The threat of global climate change has pushed governments around the world to consider alternati... more The threat of global climate change has pushed governments around the world to consider alternative energy sources, including nuclear energy. As the interest in nuclear power increases, serious discussions on safety must resume before moving forward. There is no better time than now, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Chernobyl, to revisit the causes of the worst civilian nuclear disaster in history in an attempt to prevent future accidents. The author reviews initial reports that accused operators of violating instructions, but also looks at evidence that surfaced in the early 1990s, which suggested that the reactor design, combined with a lack of information sharing, were to blame for the explosion. While it is imperative to address human error, design flaws, and communication failures, the author argues that organizational characteristics of the Soviet nuclear power sector deserve more attention by scholars and policy makers. Chernobyl was not a disaster waiting to happen, the autho...
The Chernobyl disaster has been variously ascribed to human error, reactor design flaws, and indu... more The Chernobyl disaster has been variously ascribed to human error, reactor design flaws, and industry mismanagement. Six former Chernobyl employees were convicted of criminal negligence; they defended themselves by pointing to reactor design issues. Other observers blamed the Soviet style of ideologically driven economic and industrial management. In Producing Power, Sonja Schmid draws on interviews with veterans of the Soviet nuclear industry and extensive research in Russian archives as she examines these alternate accounts. Rather than pursue one "definitive" explanation, she investigates how each of these narratives makes sense in its own way and demonstrates that each implies adherence to a particular set of ideas -- about high-risk technologies, human-machine interactions, organizational methods for ensuring safety and productivity, and even about the legitimacy of the Soviet state. She also shows how these attitudes shaped, and were shaped by, the Soviet nuclear industry from its very beginnings. Schmid explains that Soviet experts established nuclear power as a driving force of social, not just technical, progress. She examines the Soviet nuclear industry's dual origins in weapons and electrification programs, and she traces the emergence of nuclear power experts as a professional community. Schmid also fundamentally reassesses the design choices for nuclear power reactors in the shadow of the Cold War's arms race. Schmid's account helps us understand how and why a complex sociotechnical system broke down. Chernobyl, while unique and specific to the Soviet experience, can also provide valuable lessons for contemporary nuclear projects.
The article contrasts efforts by Soviet scientists and engineers in the 1950s and 1960s, who succ... more The article contrasts efforts by Soviet scientists and engineers in the 1950s and 1960s, who successfully persuaded planners to support expensive, still unproven nuclear technologies, and to establish a nuclear industry from scratch, with contemporary efforts by nuclear energy advocates to maintain at least a sliver of relevance for nuclear power in the carbon-friendly energy mix of the 21st century - efforts that have proven very challenging. Nuclear power not only promised to facilitate modernization, it also offered a solution to the imbalance in resource and demand distribution. Despite its cost, creating a nuclear industry made sense to many nations in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, the picture is more fragmented, and different criteria are being used to evaluate the benefits of nuclear energy, including the possibility of severe accidents, and the still unresolved waste management issue. Some countries with nuclear industries have decided to phase out nuclear, while others are en...
the Pavilion for Atomic Energy at the 'Exhibition of the Achievements of the People's Eco... more the Pavilion for Atomic Energy at the 'Exhibition of the Achievements of the People's Economy1'{VDNKh) in Moscow, from its inception in 1956 to its closing in 1989. The analytical goal is to unpack the kind of social order that was implicit in the way visitors to the pavilion were envisioned. The paper proposes that the pavilion's exhibitions on nuclear energy, staged as pivotal to technical progress, not only reinforced a vision of the country's scientific and technological potential, but also contributed significantly to the Soviet political vision. Based on archival documents and published material, the paper traces shifts in the pavilion's tasks, and attempts to convey how these shifts mirror changing concepts of the intended visitors. Moreover, the paper explores how this historical case study speaks to contemporary museum theory, and how this may qualify our understanding of the role of the popularization of science and technology. It addresses differen...
