation” and even “disposal” for liquid radioactive wastes, provided they can be safely isolated from the environment76.
- 77 Brown, Plutopia, 297–305.
42Even more inadequate has been the handling of the contamination on the Techa River basin outside the Maiak facility. This part is not properly posted as radioactively hazardous nor fenced off, yet remains a place where people live and work, and who rely on the river for drinking water and for their crops and animals. While many villages were evacuated due to radiation, especially after the major incidents at Kyshtym and Lake Karachai, others were not. The inhabitants of the village of Musliumovo, almost at the epicenter of radioactivity, were never effectively relocated.77 After Kirienko became head of Rosatom in 2005, he supported the decision to move its residents two kilometers away from its previous location, which was not enough to ensure the safety of its residents, as a number of experts and activists have shown.
- 78 Quoted in “Igor´ Konyshev, eks‑nachal´nik Upravleniia po rabote s regionami goskorporatsii ‘Rosatom (...)
43Igor Konyshev, the director of the regional liaison office for Rosatom, asserted in a 2012 interview that the dissatisfaction of villagers and activists is mainly due to their vulnerable emotional state or an attempt to extract material benefit from the government (in the case of Muslumovo residents), or from foreign grant foundations (in the case of NGO activists). Konyshev claimed that the relocation was mainly successful and pointed out that the riverside area had been regularly covered with rocky soil, which complicated access to the river and significantly reduced levels of radiation. The measures for Muslumovo, he continued, were close to completion and would be a reminder of both the sacrifices and achievements of the nuclear program: “We can regret what happened, but cannot judge our predecessors in any way. They have ensured the nuclear parity that still preserves us.”78
- 79 Author’s skype interview with Nadezhda Kutepova, November 3, 2018.
44For Nadezhda Kutepova, who has been fighting to defend the rights of local residents, the protective measures mentioned above are laughably insufficient for a river so contaminated that it is barely distinguishable from a waste storage facility.79 In 2004 Kutepova established the Ozersk NGO Planet of Hopes, in part with funding from U.S. and European organizations. Her mission was to defend citizens whose rights were being violated by the nuclear industry. Kutepova has both acted as public adviser to the ombudsman of Cheliabinsk region, and has represented victims of the nuclear industry in Russian courts and at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. For her work, she received the Nuclear‑Free Future Award 2011.
- 80 Ibid.
- 81 Decision of the Chelyabinsk Regional Court to terminate a criminal case against V.I. Sadovnikov, Ma (...)
- 82 Vladimir Sliviak, “Radioaktivnye otkhody s kombinata ‘Maiak’ pronikaiut v reki, otravliaia sredu pr (...)
- 83 Quoted in Sergei Taran, “Shkola dlia evropeiskikh atomshchikov [School for European nuclear special (...)
45Kutepova tried to use legal instruments to ensure that local people are better protected from radiation exposure. When the 2011 law on radioactive waste was adopted, it provided for the creation of “a unified state system for radioactive waste management.” The government began the “primary registration” of radioactive waste and storage sites, which Rosatom coordinated with federal and local authorities. Kutepova believed it was a great opportunity to solve the problem of the Techa River: “We filed a request with the local government asking them to designate the Techa River as a radioactive waste storage.” Unsurprisingly, the answer they received was that the Techa River was not a waste storage facility.80 According to Kutepova and others, this contradicts the fact that the river remains heavily contaminated from the dumping of radioactive waste in late 1940s and early 1950s. Moreover, the practice of liquid waste dumping has continued. Indeed, a Cheliabinsk Regional Court decision from May 11, 2006, states that the former Maiak director Sadovnikov knowingly allowed liquid radioactive waste to enter the Techa beyond the TCR between 2001 and 2004. Measurements taken near the village of Musliumovo showed that according to the existing sanitary rules the river water of the Techa during these years could be “classified as liquid radioactive waste.”81 Since the hearings were closed, this decision became public only because of the efforts of Kutepova and the NGO Ekozashchita!82 Indeed, Rosatom’s official position has been to deny any discharges after the 1950s. While visiting Maiak in 2011, Igor Konyshev assured journalists that from an ecological point of view Maiak was “ten times safer than any other large‑scale production facility.” He continued by reminding the audience that “since the mid‑1950s the Maiak production facility has not discharged liquid radioactive waste into an open hydrographic network.”83
- 84 On Kutepova, see Daria Litvinova, “TV Witch Hunt Drives Human Rights Activist Out of Russia,” The M (...)
