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Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters
While many transnational histories of the nuclear arms race have been written, Kate Brown provides the first definitive account of the great plutonium disasters of the United States and the Soviet Union.
In Plutopia, Brown draws on official records and dozens of interviews to tell the extraordinary stories of Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia—the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium. To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias—communities of nuclear families living in highly-subsidized, limited-access atomic cities. Fully employed and medically monitored, the residents of Richland and Ozersk enjoyed all the pleasures of consumer society, while nearby, migrants, prisoners, and soldiers were banned from plutopia—they lived in temporary "staging grounds" and often performed the most dangerous work at the plant. Brown shows that the plants' segregation of permanent and temporary workers and of nuclear and non-nuclear zones created a bubble of immunity, where dumps and accidents were glossed over and plant managers freely embezzled and polluted. In four decades, the Hanford plant near Richland and the Maiak plant near Ozersk each issued at least 200 million curies of radioactive isotopes into the surrounding environment—equaling four Chernobyls—laying waste to hundreds of square miles and contaminating rivers, fields, forests, and food supplies. Because of the decades of secrecy, downwind and downriver neighbors of the plutonium plants had difficulty proving what they suspected, that the rash of illnesses, cancers, and birth defects in their communities were caused by the plants' radioactive emissions. Plutopia was successful because in its zoned-off isolation it appeared to deliver the promises of the American dream and Soviet communism; in reality, it concealed disasters that remain highly unstable and threatening today.
An untold and profoundly important piece of Cold War history, Plutopia invites readers to consider the nuclear footprint left by the arms race and the enormous price of paying for it.
In Plutopia, Brown draws on official records and dozens of interviews to tell the extraordinary stories of Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia—the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium. To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias—communities of nuclear families living in highly-subsidized, limited-access atomic cities. Fully employed and medically monitored, the residents of Richland and Ozersk enjoyed all the pleasures of consumer society, while nearby, migrants, prisoners, and soldiers were banned from plutopia—they lived in temporary "staging grounds" and often performed the most dangerous work at the plant. Brown shows that the plants' segregation of permanent and temporary workers and of nuclear and non-nuclear zones created a bubble of immunity, where dumps and accidents were glossed over and plant managers freely embezzled and polluted. In four decades, the Hanford plant near Richland and the Maiak plant near Ozersk each issued at least 200 million curies of radioactive isotopes into the surrounding environment—equaling four Chernobyls—laying waste to hundreds of square miles and contaminating rivers, fields, forests, and food supplies. Because of the decades of secrecy, downwind and downriver neighbors of the plutonium plants had difficulty proving what they suspected, that the rash of illnesses, cancers, and birth defects in their communities were caused by the plants' radioactive emissions. Plutopia was successful because in its zoned-off isolation it appeared to deliver the promises of the American dream and Soviet communism; in reality, it concealed disasters that remain highly unstable and threatening today.
An untold and profoundly important piece of Cold War history, Plutopia invites readers to consider the nuclear footprint left by the arms race and the enormous price of paying for it.
406 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
175 people are currently reading
3683 people want to read
About the author
Kate Brown
10 books16 followersKate Brown (born September 24, 1965) is a Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the author of Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future (2019), Dispatches from Dystopia (2015), Plutopia (2013), and A Biography of No Place (2004).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 153 reviews
September 2, 2013
I found something about this book puzzling and troubling - but I am having difficulty putting it into words. Because of my background in Russian studies and a personal connection to Richland, Washington, I was interested in reading this comparison of these two unusual cities that served as the homes of the workers who manufactured plutonium for the Soviet Union and the United States.
I am not an academic Russian specialist myself, but I was an area studies librarian specializing in Russia for about ten years and have visited Russia or lived there for periods of time starting in the mid-1970s. In 1997-98 I was in Ekaterinburg for eight months and visited a closed city much like Ozersk, Novouralsk. So I have seen one of these closed cities myself. Besides that, my wife grew up in Richland - and I myself have visited there many times, although not so often since we moved to the east coast (of the U.S.).
As someone with some understanding of what the Soviet Union was (although not going back as far as WWII, of course) I think many readers might be confused by the suggestion of strong parallels between Richland and Ozersk. The journal Foreign Affairs has a brief positive review that makes the following points (in italics) that consider somewhat simplistic:
Over their multidecade existence, each pumped into their environs a volume of radioactive isotopes twice as large as that released by the Chernobyl disaster. - The author, a historian, provides some documentation of nuclear contamination but (in effect) discounts the relative importance of the Kyshtym explosion - whatever else happened at Hanford, nothing blew up.
