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

In “Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters”, Kate Brown writes, “To entice workers to agree to the risks and sacrifices involved in plutonium production, American and Soviet nuclear leaders created something new – plutopia. Plutopia’s unique, limited-access, aspirational communities satisfied most desires of American and Soviet postwar societies. The orderly prosperity of plutopia led most eyewitnesses to overlook the radioactive waste mounting around them” (pg. 4). She continues, “As the Cold War promises of affluence, upward mobility, and the freedom to consume materialized in plutopia, anxious residents gradually came to trust their leaders, the safety of their plants, and the rightness of their national cause. As plutopia matured, residents gave up their civil and biological rights for consumer rights” (pg. 5). Brown takes a transnational approach in her examination, writing, “I place the plutonium communities alongside each other to show how plutonium bound lives together across the Cold War divide. I suggest that the world’s first plutonium cities shared common features, which transcended political ideology and national culture and were derived from nuclear security, atomic intelligence, and radioactive hazards” (pg. 8). Describing the founding of the American plutopia, Brown writes, “New Deal social welfare went against the grain of DuPont corporate ideology, but government spending that promoted business, generated profits for deserving parties, and preserved unspoken class divisions – that was the desired future, and in planning the city of Richland DuPont executives sought forcefully to push this vision along” (pg. 39). Further, “In insisting on middle-class housing, DuPont executives argued that only a community united in middle-class abundance would deliver plutonium safely and securely. Yet to run the vast plant they had to stock Richland with working people. So they simply called the proletariat ‘middle-class’ and in that way co-opted it. The scheme worked. Although Richland was a city with a working-class majority until the 1960s, it was seen and is remembered as a middle-class town of scientists and engineers, a homogeneous, monoclass society” (pg. 51). To this end, “The desire to keep the government-stimulated communities alive led residents to blithely exchange the possible dangers of radioactive contamination for the certainties of growing prosperity, bankrolled by an expanding federal government, which, as they grew more dependent on it, they politically derided” (pg. 132). In this culture, “The expanding industrial wealth of the West alongside the personally increasing prosperity of the American working class joined at a point where science, technology, and culture bolstered one another to send a message of competence, expertise, and trust” (pg. 221). Brown writes of the Soviet plutopia, “Like their American counterparts, Soviet leaders also created a community of select plutonium workers secured both physically and financially, which was orbited by lesser communities of workers, prisoners, and soldiers, servicing both plutopia and the spreading radioactive contamination flowing from the plant. The Stalinist regime may seem like it was ready-made for the kind of surveillance, submission, and obedience demanded by the nuclear security state. But that was not the case. Due to sheer poverty and disorganization, it took more than a decade to build the first Soviet plutopia, and it cost the nation dearly” (pg. 75). Addressing popular misconceptions, Brown writes, “There are two problems with the equation of the mature, closed nuclear city with the Gulag. First, Soviet leaders and construction managers like General Rapoport were so taken up in the first two years with organizing a colossal nuclear infrastructure amidst the postwar ruin that they largely forgot about security and secrecy. Second, despite the popular image of a Soviet labor camp as a place of totalitarian order and control, where prisoners meekly submitted to the power of guards and wardens, that reputation is grandly mythical” (pg. 92). In this way, “Party leaders agreed that the best way to keep employees was to tempt them with urban magnificence” (pg. 214). This led to a situation where residents living under advanced socialism were no longer socialist and demanded ever more opulence. Brown writes, “Peace, contentment, and tranquility reigned in Ozersk, this major front of the Cold War, as if it had slipped the collective mind that the city existed to produce plutonium, not the other way round – that plutonium’s existence was there to ensure the city’s prosperity” (pg. 267). Turning to disasters and the example of Chernobyl, Brown writes, “Most liquidators in Ukraine had no idea that Chernobyl was not the nation’s first disaster or that, from a scientific perspective, there was little that was new in the Chernobyl cleanup. The emergency actions in Ukraine had all played out before in 1951, 1953, 1955, 1957, and 1967 in the Urals” (pg. 284). The difference was that, “as nuclear catastrophe laid waste to the assurances that Soviet leaders and Soviet science would protect and defend its citizens, [Head of the Soviet Committee for Atomic Energy A.M.] Petrosiants failed to see that Chernobyl’s greatest victim would be the Soviet state” (pg. 286). Brown concludes, “The effects of radiation on health remain highly controversial, as the continuing debate about the effects of Chernobyl demonstrates; estimates of deaths from the accident range from thirty-seven to a quarter of a million. The controversy is not surprising. I have argued in this history that highly controlled medical research on the effects of radioactive isotopes on human bodies manufactured knowledge, doubt, and dissent in a way that created a gulf of opinions. But there also existed a strange lack of curiosity” (pg. 332). Further, “Plutopia’s spatial compartmentalization appeared natural because it mirrored divisions in Soviet and American society between free and unfree labor, between majority white and minority nonwhite populations, and often between those people thought to be safe and those left in the path of radiation” (pg. 334).