46In April 2010, Kutepova and a lawyer from the NGO Ekozashchita! helped 23 residents of Musliumovo file a lawsuit in Moscow against the government of the Russian Federation, Rosatom, the Emergencies Ministry, and the Ministry of Health. The plaintiffs demanded that the Techa be recognized as a “storage site for radioactive waste” and a 240 km‑long sarcophagus be built to block access to the radioactive river. The lawsuit was still pending when Russian investigators and law enforcement agents began to harass Kutepova, accusing her, among other things, of tax evasion. Under new laws intended to destroy NGOs, they designated Planet of Hopes a “foreign agent” and fined it for failing to register with the authorities as such. The government also initiated a public media campaign against her. After being accused of “industrial espionage” in a show on state TV, Kutepova did not wait for the formal prosecution and fled to France in 2015.84 Nadezhda Kutepova’s story shows that “heritagization” of military nuclear waste is symptomatic of Russian efforts to downplay the gravity of environmental contamination, delegitimize public criticism, and redirect the public’s attention to Russia’s past and present national glory.
Conclusion
47Since the end of the Cold War – amid demilitarization, the political fallout of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, and the liberalization of the political regime – Russian authorities have been far more forthcoming about the nature and extent of the country’s radioactive waste problem. This commenced with the Iablokov report to President Yeltsin in 1993 and continued through the 2000s, even as state authorities, especially under President Putin, tried to shape and control information, going so far as to charge such whistleblowers as Aleksandr Nikitin and Nadezhda Kutepova with treason.
48This period also saw greater openness about radioactive waste in the West, including in the U.S., which in the 1980s and the 1990s attempted to come to terms with the environmental effects of the Cold War, in particular the impact of the nuclear arms industry. The U.S. and other Western nuclear powers began to inventory nuclear waste, to devise better ways for treating and storing it, and to engage in cooperative research and development for selecting the best paths going forward.
- 85 See Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz, ed., Hiroshima’s Shadow (Stony Creek : Pamphleteer’s, 1998) ; (...)
49Yet, greater public awareness of the environmental and human consequences of the nuclear arms race has had, it seems, different effects on the dominant historical narratives of the Cold War in Russia and in the U.S. In the U.S., public scrutiny of radioactive waste and contamination contributed to intense criticism of patriotic postwar narratives and exhibitions dedicated to the atomic bomb. In response to this public criticism, we observe attempts to revise official narratives in order to include alternative and critical visions of the damage and destruction that nuclear arms could and did cause. Even if these revisions generated new controversies, such as the one surrounding the Enola Gay exhibition at Smithsonian, they have also helped democratize discussions of America’s nuclear history.85
50In Russia however, public criticism and the official recognition of nuclear waste problems have not led to a serious questioning of the atomic bomb’s heroic narrative. Indeed, reframing nuclear waste as part of Russia’s military heritage has only served to reinforce the heroic storyline. In view of Russia’s revived nationalism under Putin, and a belief in the need to secure the country’s position as a military and scientific superpower at all costs, the portrayal of the harm of nuclear arms as a necessary “sacrifice” is almost certain to bring future disasters.
Notes
1 This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska‑Curie grant agreement n° 705577 (TechPolChange) and from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond under the grant agreement n° P16‑0684 :1 (Atomic Heritage Goes Critical : Community, Waste and Nuclear Imaginaries).