They ravaged the health of their workers under the half-knowing eyes of superiors. Admittedly this is the wording of a review, not the book itself, but it reflects the kind of emotional approach to the topic that I found the book to have - and the kind of parallelism drawn between what happened in the two different countries that seems less compelling than stated.
But both cities offered their residents privileges they would not have enjoyed in any normal setting: tellingly, when given a choice to stay or leave, most preferred to stay and keep their material abundance at the expense of worrying about their health and that of their families. This theme I found particularly odd - given the relative standards of living in the post WWII Soviet Union and the U.S., any comparison like this shouldn't be made in the kind of direct way that it is in this book. More importantly, I simply don't think that was what happened in most cases.
I am not an academic Russian specialist myself, but I was an area studies librarian specializing in Russia for about ten years and have visited Russia or lived there for periods of time starting in the mid-1970s. In 1997-98 I was in Ekaterinburg for eight months and visited a closed city much like Ozersk, Novouralsk. So I have seen one of these closed cities myself. Besides that, my wife grew up in Richland - and I myself have visited there many times, although not so often since we moved to the east coast (of the U.S.).
As someone with some understanding of what the Soviet Union was (although not going back as far as WWII, of course) I think many readers might be confused by the suggestion of strong parallels between Richland and Ozersk. The journal Foreign Affairs has a brief positive review that makes the following points (in italics) that consider somewhat simplistic:
Over their multidecade existence, each pumped into their environs a volume of radioactive isotopes twice as large as that released by the Chernobyl disaster. - The author, a historian, provides some documentation of nuclear contamination but (in effect) discounts the relative importance of the Kyshtym explosion - whatever else happened at Hanford, nothing blew up.
They ravaged the health of their workers under the half-knowing eyes of superiors. Admittedly this is the wording of a review, not the book itself, but it reflects the kind of emotional approach to the topic that I found the book to have - and the kind of parallelism drawn between what happened in the two different countries that seems less compelling than stated.
But both cities offered their residents privileges they would not have enjoyed in any normal setting: tellingly, when given a choice to stay or leave, most preferred to stay and keep their material abundance at the expense of worrying about their health and that of their families. This theme I found particularly odd - given the relative standards of living in the post WWII Soviet Union and the U.S., any comparison like this shouldn't be made in the kind of direct way that it is in this book. More importantly, I simply don't think that was what happened in most cases.
December 30, 2017
Fascinating read about about two towns Richland, WA and Ozersk, Russia in a race to create nuclear bombs and the first two cities to create plutonium. The author interviewed hundreds of people and did a lot of research to tell the tale of these two towns with similar stories. In the race to be the first to produce and meet deadlines, safety was overlooked leaving workers and the community exposed to radioactivity.
Having been raised in Richland, WA, it was interesting to read about all that was swept under the rug so people would feel safe. My dad, Ed Bricker, was interviewed as a whistleblower who reported safety concerns and in return was not rewarded but retaliated against, had his phone tapped and received death threats. This retaliation and bullying happened to many other people who saw the dangers in the nuclear power plant and the effect it had on public health. I am thankful to those brave enough to speak up about the truth to protect others.
Having been raised in Richland, WA, it was interesting to read about all that was swept under the rug so people would feel safe. My dad, Ed Bricker, was interviewed as a whistleblower who reported safety concerns and in return was not rewarded but retaliated against, had his phone tapped and received death threats. This retaliation and bullying happened to many other people who saw the dangers in the nuclear power plant and the effect it had on public health. I am thankful to those brave enough to speak up about the truth to protect others.
October 12, 2015
This is one of those books that stay with you, and not in a good way. The author looks at two 'nuclear' cities, built in the 1940's and '50's in Washington state and in the Soviet Union, to process the nuclear material -- plutonium -- for atomic bombs. How they were built, how the residents lived, and the terrible accidents that would have a long reaching effects on everyone. I found it a fascinating, but damn depressing. It's well written, but not for everyone. Four stars overall.
For the longer review, please go here:
http://www.personapaper.com/article/3...
For the longer review, please go here:
http://www.personapaper.com/article/3...