I devoured Brown's extremely well-researched book during the research phase of my novel. Brown's grasp and breadth of the subject make for compelling reading. A book that not only informs but lays out the challenges of our future. Everyone should read this book! Kay Smith-Blum, author, debut novel, TANGLES, coming Winter 2024-25

Kate Brown’s latest work, Plutopia compares two Plutonium production plants in the USSR and the USA from 1943 on. The two plants located in Richland, Washington and Ozersk in the Ural Mountains of Russia were created to harvest and refine the element essential for the production of nuclear weapons. Brown juxtaposes the two plutonium plants and uses numerous eyewitness accounts to demonstrate how plutonium production occurred in the two different plants on the opposite sides of the world. Plutopia also analyzes lives of the workers and the support staff present at these two production facilities. Brown discusses these workers’ standard of living and how it compares to the rest of their respective nations in these Plutonium rich utopias. Her book effectively addresses the fledgling plutonium industry in both the US and the USSR and the effect it had on the workers, and the surrounding environment. In her analysis of both plutonium production plants we can see how similar the two actually are despite one being a product of communism and the other a product of capitalism. Kate Brown divides the book up into four parts. The first two parts are dedicated to the creation of these two production facilities. She highlights the difficulties encountered in creating both the Hanford Plutonium Plant and the Ozersk Plant. Following the discovery of atomic weapons by the US and the subsequent copying by the USSR, both became obsessed with building these newfound weapons. They needed a vast amount of fissionable material (i.e. plutonium) to create stockpiles of nuclear weapons. The Hanford Plant and the Ozersk plant were created to fulfill that need. Both of the plants required massive amounts of labor to create them, The Russians turned to prison labor from the Gulag and the USA pulled workers from their prison system as well. The plants were both created haphazardly; there was little support for the workers in the form of food or housing. There was always a certain disregard for worker well being. The standard of living would go up in both places. The key to security was created close ties between the workers families and the Plutonium production facilities. The US and Russia created little utopias alongside their plutonium plants. This created a mutually beneficially partnership between the plant and its workers. Part three of the book addresses the effects that plutonium production had on people and the environment. This is a relatively unknown part of history that Brown draws attention to. These two plants were self-sufficient and effectively closed off from the rest of civilization. They were not overseen by any government body. They were left to their own devices with catastrophic results. Brown emphasizes how both plants were essentially ecological catastrophes on par or with, or exceeding Chernobyl. Plutonium refining is a dirty business, and during the 1950s and 1960s no one was entirely sure how to safely handle the highly radioactive element. In Brown’s interview with a several of the factory workers like Marge Degooyer emphasized how dangerously ignorant everyone was. She worked with highly radioactive materials and no one told her how dangerous they were. In the 1950s scientists were starting to get a sense of how dangerous plutonium production was. However, the mangers of the plants on Ozersk and Hanford kept their workers in the dark for the most part. Both of the plants gave the workers job security and a good standard of living. The tradeoff was irreversible damage to their health. There were deaths from radiation poisoning as well as high risk for cancer later in life. These problems were not isolated to just the plutonium plants. Brown dedicates several chapters to the environmental catastrophes that occurred in and around these two cities. Neither of the facilities knew what to do with the radioactive byproducts of plutonium production or how to keep it contained. The Ozersk simply dumped the waste into the Techa River near the plant. This polluted all of the downstream villages and contributed to astronomical numbers of cancer and birth defect cases. The towns downstream and downwind of Hanford had similar problems. The Columbia River was highly contaminated with radiation. The people in the towns near Hanford suffered similar radiation related problems like the people near Ozersk. The fourth part of Plutopia details the aftermath of the contamination in the areas around the plutonium plants. For decades the governments had kept affected citizens in the dark, dealing in the idea of “permissible doses” of radiation. In the 1980s there was a demand by both the Soviet people and the US to know exactly what they had been exposed to. They were determined to get some sort of compensation for their prolonged suffering. Kate Brown’s Plutopia does a great job of bridging the gap between east and west during the Cold War. Ozersk and Hanford paralleled each other in their mutual pursuit of plutonium. Brown also does a great job of drawing focus to the environmental catastrophes that these two plants created unbeknownst the general public. The accidental radiation poisoning of an entire populace is the sort of behavior that one expects in the Soviet Union, but it is somewhat shocking to realize that the USA did this to its citizens as well.

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.

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.

I agree with the rewiew saying this book repeats itself quite a lot, yet it still brings us a really interesting perspective and "behind the scenes" from both USA and USSR while developing the Plutonium facilities, and like all scientific good work, brings us tons of sources. I've been studying radioactive accidents and I found in this book plenty of good information

米国ハンフォードとソ連マヤク再処理工場を対比させ，大河川に放射能を直接放流し，住民が多大な健康被害を受けたことに，丁寧にインタビューし，まとめた．現在の武漢生物研究所が長江にウィルスを直接放流し，世界中に感染被害をもたらしている状況を予言している．核とウィルスがリスクでは等価であり，周辺住民のみならず世界的な健康被害が及ぶ点，軍事技術である点で全く同じである．奇形や障害児が現れている点で，コロナの近未来を示唆している．

The same story could have been told with half the pages without losing anything.