2 For the first official publication on Kyshtym disaster at Maiak facility see B.V. Nikipelov, G.N. Romanov, L.A. Buldakov, N.S. Babaev. Iu.B. Kholina, E.I. Mikerin, “Ob avarii na Iuzhnom Urale 29 sentiabria 1957g. [On the accident in the South Urals 29 September 1957],” Informatsionnyi biulleten´ TsNII Atominform (June 30, 1989). For the first official report on radioactive waste dumps in the Arctic see the discussion of the Iablokov report below.
3 For a detailed report on the Nikitin case, including a collection of legal documentation, press releases, and press articles, see Aleksandr Nikitin and Nina Katerli, Delo Nikitina : Strategiia pobedy [The Nikitin affair : The strategy of victory] (SPb. : Zvezda, 2001) ; and Iurii Shmidt, ed., Delo Nikitina : Strategiia pobedy. Sbornik protsessual´nykh dokumentov zashchity [The Nikitin affair : The strategy of victory. Collection of legal defense documents] (SPb. : Zvezda, 2001).
4 United States Congress Office of Technology Assessment, Complex Cleanup : The Environmental Legacy of Nuclear Weapons Production (Washington : OTA, 1991).
5 National Research Council, Long‑Term Institutional Management of U.S. Department of Energy Legacy Waste Sites (Washington : National Academy Press, 2000).
6 Vladislav Larin, Kombinat “Maiak” – Problema na veka [The “Maiak” combine – Problems forever] (M. : Ecopresscenter, 2001).
7 A.A. Iskra, S.N. Brykin, A.A. Burykin, O.G. Lebedev, V.K. Popov, and R.S. Churaev, “The Evolution and Perfection of the ‘Radleg‑Radinfo’ Radioecological Information System” (September 2004) at https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/35/106/35106149.pdf.
8 International Atomic Energy Agency, Radiation Legacy of the 20th Century : Environmental Restoration. Proceedings of an International Conference (RADLEG 2000) held in Moscow, Russian Federation, 30 October–2 November 2000 (Vienna : IAEA, April 2002).
9 JSTOR searches from the 1960s to the present show that the number of articles referring to “radioactive waste” grew from 3 in the 1960s ; 24 in the 1970s ; 71 in the 1980s ; 249 in the 1990s ; and 241 in the 2000s.
10 See, for instance, the recent book by the British social scientist and environmental activist Andrew Blowers, The Legacy of Nuclear Power (London – New York : Routledge, 2016).
11 See, for example, the website of the Atomic Heritage Foundation at https://www.atomicheritage.org. Established in 2002, it is dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of the history of the Manhattan Project.
12 Because of the double meaning of “iadernoe nasledie,” I use the formulation “legacy/heritage” to remind readers that in Russian “legacy” is always entwined with “heritage.”
13 Rodney Harrison, “Introduction,” in Rodney Harrison, ed., Understanding the Politics of Heritage (Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2010), 5‑42.
14 See Rodney Harrison, Heritage : Critical approaches (New York : Routledge, 2013), 165.
15 For recent literature that makes the case for treating radioactive waste as “heritage,” see Cornelius Holtorf and Anders Högberg, “Communicating with Future Generations : What are the Benefits of Preserving Cultural Heritage ? Nuclear Power and Beyond,” The European Journal of Post‑Classical Archaeologies, 4 (2014) : 343–58 ; and Marcos Buser, Rubbish Theory : The Heritage of Toxic Waste (Amsterdam : Reinwardt Academy, 2015).
16 For some reflections on the distinctive features of atomic heritage from the perspective of heritage studies, see Anna Storm, Fredrik Krohn Andersson, and Egle Rindzevičiūtė, ”Urban Nuclear Reactors and the Security Theatre : The Making of Atomic Heritage in Chicago, Moscow and Stockholm” in Heike Oevermann and Eszter Gantner, eds., Securing Urban Heritage : Agents, Access, and Securitization (New York : Routledge, 2019), 111‑29.
