Table Of ContentProducing Power
Inside Technology Series
edited by Wiebe E. Bijker, W. Bernard Carlson, and Trevor Pinch
Sonja D. Schmid, Producing Power: The Pre-Chernobyl Christine Hine, Systematics as Cyberscience: Computers,
History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry Change, and Continuity in Science
Casey O’ Donnell, Developer’ s Dilemma: The Secret Wesley Shrum, Joel Genuth, and Ivan Chompalov,
World of Videogame Creators Structures of Scientific Collaboration
Christina Dunbar-Hester, Low Power to the People: Shobita Parthasarathy, Building Genetic Medicine:
Pirates, Protest, and Politics in FM Radio Activism Breast Cancer, Technology, and the Comparative Politics
Eden Medina, Ivan da Costa Marques, and Christina of Health Care
Holmes, editors, Beyond Imported Magic: Essays on Kristen Haring, Ham Radio’ s Technical Culture
Science, Technology, and Society in Latin America Atsushi Akera, Calculating a Natural World: Scientists,
Anique Hommels, Jessica Mesman, and Wiebe E. Engineers and Computers during the Rise of U.S. Cold
Bijker, editors, Vulnerability in Technological Cultures: War Research
New Directions in Research and Governance Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How
Amit Prasad, Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Financial Models Shape Markets
Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India Geoffrey C. Bowker, Memory Practices in the
Charis Thompson, Good Science: The Ethical Sciences
Choreography of Stem Cell Research Christophe Le ́ cuyer, M aking Silicon Valley: Innovation
Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo J. Boczkowski, and Kirsten and the Growth of High Tech, 1930– 1 970
A. Foot, editors, Media Technologies: Essays on Anique Hommels, Unbuilding Cities: Obduracy in
Communication, Materiality, and Society Urban Sociotechnical Change
Catelijne Coopmans, Janet Vertesi, Michael Lynch, David Kaiser, editor, Pedagogy and the Practice of
and Steve Woolgar, editors, Representation in Scientific Science: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
Practice Revisited Charis Thompson, Making Parents: The Ontological
Rebecca Slayton, Arguments that Count: Physics, Choreography of Reproductive Technology
Computing, and Missile Defense, 1949– 2012 Pablo J. Boczkowski, Digitizing the News: Innovation in
Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday, Patently Online Newspapers
Contestable: Electrical Technologies and Inventor Dominique Vinck, editor, Everyday Engineering: An
Identities on Trial in Britain Ethnography of Design and Innovation
Jens Lachmund, Greening Berlin: The Co- Production of Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch, editors, How
Science, Politics, and Urban Nature
Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and
Chikako Takeshita, The Global Biopolitics of the Technology
IUD: How Science Constructs Contraceptive Users and Peter Keating and Alberto Cambrosio, Biomedical
Women’ s Bodies
Platforms: Realigning the Normal and the Pathological in
Cyrus C. M. Mody, Instrumental Community: Probe Late-Twentieth-Century Medicine
Microscopy and the Path to Nanotechnology Paul Rosen, Framing Production: Technology, Culture,
Morana Alač , Handling Digital Brains: A Laboratory and Change in the British Bicycle Industry
Study of Multimodal Semiotic Interaction in the Age of Maggie Mort, Building the Trident Network: A Study of
Computers the Enrollment of People, Knowledge, and Machines
Gabrielle Hecht, editor, Entangled Geographies: Empire Donald MacKenzie, Mechanizing Proof: Computing,
and Technopolitics in the Global Cold War Risk, and Trust
Michael E. Gorman, editor, Trading Zones and Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, Sorting
Interactional Expertise: Creating New Kinds of Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences
Collaboration
Charles Bazerman, The Languages of Edison’ s Light
Matthias Gross, Ignorance and Surprise: Science, Society,
and Ecological Design Janet Abbate, Inventing the Internet
Andrew Feenberg, Between Reason and Experience: Herbert Gottweis, Governing Molecules: The Discursive
Essays in Technology and Modernity Politics of Genetic Engineering in Europe and the United
States
Wiebe E. Bijker, Roland Bal, and Ruud Hendricks,
The Paradox of Scientific Authority: The Role of Scientific Kathryn Henderson, On Line and On Paper: Visual
Advice in Democracies Representation, Visual Culture, and Computer Graphics
in Design Engineering
Park Doing, Velvet Revolution at the Synchrotron:
Biology, Physics, and Change in Science Susanne K. Schmidt and Raymund Werle,
Coordinating Technology: Studies in the International
Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power Standardization of Telecommunications
and National Identity after World War II
Marc Berg, Rationalizing Medical Work: Decision
Richard Rottenburg, Far-Fetched Facts: A Parable of Support Techniques and Medical Practices
Development Aid
Eda Kranakis, Constructing a Bridge: An Exploration of
Michel Callon, Pierre Lascoumes, and Yannick
Engineering Culture, Design, and Research in Nineteenth-
Barthe, Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Century France and America
Technical Democracy
Paul N. Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the
Ruth Oldenziel and Karin Zachmann, editors,
Politics of Discourse in Cold War America
Cold War Kitchen: Americanization, Technology, and
European Users Donald MacKenzie, Knowing Machines: Essays on
Technical Change