April 14, 2023
This book irritated me and it did so right out of the gate. I've complained among my friends and acquaintances that when people talk about nuclear in a negative way, they almost never do so in relation to comparable alternatives. That is, when someone is, for example, complaining about nuclear energy, they almost always do so in isolation ("X amount of waste is produced per MW of energy by utilizing nuclear technology!" and not "X amount of waste is produced per MW of energy by utilizing nuclear technology and that is higher/lower/equivalent/whatever to other technologies which produce A/B/C amounts respectively"). They also don't tend to provide context for their numbers and just state something with the cadence of it being shocking. This might work on people who aren't well-versed in nuclear, but it won't work on me.
For example, the author states, "Each kilogram of [plutonium] generates hundreds of thousands of gallons of radioactive waste" and does so in the context of saying that plutonium generation is the dirtiest part of the weapons production process. Does the average reader of this book have a sense of how much a kilogram of plutonium or hundreds of thousands of gallons of radioactive waste is in a broader context? Well, a kilogram of plutonium is a significant quantity, as defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That is, ~1/8 the amount required to make one bomb. Or, a higher amount than the minimum that is required before it needs to be transported by armed guards. "Hundreds of thousands of gallons" is ~an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Maybe with this additional context you're still like, "Wow, that's awful!" but then I'd welcome you to look into the waste produced by almost anything in an industrial setting. It was like this throughout the entire book and I was over it pretty early on.
This book earned its stars for the story it weaved and lost them for the annoyance it caused due to what I can only view as bad faith reporting/an axe to grind with nuclear.
And I'll end the review with this this.
For example, the author states, "Each kilogram of [plutonium] generates hundreds of thousands of gallons of radioactive waste" and does so in the context of saying that plutonium generation is the dirtiest part of the weapons production process. Does the average reader of this book have a sense of how much a kilogram of plutonium or hundreds of thousands of gallons of radioactive waste is in a broader context? Well, a kilogram of plutonium is a significant quantity, as defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That is, ~1/8 the amount required to make one bomb. Or, a higher amount than the minimum that is required before it needs to be transported by armed guards. "Hundreds of thousands of gallons" is ~an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Maybe with this additional context you're still like, "Wow, that's awful!" but then I'd welcome you to look into the waste produced by almost anything in an industrial setting. It was like this throughout the entire book and I was over it pretty early on.
This book earned its stars for the story it weaved and lost them for the annoyance it caused due to what I can only view as bad faith reporting/an axe to grind with nuclear.
And I'll end the review with this this.
January 29, 2014
This book was unsurprisingly subjective. I agree with the overall issue, that the American and Soviet governments have grossly overstepped their bounds during the Cold War with regard to nuclear weapon production. The concern Brown has for the communities around the nuclear sites is definitely warranted. Their homes, livestock, crops, and own bodies were contaminated by a source outside of their control. They were kept in the dark about the physiological harm that became them, which is unjust. Some people moved away but returned after economic hardship in the "real" world.
However, reading through Brown's numerous references, a large percentage of them are personal interviews. Some titles read incredibly biased. The book dragged on as she recounted her meetings with so many people affected by the nuclear sites. I feel that her time spent on this issue would be better suited as a long essay rather than a 400 page book.
However, reading through Brown's numerous references, a large percentage of them are personal interviews. Some titles read incredibly biased. The book dragged on as she recounted her meetings with so many people affected by the nuclear sites. I feel that her time spent on this issue would be better suited as a long essay rather than a 400 page book.
September 16, 2025
This is a very good book about two opposing communities one in the United States and one in the Soviet Union that were instrumental in early, large-scale production of atomic bombs. Both cities, Richland in Washington State and Ozersk in the Urals were closed cities. A person could only live there if they were in the business and had government permission. Residents of both cities had a very high standard of living compared to the rest of their respective regions. Residents of both cities had their health sacrificed to the demands of the military industrial complexes int their respective cities. Brown does a great job discussing the health effects and the societal effect of living in the cities.
If you are interested in the Cold War, nuclear weapons, or the effects of acute or chronic radiation effects, I highly recommend this book.
If you are interested in the Cold War, nuclear weapons, or the effects of acute or chronic radiation effects, I highly recommend this book.