17 See United States Congress Office of Technology Assessment, Nuclear Wastes in the Arctic : An Analysis of Arctic and Other Regional Impacts From Soviet Nuclear Contamination (Washington : OTA, 1995), 3.
18 See Olav Stokke, “Nuclear Dumping in Arctic Seas : Russian Implementation of the London Convention,” in David Victor, Kal Raustiala, and Eugene Skonikoff, eds., The Implementation and Effectiveness of International Environmental Commitments (Cambridge : MIT Press, 2001), 475–17.
19 Jacob D. Hamblin, Poison in the Well : Radioactive Waste in the Oceans at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, 2009), 1–2.
20 President of the Russian Federation, “Ob obrazovanii pravitel´stvennoi komissii po voprosam, sviazannym s zakhoroneniem v more radioaktivnykh otkhodov [About the formation of the government commission on questions related to the disposal of radioactive waste at sea],” Rasporiazhenie n° 613‑rp (October 24, 1992), at http://pravo.gov.ru/proxy/ips/?docbody=&prevDoc=102043022&backlink=1&&nd=102019212.
21 Aleksei Iablokov et al., Fakty i problemy sviazannye so sbrosom radioaktivnykh otkhodov v moria, primykaiushchie k territorii Rossiiskoi Federatsii [Facts and problems connected with the disposal of radioactive waste in seas adjacent to the territory of the Russian Federation] (M. : Priemnaia Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 1993). According to a number of sources, this document may be available as Facts and Problems Related to Radioactive Waste Disposal in Seas Adjacent to the Territory of the Russian Federation, trans. P. Gallager and E. Bloomstein (Albuquerque, NM : Small World Publishers, Inc., 1993), but I have been unable to locate it. For a summary of the report, see Aleksei Yablokov, “Radioactive Waste Disposal in Seas Adjacent to the Territory of the Russian Federation,” Marine Pollution Bulletin, 43, 1–6 (January – June 2001) : 8–18.
22 See the report of the first three years of the group’s work and joint expeditions to the site dumps in the Arctic : Joint Russian‑Norwegian Expert Group for Investigation of Radioactive Contamination in the Northern Areas, Dumping of Radioactive Waste and Radioactive Contamination in the Kara Sea : Results from 3 Years of Investigations (1992–1994) performed by the Joint Norwegian‑Russian Expert Group (March 1996), at https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/28/007/28007527.pdf.
23 Kirsti‑Liisa Sjoeblom and Gordon S. Linsley, “The International Arctic Seas Assessment Project (IASAP) : Interim progress report (IAEA‑SM‑339/167),” in International Atomic Energy Agency, Environmental Impact of Radioactive Releases. Proceedings of an International Symposium (Vienna : IAEA, October 1995), 155–64, at https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx ?orig_q =RN :27035343.
24 Office of Technology Assessment, Nuclear Wastes in the Arctic.
25 Lasse Ringius, Radioactive Waste Disposal at Sea (Cambridge : MIT Press, 2001), 152.
26 Ibid., 150–52.
27 Thomas Nilsen and Nils Bøhmer, Sources to Radioactive Contamination in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk Counties, Bellona Report Volume I (Oslo : Bellona, 1994), at https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/26/002/26002307.pdf ?r =1&r =1 ; Aleksandr Nikitin, Igor Kudrik, and Thomas Nilsen, “The Russian Northern Fleet : Sources of Radioactive Contamination,” Bellona Foundation Reports, no. 2 (1996) ; Nils Bøhmer, Aleksandr Nikitin, Igor Kudrik, Thomas Nilsen, Andrey Zolotkov, Michael H. McGovern, The Arctic Nuclear Challenge (Bellona Foundation, 2001).