1.Introduction 2. Structural properties 2.1 Grammatical gender 2.2 Gender agreement 2.3 The morph... more 1.Introduction 2. Structural properties 2.1 Grammatical gender 2.2 Gender agreement 2.3 The morphological structure of personal nouns 2.3.1 Derivation 2.3.2 Compounding 3. The lexical representation of women and men 4. Gender and reference 4.1 Gender-specific reference and agreement conflicts 4.2 Gender-indefinite reference and generic masculines 4.3 The endearing use of the masculine gender 4.4 Summary 5. The interpretation of generic masculines: Empirical evidence 5.1 Personal nouns with specific reference 5.2 Personal nouns with more generic reference 5.3 Metalinguistic test 6. Linguistic gender studies in Russia 6.1 Proverbs and idioms 6.1.1 The androcentric perspective 6.1.2 Ženskij golos – ‘The female voice’ 6.1.3 ‘Woman/wife’ 6.1.4 ‘Mother’ 6.1.5 The “pseudo-female” perspective 6.2 Obscene expressions – a male domain? 7.Language politics 8.Suggestions for future research Notes References
A recent American “mini-series” on Chernobyl, widely watched across the world, presented viewers ... more A recent American “mini-series” on Chernobyl, widely watched across the world, presented viewers with the concluding finding that this massive accident had occurred because the reactor design had inherent flaws; flaws that were known but not previously fixed because it was “cheaper” that way. The reactor design in question is the RBMK, and this paper will argue that this design was far from “cheap,” neither then nor now, and that its adoption as the second standard design for the Soviet Union’s nuclear power reactor fleet was based on much more than economic considerations. With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to forget that reactor designs are always chosen for a multitude of reasons and never solely based on their technical or economic merits. Based on archival research, interviews, and industry publications, I show that approving and building RBMK reactors made good sense at the time, despite later claims to the contrary. Then I take the examples of a small modular reactor (...
It was the sudden disappearance of American scholarly publications on nuclear fission in the earl... more It was the sudden disappearance of American scholarly publications on nuclear fission in the early 1940s that alerted Soviet scientists to the secret American nuclear weapons program. Georgi Flerov, a Soviet nuclear physicist, wrote a letter to Stalin in 1942 and warned him that this conspicuous silence could only mean that the Americans were working on a nuclear bomb.1 Intelligence soon confirmed Flerov’s suspicion, and in early 1943, the Soviet Union initiated its own nuclear weapons project. Shrouded in secrecy, the Soviet state set up organizations and facilities supporting an army of nuclear scientists and engineers, who developed and mastered fission and fusion devices soon after their American counterparts. The ground work was laid for a nuclear arms race that would soon escalate. Yet another race started in 1954, with the launch of a Soviet nuclear power plant—named “The World’s First.” This race was about capturing the public’s imagination, and providing a vision of what th...
The Chernobyl disaster has been variously ascribed to human error, reactor design flaws, and indu... more The Chernobyl disaster has been variously ascribed to human error, reactor design flaws, and industry mismanagement. Six former Chernobyl employees were convicted of criminal negligence; they defended themselves by pointing to reactor design issues. Other observers blamed the Soviet style of ideologically driven economic and industrial management. In Producing Power, Sonja Schmid draws on interviews with veterans of the Soviet nuclear industry and extensive research in Russian archives as she examines these alternate accounts. Rather than pursue one "definitive" explanation, she investigates how each of these narratives makes sense in its own way and demonstrates that each implies adherence to a particular set of ideas -- about high-risk technologies, human-machine interactions, organizational methods for ensuring safety and productivity, and even about the legitimacy of the Soviet state. She also shows how these attitudes shaped, and were shaped by, the Soviet nuclear industry from its very beginnings. Schmid explains that Soviet experts established nuclear power as a driving force of social, not just technical, progress. She examines the Soviet nuclear industry's dual origins in weapons and electrification programs, and she traces the emergence of nuclear power experts as a professional community. Schmid also fundamentally reassesses the design choices for nuclear power reactors in the shadow of the Cold War's arms race. Schmid's account helps us understand how and why a complex sociotechnical system broke down. Chernobyl, while unique and specific to the Soviet experience, can also provide valuable lessons for contemporary nuclear projects.
This article focuses on a part of the “nuclear condition” that is often overlooked in philosophic... more This article focuses on a part of the “nuclear condition” that is often overlooked in philosophical discussions: that of materiality. Connecting the spheres of nuclear weapons (and associated security threats), and of nuclear power generation (and associated safety concerns), are the materials that bombs and electricity can be made of, and the machines that produce either enriched uranium or plutonium. We now have evidence of just how fragile the machines and devices were (and are) that sustained the nuclear age, but also how tenuous and artificial the boundary is that we assume between “peaceful” and “military” purposes. And yet, each new “nuclear deal” affirms this boundary, and the possibility of its existence. While the community of scholars and policymakers who prioritize nuclear security strive to label as many steps of the process as “special,” and therefore subject to inspection, accounting, and international control, multinational power companies and national nuclear indust...