April 7, 2015
If you are going to write a non fiction book you should have real passion for the subject not just an axe to grind. I bought this book hoping to learn more about what went on at Hanford, how plutonium was manufactured, as well as the accidents that took place. Instead you get a book written by someone who seems to know nothing about science, nothing about how the world was in the 1940's during WWII. the first 8 or so chapters are all about how sleazy DuPont the company was in the way it operated as well as the way it and the military handled hiring women and minorities to work at the factory. Who cares? You can't take your liberal social belief system from 2013 and blanket it over something from 1943. Richard Rhodes is no fan of nuclear weapons but his book "the making of the atomic bomb" is an amazing achievement in chronicling that event. Kristen Iversen the author of "Full Body Burden" is no fan of the manufacture of Nuclear weapons, having grown up next to the Rocky Flats nuclear trigger plant. But her book was interesting well detailed, and had the element of being about people. Plutopia, is written by a woman with zero science background who throws together a bunch of meaningless statements and thinks it is ok because she used footnotes. ( in chapter 7 footnote 15 she is discussing how experts knew how dangerous radioactivity was and ignored it for the sake of the project, and cites the famous example of the women who had radioactivity poisoning who worked at a watch company. What she failed to point out is that those women working there would wet the tip of the brush in their mouth repeatedly every day as they painted the watch face with radiated paint to make the watch face glow. To this day science can tell us that uranium, plutonium and all the other dangerous radioactive elements can kill you, what science can't do, is tell us why some die and some don't, why some get cancer and some don't. But this author couldn't be bothered with honesty if it lessened her point. This author has done a major disservice in pretending to chronicle what happened at Hanford, because she was more concerned with laying out her modern political beliefs, and editorializing at every opportunity to document the injustices she perceives took place. In addition to the two books I have already cited another far better book is "The Girls of Atomic City" by Denise Kiernan, who does a wonderful job detailing life and the work that took place in Oak Ridge, another huge Manhattan project endeavor. Plutopia winds up being a jumbled bunch of documented facts, none of which are questioned, rather than being a book about plutonium and the places where it has been manufactured in the world. To ignore these two aspects is to gloss over the fact that if it weren't for the manufacture of plutonium there would have been no Hanford or similar sites in the USSR, and no book to write.
April 12, 2013
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the declassification of studies (done over 60 years) where the US conducted 2,000 radiation experiments on as many as 20,000 US citizens, including pregnant women. That's only one fact mentioned briefly in the book. There is so much more to the story of plutonium manufacturing and the people who were used to make sure two nations would have more than enough of it to destroy the world several times over.
Essentially, the book explores how the US and Russia used whatever tactics it could to get it's citizens to make plutonium & the human consequences in Hanford, WA. and in the Urals of Russia. It is well-researched and includes many interviews with subjects directly involved in the history.
Corruption, suppression and altering of data about events & pollution, turning public health into public relations, harassment and dirty tactics to keep concerned workers in-line are detailed to show that the war machine had to be kept going no matter the human cost.
It's a captivating read, and even though I have followed the history of Hanford for years, I was astonished at what I never knew. It certainly shows that authority, power, 'science', 'public health', entities that benefit financially or otherwise should never be met with unquestioning obedience, no matter what--and especially if--it is some 'patriotic' duty.
Essentially, the book explores how the US and Russia used whatever tactics it could to get it's citizens to make plutonium & the human consequences in Hanford, WA. and in the Urals of Russia. It is well-researched and includes many interviews with subjects directly involved in the history.
Corruption, suppression and altering of data about events & pollution, turning public health into public relations, harassment and dirty tactics to keep concerned workers in-line are detailed to show that the war machine had to be kept going no matter the human cost.
It's a captivating read, and even though I have followed the history of Hanford for years, I was astonished at what I never knew. It certainly shows that authority, power, 'science', 'public health', entities that benefit financially or otherwise should never be met with unquestioning obedience, no matter what--and especially if--it is some 'patriotic' duty.
September 8, 2016
Napisać o atomowych, zamkniętych miastach książkę tendencyjną i ocierającą się o spiskologię? Żaden problem. Ale napisać nudną? To udaje się tylko nielicznym.
March 19, 2023
at this point, i'm convinced grad school is just reading about environmental disasters. Brown's research is chilling, devastating, and terrifyingly unsurprising.