28 Dale Herspring, The Kremlin and the High Command (Lawrence, KS : University Press of Kansas, 2006).
29 Thomas Nilsen, Igor Kudrik, and Alexandr Nikitin, The Russian Northern Fleet : Sources of Radioactive Contamination, Bellona Report vol. 2 (1996), at http://spb.org.ru/bellona/ehome/russia/nfl/index.htm.
30 Danielle Gordon, Bartosz Weglarczyk, and Linda Rothstein, “Just Like the Bad Old Days,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 52, 5 (September/October 1996) : 5–10.
31 Jon Gausllaa, “Nikitin Application Admissible,” Bellona (November 23, 2003), at http://bellona.org/news/russian‑human‑rights‑issues/nikitin‑case/2003‑11‑nikitin‑application‑admissible.
32 Bellona, “Aleksandr Nikitin : Nashei tsel´iu byla likvidatsiia na Severe Rossii iadernoi svalki [Aleksandr Nikitin : Our goal was the liquidation of the nuclear dump in Northern Russia],” Bellona (March 13, 2009), at http://bellona.ru/2009/03/13/aleksandr‑nikitin‑nashej‑tselyu‑byla‑l/. For greater detail, see Nikitin and Katerli, Delo Nikitina and Shmidt, Delo Nikitina.
33 Jon Gauslaa, “The Case of Grigory Pasko,” Bellona (April 23, 2002), at http://bellona.org/news/russian‑human‑rights‑issues/access‑to‑information/2002‑04‑the‑case‑of‑grigory‑pasko.
34 Lina Zernova, “Yury Schmidt : A Nation Where Law Enforcement Run Unchecked is Doomed to See Its Civil Liberties Dwindle,” Bellona (October 30, 2012), at http://bellona.org/news/climate‑change/international‑climate‑conferences/2012‑10‑yury‑schmidt‑a‑nation‑where‑law‑enforcement‑run‑unchecked‑is‑doomed‑to‑see‑its‑civil‑liberties‑dwindle.
35 Dale Herspring, The Kremlin and the High Command (Lawrence, KS : University Press of Kansas, 2006).
36 Aleksandr Nikitin, “Grazhdane veriat antiatomnym insinuatsiiam bol´she, chem slovam uchënykh, glava pravleniia EPTs ‘Bellona’ [Citizens believe in anti‑nuclear insinuations more than in the words of scholars, according to the head of the ‘Bellona’ Environmental Rights Center],” I A Regnum (April 14, 2014), at https://regnum.ru/news/society/1790939.html ; Aleksandr Nikitin, “Atomnaia otrasl´ i ecologicheskoe dvizhenie : Tochki sotrudnichestva [The atomic industry and the ecological movement : Points of cooperation],” X International Forum‑Dialog “70 Years of the Russian Nuclear Industry. Dialog of Generations” (M., November 12–13, 2015), at http://osatom-1.nichost.ru/mediafiles/u/files/X_forum_2015/03_Nikitin_A.K._Tochki_sotrudnichestva.pdf .
37 European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, “NDEP Nuclear Window,” at https://www.ebrd.com/what‑we‑do/sectors/nuclear‑safety/nuclear‑window.html.
38 Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, “About the Global Partnership,” at https://www.gpwmd.com/about, and NTI, “Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials…” (‘10 plus 10 over 10 program’),” at https://www.nti.org/learn/treaties‑and‑regimes/global‑partnership‑against‑spread‑weapons‑and‑materials‑mass‑destruction‑10‑plus‑10‑over‑10‑program/.
39 NDEP, “Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership” at https://ndep.org/ ; NDEP, “History,” at https://ndep.org/about/overview/history/.
40 Ibid.
41 Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development (OECD)/Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), Radioactive waste management programmes in OECD/NEA member countries : Russian Federation (OECD/NEA, 2014), 9, at https://www.oecd-nea.org/rwm/profiles/Russian_Federation_profile_web.pdf..