The threat of global climate change has pushed governments around the world to consider alternati... more The threat of global climate change has pushed governments around the world to consider alternative energy sources, including nuclear energy. As the interest in nuclear power increases, serious discussions on safety must resume before moving forward. There is no better time than now, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Chernobyl, to revisit the causes of the worst civilian nuclear disaster in history in an attempt to prevent future accidents. The author reviews initial reports that accused operators of violating instructions, but also looks at evidence that surfaced in the early 1990s, which suggested that the reactor design, combined with a lack of information sharing, were to blame for the explosion. While it is imperative to address human error, design flaws, and communication failures, the author argues that organizational characteristics of the Soviet nuclear power sector deserve more attention by scholars and policy makers. Chernobyl was not a disaster waiting to happen, the autho...
The Chernobyl disaster has been variously ascribed to human error, reactor design flaws, and indu... more The Chernobyl disaster has been variously ascribed to human error, reactor design flaws, and industry mismanagement. Six former Chernobyl employees were convicted of criminal negligence; they defended themselves by pointing to reactor design issues. Other observers blamed the Soviet style of ideologically driven economic and industrial management. In Producing Power, Sonja Schmid draws on interviews with veterans of the Soviet nuclear industry and extensive research in Russian archives as she examines these alternate accounts. Rather than pursue one "definitive" explanation, she investigates how each of these narratives makes sense in its own way and demonstrates that each implies adherence to a particular set of ideas -- about high-risk technologies, human-machine interactions, organizational methods for ensuring safety and productivity, and even about the legitimacy of the Soviet state. She also shows how these attitudes shaped, and were shaped by, the Soviet nuclear industry from its very beginnings. Schmid explains that Soviet experts established nuclear power as a driving force of social, not just technical, progress. She examines the Soviet nuclear industry's dual origins in weapons and electrification programs, and she traces the emergence of nuclear power experts as a professional community. Schmid also fundamentally reassesses the design choices for nuclear power reactors in the shadow of the Cold War's arms race. Schmid's account helps us understand how and why a complex sociotechnical system broke down. Chernobyl, while unique and specific to the Soviet experience, can also provide valuable lessons for contemporary nuclear projects.
The article contrasts efforts by Soviet scientists and engineers in the 1950s and 1960s, who succ... more The article contrasts efforts by Soviet scientists and engineers in the 1950s and 1960s, who successfully persuaded planners to support expensive, still unproven nuclear technologies, and to establish a nuclear industry from scratch, with contemporary efforts by nuclear energy advocates to maintain at least a sliver of relevance for nuclear power in the carbon-friendly energy mix of the 21st century - efforts that have proven very challenging. Nuclear power not only promised to facilitate modernization, it also offered a solution to the imbalance in resource and demand distribution. Despite its cost, creating a nuclear industry made sense to many nations in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, the picture is more fragmented, and different criteria are being used to evaluate the benefits of nuclear energy, including the possibility of severe accidents, and the still unresolved waste management issue. Some countries with nuclear industries have decided to phase out nuclear, while others are en...
the Pavilion for Atomic Energy at the 'Exhibition of the Achievements of the People's Eco... more the Pavilion for Atomic Energy at the 'Exhibition of the Achievements of the People's Economy1'{VDNKh) in Moscow, from its inception in 1956 to its closing in 1989. The analytical goal is to unpack the kind of social order that was implicit in the way visitors to the pavilion were envisioned. The paper proposes that the pavilion's exhibitions on nuclear energy, staged as pivotal to technical progress, not only reinforced a vision of the country's scientific and technological potential, but also contributed significantly to the Soviet political vision. Based on archival documents and published material, the paper traces shifts in the pavilion's tasks, and attempts to convey how these shifts mirror changing concepts of the intended visitors. Moreover, the paper explores how this historical case study speaks to contemporary museum theory, and how this may qualify our understanding of the role of the popularization of science and technology. It addresses differen...