February 5, 2020
Postanowiłam przeczytać mimo że słyszałam złe opinie o pani Brown. Liczyłam, że z wiedzą, jaką już posiadam, będę w stanie wyłuskać chociaż ciekawe fakty z tej książki. Mocno się przeliczyłam. Faktów jest tyle, co kot napłakał, reszta to zbitka prywatnych opini autorki, popartych równie prywatnymi opiniami kilku mieszkańców wspomnianych miast i ich okolic. Do tego jakieś dziwne metafory i częste powtórzenia. A na koniec dowiaduję się, że jestem podsłuchiwana, obserwowana i śledzona i na pewno się z tego cieszę! Dawno mnie tak żadna książka nie wymęczyła. A szkoda, temat naprawdę zapowiadał się ciekawie.
March 17, 2021
A great history of the way nuclear material made its way into the lives, bodies, environments, economies, and cultures of mid-twentieth century America and Soviet Russia. This is both a work of journalism and a work of history; it's probing, inquisitive, interdisciplinary, and razor sharp. Having spent a good number of years in my youth not far from the banks of the Columbia River - and having never heard of its highly contaminated headwaters - much of Kate Brown's story came as a bit of a shock. This is important history, and it remains extremely relevant today.
September 21, 2013
One of the best nonfiction books I've read recently. Well-written, fascinating, and every bit advanced the thesis. Great comparison/contrast of the Soviet and US nuclear weapons plant cities. The more I read on the history of nuclear weapons manufacturing, the more amazed I am that we haven't blown ourselves up and/or polluted the entire planet beyond repair.
May 26, 2018
The book covers important topic and a thesis that American and Soviet nuclear programs caused comparable social consequences is persuasive. Unfortunately, I can hardly stand author's writing style.
March 6, 2020
Very sad. It was a tuff read.
April 17, 2021
This very detailed and disturbing book falls into the history category I consider to be: "I didn't know about that, it's appalling, but I'm not surprised". I realize I have very verbose categories for my history book reading! Seriously though, this is an apparently well researched book about the early days of Plutonium production in both the US and USSR, programs that uncannily mirror one another. It is well written and replete with detail on both programs.
It is a fairly straightforward telling of the construction and operation of nuclear reactors primarily aimed at producing weapons grade Plutonium to fuel the construction of atomic weapons during the burgeoning Cold War. It is charitable to claim that there was limited awareness of the devastating impact radiation had on people and the environment but that hardly justifies both programs basically just dumping high level nuclear waste into the environment which is what they both did. Much of the book charts this malfeasance and it's devastating consequences that continue to this day.
However the main thrust of the narrative is the so called "Plutopia" that is the building of model communities that were closed off to outsiders due to the secrecy of the manufacturing going on there. Of course, in the US this was tainted by racism (pretty much an all white community) and in the USSR based on the Stalinist systems in place at the time. The cities constructed around the plants were designed to provide a high standard of living and a "nuclear family" experience, despite the fact that many who lived there were subject to irradiation and not infrequent nuclear accidents.
The book is fairly easy to read and well structured into fairly short chapters that flip between the two plants, although the stories of those affected are depressingly similar. There are a couple of quibbles I had. I've found this in other books and articles too. There is a lot of discussion about the level of radiation in the environment and it is difficult for the lay person to follow as the narrative keeps switching units. In other words sometimes we are told about micro roentgens, other times it's REMs, sieverts, microsieverts, gamma rays, becquerels, Curies and RADS. I get that these are all measuring slightly different things but a word of explanation in the intro or in an appendix might have helped. To give Brown credit, she does tell us what is a lethal dose on most occasions.
But this is a minor point. I feel much better informed and, of cause, am appalled at how all this happened, the cover ups and the denials etc. It must have been a challenge to get this information and it is well worth working though this somewhat depressing topic in world history.
It is a fairly straightforward telling of the construction and operation of nuclear reactors primarily aimed at producing weapons grade Plutonium to fuel the construction of atomic weapons during the burgeoning Cold War. It is charitable to claim that there was limited awareness of the devastating impact radiation had on people and the environment but that hardly justifies both programs basically just dumping high level nuclear waste into the environment which is what they both did. Much of the book charts this malfeasance and it's devastating consequences that continue to this day.