42 Public Council of the State Corporation “Rosatom,” Radioaktivnye otkhody : ot obrazovaniia do izoliatsii [Radioactive waste : from formation to isolation] (M. : Eko‑Ekspert, 2013), 22‑23.
43 E.V. Evstratov et al., eds., Problemy iadernogo naslediia i puti ikh resheniia [Problems related to the nuclear legacy and paths to remediation], vol. 1, (M. : IBRAE, 2012) ; L.A. Bol´shov, N.P. Laverov, I.I. Linge, eds., Problemy iadernogo naslediia i puti ikh resheniia. Razvitie sistemy obrashcheniia s radioaktivnymi otkhodami v Rossii [Problems related to the nuclear legacy and paths to remediation. The development of radioactive waste management in Russia], vol. 2 (M. : IBRAE, 2013) ; A.Bol´shov, N.P. Laverov, I.I. Linge, eds., Problemy iadernogo naslediia i puti ikh resheniia. Vyvod iz ekspluatatsii [Problems related to the nuclear legacy and paths to remediation. Decommissioning], vol. 3 (M. : IBRAE, 2015).
44 Evstratov et al., Problemy iadernogo naslediia, 9–10.
45 Ibid., 79.
46 See, for example, N.N. Bogunenko, A.D. Pelipenko, G.A. Sosnin, eds., Geroi atomnogo proekta [Heroes of the atomic project] (Sarov : RFIaTs‑VNIIÈF, 2005).
47 Paul Josephson, Fish Sticks, Sports Bras, and Aluminum Cans (Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), chapter 6.
48 Museum and Exhibition Association Manege, “70 let atomnoi otrasli. Tsepnaia reaktsiia uspekha [70 years of the atomic industry. A chain reaction of success]” (2015), at http://moscowmanege.ru/70‑let‑atomnoj‑otrasli‑cepnaya‑reakciya‑uspexa/). See also the analysis of cultural heritage practices and processes in Russia’s nuclear sphere by Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, “Nuclear Energy in Russia : From Future Technology to Cultural Heritage,” The Bridge, 6, 2 (2016) : 15–20.
49 State Duma of the Russian Federation, “Ob obrashchenii s radioaktivnymi otkhodami i o vnesenii izmenenii v otdel´nye zakonodatel´nye akty Rossiiskoi Federatsii [On radioactive waste management and amendments to some laws of the Russian Federation],” Federal law no 190‑FZ (July 11, 2011), at http://pravo.gov.ru/proxy/ips/?docbody=&prevDoc=102164278&backlink=1&&nd=102149374.
50 Public Council of “Rosatom,” Radioaktivnye Otkhody, 23.
51 These estimations do not take into account the radioactive waste located in the deep disposal facilities and at nuclear test sites. See I.I. Linge, ed., Osobyye radioaktivnyye otkhody [Special radioactive wastes] (M. : SAM poligrafist, 2015), 3.
52 See Evstratov et al., Problemy iadernogo naslediia, 96.
53 See Aleksandr Nikitin, “Zakon o RAO : itogi pervoi piatiletki [The law on radioactive waste : Results of the first five years]”, Ekologiia i Pravo, 2, 66 (March 2017) : 8.
54 Russian State Duma, “Ob obrashchenii,” art. 3.
55 Nikitin, “Zakon o RAO,” 8.
56 Yannick Barthe, Le pouvoir d’indécision : La mise en politique des déchets nucléaires (P. : Ed. Economica, 2006).
57 V.A. Kostiuchenko, “Sostoianie radioaktivnogo zagriazneniia reki Techa [The state of radioactive contamination of the Techa River],” Radiatsionnaia Biologiia. Radioekologiia, 49, 2 (2009) : 212–18 ; Thomas Cochran, Robert Norris, and Kristen Suokko, “Radioactive Contamination at Chelyabinsk‑65, Russia,” Annual Review of Energy Environment, 18 (1993) : 512–13.