1.Introduction 2. Structural properties 2.1 Grammatical gender 2.2 Gender agreement 2.3 The morph... more 1.Introduction 2. Structural properties 2.1 Grammatical gender 2.2 Gender agreement 2.3 The morphological structure of personal nouns 2.3.1 Derivation 2.3.2 Compounding 3. The lexical representation of women and men 4. Gender and reference 4.1 Gender-specific reference and agreement conflicts 4.2 Gender-indefinite reference and generic masculines 4.3 The endearing use of the masculine gender 4.4 Summary 5. The interpretation of generic masculines: Empirical evidence 5.1 Personal nouns with specific reference 5.2 Personal nouns with more generic reference 5.3 Metalinguistic test 6. Linguistic gender studies in Russia 6.1 Proverbs and idioms 6.1.1 The androcentric perspective 6.1.2 Ženskij golos – ‘The female voice’ 6.1.3 ‘Woman/wife’ 6.1.4 ‘Mother’ 6.1.5 The “pseudo-female” perspective 6.2 Obscene expressions – a male domain? 7.Language politics 8.Suggestions for future research Notes References
A recent American “mini-series” on Chernobyl, widely watched across the world, presented viewers ... more A recent American “mini-series” on Chernobyl, widely watched across the world, presented viewers with the concluding finding that this massive accident had occurred because the reactor design had inherent flaws; flaws that were known but not previously fixed because it was “cheaper” that way. The reactor design in question is the RBMK, and this paper will argue that this design was far from “cheap,” neither then nor now, and that its adoption as the second standard design for the Soviet Union’s nuclear power reactor fleet was based on much more than economic considerations. With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to forget that reactor designs are always chosen for a multitude of reasons and never solely based on their technical or economic merits. Based on archival research, interviews, and industry publications, I show that approving and building RBMK reactors made good sense at the time, despite later claims to the contrary. Then I take the examples of a small modular reactor (...
It was the sudden disappearance of American scholarly publications on nuclear fission in the earl... more It was the sudden disappearance of American scholarly publications on nuclear fission in the early 1940s that alerted Soviet scientists to the secret American nuclear weapons program. Georgi Flerov, a Soviet nuclear physicist, wrote a letter to Stalin in 1942 and warned him that this conspicuous silence could only mean that the Americans were working on a nuclear bomb.1 Intelligence soon confirmed Flerov’s suspicion, and in early 1943, the Soviet Union initiated its own nuclear weapons project. Shrouded in secrecy, the Soviet state set up organizations and facilities supporting an army of nuclear scientists and engineers, who developed and mastered fission and fusion devices soon after their American counterparts. The ground work was laid for a nuclear arms race that would soon escalate. Yet another race started in 1954, with the launch of a Soviet nuclear power plant—named “The World’s First.” This race was about capturing the public’s imagination, and providing a vision of what th...
The Chernobyl disaster has been variously ascribed to human error, reactor design flaws, and indu... more The Chernobyl disaster has been variously ascribed to human error, reactor design flaws, and industry mismanagement. Six former Chernobyl employees were convicted of criminal negligence; they defended themselves by pointing to reactor design issues. Other observers blamed the Soviet style of ideologically driven economic and industrial management. In Producing Power, Sonja Schmid draws on interviews with veterans of the Soviet nuclear industry and extensive research in Russian archives as she examines these alternate accounts. Rather than pursue one "definitive" explanation, she investigates how each of these narratives makes sense in its own way and demonstrates that each implies adherence to a particular set of ideas -- about high-risk technologies, human-machine interactions, organizational methods for ensuring safety and productivity, and even about the legitimacy of the Soviet state. She also shows how these attitudes shaped, and were shaped by, the Soviet nuclear industry from its very beginnings. Schmid explains that Soviet experts established nuclear power as a driving force of social, not just technical, progress. She examines the Soviet nuclear industry's dual origins in weapons and electrification programs, and she traces the emergence of nuclear power experts as a professional community. Schmid also fundamentally reassesses the design choices for nuclear power reactors in the shadow of the Cold War's arms race. Schmid's account helps us understand how and why a complex sociotechnical system broke down. Chernobyl, while unique and specific to the Soviet experience, can also provide valuable lessons for contemporary nuclear projects.
This article focuses on a part of the “nuclear condition” that is often overlooked in philosophic... more This article focuses on a part of the “nuclear condition” that is often overlooked in philosophical discussions: that of materiality. Connecting the spheres of nuclear weapons (and associated security threats), and of nuclear power generation (and associated safety concerns), are the materials that bombs and electricity can be made of, and the machines that produce either enriched uranium or plutonium. We now have evidence of just how fragile the machines and devices were (and are) that sustained the nuclear age, but also how tenuous and artificial the boundary is that we assume between “peaceful” and “military” purposes. And yet, each new “nuclear deal” affirms this boundary, and the possibility of its existence. While the community of scholars and policymakers who prioritize nuclear security strive to label as many steps of the process as “special,” and therefore subject to inspection, accounting, and international control, multinational power companies and national nuclear indust...
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