However the main thrust of the narrative is the so called "Plutopia" that is the building of model communities that were closed off to outsiders due to the secrecy of the manufacturing going on there. Of course, in the US this was tainted by racism (pretty much an all white community) and in the USSR based on the Stalinist systems in place at the time. The cities constructed around the plants were designed to provide a high standard of living and a "nuclear family" experience, despite the fact that many who lived there were subject to irradiation and not infrequent nuclear accidents.
The book is fairly easy to read and well structured into fairly short chapters that flip between the two plants, although the stories of those affected are depressingly similar. There are a couple of quibbles I had. I've found this in other books and articles too. There is a lot of discussion about the level of radiation in the environment and it is difficult for the lay person to follow as the narrative keeps switching units. In other words sometimes we are told about micro roentgens, other times it's REMs, sieverts, microsieverts, gamma rays, becquerels, Curies and RADS. I get that these are all measuring slightly different things but a word of explanation in the intro or in an appendix might have helped. To give Brown credit, she does tell us what is a lethal dose on most occasions.
But this is a minor point. I feel much better informed and, of cause, am appalled at how all this happened, the cover ups and the denials etc. It must have been a challenge to get this information and it is well worth working though this somewhat depressing topic in world history.
October 14, 2019
Tells the story of two plutonium-producing communities, one in the Soviet Union and one in the United States. They are remarkably similar in their design, oversight, fears, and biological and environmental consequences. These myriad risks were accepted by the population that worked in the plants because they were given an affluent lifestyle.
The book needs to be organized better and the author could more clearly show her argument throughout the book but, in general, these two intertwined histories create an excellent history of the Cold War and its long-term consequences.
It is also diligently researched, with the author going to former Soviet areas herself to interview many residents of the Plutopian communities.
The book needs to be organized better and the author could more clearly show her argument throughout the book but, in general, these two intertwined histories create an excellent history of the Cold War and its long-term consequences.
It is also diligently researched, with the author going to former Soviet areas herself to interview many residents of the Plutopian communities.
February 11, 2025
A really great examination of nuclear communities in America and the Soviet Union. Kate Brown writes this book with such tact and sometimes pithiness but yet really makes salient the tragic chain of events that led to nuclear disasters.
The state of nuclear proliferation today is very similar to that of oil. While both are different in scientific ways, the power dynamics they create striking similarities. Nuclear power is one of the hallmarks of modernity, a man made energy. But it’s also our destruction, our future?, and our crisis.
With short chapters, brilliant anecdotes, and a brilliant alternative to the Chernobyl story (while not diminishing its importance) this book is a really great read!
The state of nuclear proliferation today is very similar to that of oil. While both are different in scientific ways, the power dynamics they create striking similarities. Nuclear power is one of the hallmarks of modernity, a man made energy. But it’s also our destruction, our future?, and our crisis.
With short chapters, brilliant anecdotes, and a brilliant alternative to the Chernobyl story (while not diminishing its importance) this book is a really great read!
November 12, 2017
Nawet 4.5/5
Przerażające, jak niefrasobliwie można podchodzić do promieniotwórczości, radioaktywności i skażenia środowiska. Lektura do zastanowienia się.
Przerażające, jak niefrasobliwie można podchodzić do promieniotwórczości, radioaktywności i skażenia środowiska. Lektura do zastanowienia się.
March 28, 2024
A somewhat rambling account of how the United States and the Soviet Union both managed to create planned communities that embodied the apparent public virtues (and the actual social prejudices) of their respective societies, which at the same time put a public relations band-aid on the running sore of the radioactive pollution these sites were producing. This is to the point that the favored inhabitants of these regions were loathed to give up their privileges, even as their way of life was destroying the health of them and their loved ones. Frankly, Leslie Groves and his NKVD counterparts would preferred to have simply built installations with all the living amenities of a third-rate military post to save resources, but these projects took on a life of their own once the actual controllers of the means of production took over day-to-day operations; if only to make living in an area cut off from the wider culture look attractive to the high-level managers and skilled upper crust of the onsite workforce. While gaffs like how the author refers, at one point, to a "navy" general can make one's eyes roll, the basic depressing point remains that even if the powers-that-be had had a better sense of the dangers that they were playing with, you know that they would have still gone forward with these projects.
Originally written: July 1, 2018.
Originally written: July 1, 2018.