58 Dmitriy Evlanov, “The Techa River : 50 Years of Radioactive Problems,” in International Youth Nuclear Congress 2000 : Youth, Future, Nuclear. Transactions (Slovakia : Slovak Nuclear Society, 2000), at
https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/33/011/33011261.pdf.
59 See Cochran, Norris, and Suokko, “Radioactive Contamination,” 511.
60 On this early acknowledgment of the human impact of radioactive waste from Maiak, see Kate Brown, Plutopia : Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2012), 189–96.
61 William J.F. Standring, Mark Dowdall, and Per Strand, “Overview of Dose Assessment Developments and the Health of Riverside Residents Close to the ‘Mayak’ PA Facilities, Russia,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 6, 1 (2009) 1 : 179. See also A.V. Akleyev et al., “Consequences of the Radiation Accident at the Mayak Production Association in 1957 (the ’Kyshtym Accident’), Journal of Radiological Protection, 37 (2017) : R19–R42.
62 Zhores Medvedev, “Two Decades of Dissidence,” New Scientist, 1972 (November 4, 1976) : 264–67. He followed this with Nuclear Disaster in the Urals (New York : W. W. Norton, 1980).
63 Medvedev, Nuclear Disaster ; Diane Soran and Danny Stillman, An Analysis of the Alleged Kyshtym Disaster, report LA 9217 MS (Los‑Alamos : LANL, January 1982) ; Sarah White and Christoper Joyce, “Ural Disaster : Explosion or Just Pollution ?” New Scientist, (April 22, 1982) : 200.
64 Nikipelov et al., “Ob avarii.”
65 A. Aarkrog, J. Simmonds, P. Strand, G. Christensen, B. Salbu, Radiological Assessment of Past, Present and Potential Sources to Environmental Contamination in the Southern Urals and Strategies for Remedial Measures (SUCON) (Roskilde : Risø National Laboratory, December 2000), at https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/32/036/32036317.pdf ; Cochran, Norris, and Suokko, “Radioactive Contamination,” 514-18.
66 Kostiuchenko, “Sostoianie radioaktivnogo zagriazneniia.” See also N.V. Shagina, “Reconstruction of the Contamination of the Techa River in 1949–1951 as a Result of Emissions from the “Mayak” Production Association,” Radiation And Environmental Biophysics, 51, 4 (2012) : 349–66.
67 Evlanov, “The Techa River.”
68 Nuclear Engineering International, “Russia’s Mayak Continues Clean‑Up of Lake Karachai” (November, 30, 2016), at http://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsrussias‑mayak‑continues‑clean‑up‑of‑lake‑karachai‑5684170 ; A.A. Abagian et al., “Informatsiia ob avarii na Chernobyl´skoi AES i eë posledstviiakh, podgotovlennaia dlia MAGATE [Information about the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station and its consequences, prepared for the IAEA],” Atomnaia Energiia, 61, 5 (November 1986) : 301–20.
69 Cochran, Norris, and Suokko, “Radioactive Contamination.”
70 Nuclear Engineering International, “Russia’s Mayak.”
71 For one of the first important analyses of the nuclear contamination at the Maiak facility, see Joint Russian‑Norwegian Expert Group for Investigation of Radioactive Contamination in the Northern Areas, Sources contributing to radioactive contamination of the Techa River and areas surrounding the “Mayak” Production Association, Urals, Russia : Programme on investigations of possible impacts of the “Mayak” PA activities on radioactive contamination of the Barents and Kara Seas (Østerås : Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority, 1997). Another example is the joint Russian‑American study of radiation, which among other efforts produced L.I. Il´in and V.A. Gubanov, ed., Krupnye Radiatsionnye Avarii : Posledstviia i zashchitnye Mery [Major radioactive accidents : consequences and protection measures] (M. : IzdatAT, 2001).