Deborah G. Johnson and Jameson W. Wetmore,
editors, Technology and Society: Building Our Wiebe E. Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs:
Sociotechnical Future Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change
Trevor Pinch and Richard Swedberg, editors, Living in Louis L. Bucciarelli, Designing Engineers
a Material World: Economic Sociology Meets Science and Geoffrey C. Bowker, Science on the Run: Information
Technology Studies Management and Industrial Geophysics at Schlumberger,
Christopher R. Henke, Cultivating Science, Harvesting 1920-1940
Power: Science and Industrial Agriculture in California Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, editors, Shaping
Helga Nowotny, Insatiable Curiosity: Innovation in a Technology / Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical
Fragile Future Change
Karin Bijsterveld, Mechanical Sound: Technology, Culture, Stuart Blume, Insight and Industry: On the Dynamics of
and Public Problems of Noise in the Twentieth Century Technological Change in Medicine
Peter D. Norton, Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Donald MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical
Motor Age in the American City Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance
Joshua M. Greenberg, From Betamax to Blockbuster: Pamela E. Mack, Viewing the Earth: The Social
Video Stores tand the Invention of Movies on Video Construction of the Landsat Satellite System
Mikael H å rd and Thomas J. Misa, editors, Urban H. M. Collins, Artificial Experts: Social Knowledge and
Machinery: Inside Modern European Cities Intelligent Machines
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/inside-technology
Producing Power
The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry
Sonja D. Schmid
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information
storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales
promotional use. For information, please email [email protected].
This book was set in ITC Stone Serif Std by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited, Hong
Kong. Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schmid, Sonja D., 1970-
Producing power : the pre-Chernobyl history of the Soviet nuclear industry / Sonja
D. Schmid.
pages cm. — (Inside technology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-02827-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Nuclear engineering— Soviet
Union — History — 20th century. 2. Nuclear industry— Soviet Union— History — 20th
century. 3. Nuclear power plants— Soviet Union— History — 20th century.
4. Nuclear energy— Research — Soviet Union— History — 20th century. I. Title.
TK9085.S36 2015
333.792’4094709045— dc23
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Meinen Eltern, Erika und Peter Schmid
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Note on Transliteration and Translation xv
Acronyms and Abbreviations xvii
Introduction 1
1 Envisioning a Nuclear-Powered State 17
2 Between Atomic Bombs and Power Plants: Sharing Organizational
Responsibilities 41
3 Training Nuclear Experts: A Workforce for the Nuclear Industry 67
4 “ May the Atom Be a Worker, Not a Soldier!” : A New History of Soviet
Reactor Design Choices 97
5 Chernobyl: From Accident to Sarcophagus 127
6 Conclusion 161
Epilogue: Writing about Chernobyl after Fukushima 171
Biographical Notes 177
Methodological Appendix 189
List of Interviews 199
Notes 203
Bibliography 313
Index 347
Acknowledgments
This book is partially based on research supported by the National Science
Foundation under Grant No. SES-0240807 (Dissertation Improvement
Grant). I also received generous support from Cornell University’ s Institute
for European Studies, which awarded me a Luigi Einaudi Graduate Fellow-
ship for my research in Russia. Cornell’ s University Committee on Human
Subjects (UCHS) approved the human subjects protocol for this project
(Protocol ID# 02– 08 – 010). The Center for International Security and Coop-
eration at Stanford University supported me with multiple travel grants
during my postdoctoral appointments, and with a very generous contribu-
tion to the final book editing. I am indebted to the Society for the History
of Technology for awarding me the 2006 Brooke Hindle Postdoctoral Fel-
lowship, to help turn the dissertation into a book. Finally, I am grateful to
my colleagues in the Department of Science and Technology in Society at
Virginia Tech for keeping teaching and service obligations in check, and
especially to our chair, Ellsworth “ Skip ” Fuhrman, who decided to spend
substantial amounts of money on my project in times of exceptionally tight
budgets.
Apart from financial support, numerous people have contributed over
many years to this book. Iouli Andreev and Wolfgang Kromp from the
Forum f ü r Atomfragen at the University of Vienna (now the Institute of
Safety and Risk Sciences at the University of Natural Resources and Life
Sciences, Vienna) nurtured initial ideas about this topic, and mastered the
patience to explain the basics of nuclear physics and engineering to me—
then a student in the humanities. I have benefited tremendously from the
time I spent with Irina Andreeva and Iouli Andreev at their home over
tea and Russian candy, discussing nuclear reactors, the Soviet system, and
their experiences during the cleanup work at Chernobyl. Ulrike Felt, of the
Department of Social Studies of Science at the University of Vienna, intro-
duced me to the world of science and technology studies and provided