72 REFNews, “Akademik Leonid Bol´shov : IBRAE RAN zalozhil nauchnye osnovy strategicheskogo planirovaniia v iadernoi i radiatsionnoi bezopasnosti v Rossii [Academician Leonid Bol´shov : IBRAE of the Russian Academy of Sciences set forth the scientific foundations of strategic planning in nuclear and radiation safety in Russia],” REFNews (July 10, 2018), at https://www.refnews.ru/read/article/1474019.
73 Federal State Unitary Enterprise, “Maiak Production Association,” Otchet po ekologicheskoi bezopasnosti FGUP “PO “Maiak” za 2017 god [Report on the environmental safety of the Russian state enterprise ‘Maiak’ for 2017] (Ozersk : FGUP PO Maiak, 2018), 34, at Erreur ! Référence de lien hypertexte non valide..
74 For the reference to this decision see, Maiak Production Association, Otchet po bezopasnosti, 34–35.
75 Andrei Talevlin, “Techenskii kaskad vodoëmov bol´she Shershnevskogo vodokhranilishcha v dva raza” [The Techa cascade of reservoirs is twice as large as the Shershnevskoe reservoir (October 20, 2016), at Erreur ! Référence de lien hypertexte non valide..
76 S.V. Kazakov and S.S. Utkin, “Legal Aspects of the Safety of the Techa Cascade of Reservoirs - Liquid Radioactive Waste Storage Facilities,” Water Air Soil Pollution : Focus, 9 (2009) : 287–92.
77 Brown, Plutopia, 297–305.
78 Quoted in “Igor´ Konyshev, eks‑nachal´nik Upravleniia po rabote s regionami goskorporatsii ‘Rosatom’ : Pereselenie Musliumovo – eto unikal´nyi opyt, kotoryi prigoditsia Rossii eshchë ne raz [Igor´ Konyshev, ex‑head of the Department for liaison with regions of the state corporation ‘Rosatom’ : the relocation of Musliumovo is a unique experience which will be useful for Russia many times over],” Dostup1, (February 20, 2012), at https://dostup1.ru/interview/interview_37201.html.
79 Author’s skype interview with Nadezhda Kutepova, November 3, 2018.
80 Ibid.
81 Decision of the Chelyabinsk Regional Court to terminate a criminal case against V.I. Sadovnikov, May 11, 2006. Translated from Russian by the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre. Personal archive of Nadezhda Kutepova.
82 Vladimir Sliviak, “Radioaktivnye otkhody s kombinata ‘Maiak’ pronikaiut v reki, otravliaia sredu prozhivaniia tysiach rossiian – obnarodovanie dokumenta [Radioactive wastes from the ‘Maiak’ combine penetrate the rivers, poisoning areas where thousands of Russians live – document disclosure],” Radio Ekho Moskvy (December 23, 2011), at https://echo.msk.ru/blog/ecodefense/842189‑echo/.
83 Quoted in Sergei Taran, “Shkola dlia evropeiskikh atomshchikov [School for European nuclear specialists],” Moskovskii Komsomolets Cheliabinsk (February 2, 2011), at https://chel.mk.ru/articles/2011/02/02/562404‑shkola‑dlya‑evropeyskih‑atomschikov.html.
84 On Kutepova, see Daria Litvinova, “TV Witch Hunt Drives Human Rights Activist Out of Russia,” The Moscow Times (October 15, 2015), at https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2015/10/15/tv‑witch‑hunt‑drives‑human‑rights‑activist‑out‑of‑russia‑a50302 ; Vitaly Servetnik, Kjersti Album, Yngvild Lorentzen, Pressure Toward Russian Environmental NGOs (Naturvernforbundet, 2017), 4, 21, 25 ; and Anne Garrels, Putin Country (New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), 197–200.
85 See Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz, ed., Hiroshima’s Shadow (Stony Creek : Pamphleteer’s, 1998) ; and Arthur Molella, Exhibiting Atomic Culture : The View from Oak Ridge, History and Technology, 19, 3 (2003) : 211–26.
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