May 2, 2022
This book is about the first two cities in the world to begin production of plutonium. "Plutopia" was a word designed to describe cities built around these plutonium factories, where workers and families lived to contain the secrets of the factory. The first site that is discussed is the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington state. This site was established as part of the Manhattan Project in 1943, which provided the plutonium for the bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki in World War II. Eventually, the site was expanded to nine nuclear reactors and five plutonium processing plants. Water from the nearby Columbia River was pumped out to cool the reactors, then pumped back into the river. The government kept the release of radioactive water back into the river a secret from the public. Radioactive isotopes were released into the air, affecting crops and livestock. The government kept this a secret, and even scheduled intentional releases of these substances. Workers, of course, had various degrees of radiation poisoning and sickness. They had skin issues, all manner of health issues, and disabilities. The site was eventually decommissioned and cleanup began, though the site is known to still be leaking radioactive materials into the ground water and river.
The Kyshtym disaster is named this due to the fact that the actual site was unmapped and this was the closest town. Russian scientists and government officials were behind in their nuclear developments, so a lot of the decision they made were just really poor ones. Extremely radioactive material was dumped into the river, as well as in a lake. The lake is now considered the most polluted spot on the planet. There was an explosion at the facility, which released more radioactive material than the more famous accident at Chernobyl. The materials that entered the air from the explosion traveled on the wind to various towns surrounding the sites. Of course, residents were not informed of this. Ultimately, they evacuated something like 10,000 people, yet never told them why they were being forced to leave. People for generations have experienced effects of this radiation.
This book was recommended to me on Audible, because I had recently purchased the book Paradise Falls. I do like a good disaster book, so I figured this would be a good purchase for me. I had to speed up the speaking to a rate faster than what I normally listen at. Other than that, I found the book very educational. I had never heard of the Hanford Site, so I learned a great deal. I had heard of the Russian site in passing on some show that I watched on Netflix, called Dark Tourist. The book was well researched, and the story was entertaining as well as educational. It is disgusting that people rely on "leaders" who clearly do not care about the welfare of their populations. Reading books like this make you really feel like you are some type of lab rat. It really leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
The Kyshtym disaster is named this due to the fact that the actual site was unmapped and this was the closest town. Russian scientists and government officials were behind in their nuclear developments, so a lot of the decision they made were just really poor ones. Extremely radioactive material was dumped into the river, as well as in a lake. The lake is now considered the most polluted spot on the planet. There was an explosion at the facility, which released more radioactive material than the more famous accident at Chernobyl. The materials that entered the air from the explosion traveled on the wind to various towns surrounding the sites. Of course, residents were not informed of this. Ultimately, they evacuated something like 10,000 people, yet never told them why they were being forced to leave. People for generations have experienced effects of this radiation.
This book was recommended to me on Audible, because I had recently purchased the book Paradise Falls. I do like a good disaster book, so I figured this would be a good purchase for me. I had to speed up the speaking to a rate faster than what I normally listen at. Other than that, I found the book very educational. I had never heard of the Hanford Site, so I learned a great deal. I had heard of the Russian site in passing on some show that I watched on Netflix, called Dark Tourist. The book was well researched, and the story was entertaining as well as educational. It is disgusting that people rely on "leaders" who clearly do not care about the welfare of their populations. Reading books like this make you really feel like you are some type of lab rat. It really leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
December 11, 2020
If you are looking for a great environmental history read comparable to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, then I absolutely would have to recommend Kate Brown’s Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters. I think it’s safe to say that any community, be it in the United States or Soviet Russia, that was burdened with plutonium development inherently suffered from both health and social consequences. For as different as the two country’s governments were, the sad universal truth remains that the powerful exploit the weak.
Brown looks at Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia, two of the first cities in the world to engage in plutonium manufacturing. Both were subsidized and presented as modern-day communities where the nuclear family could achieve a better future. In reality, the role of the nuclear family (juxtaposed to an extended family) mainly thrived as the more isolated an individual was, the more dependent they grew on their respective community.
The strongest element in this book, is how Kate Brown recounts her interviews with an almost post-processual reflection, and in a way that humanizes the accounts. It’s one thing to read about how young women were hired without being notified of the risks and given little to no protection from radiation, and another to see a firsthand account recalling how a climate of secrecy prevented college educated colleagues from sharing basic safety information with their working-class counterparts operating in the same lab.
In the end, each of these communities’ work were exploited, not rewarded. While in the spiritual sense it’s hard to envision any type of Utopia forming around an economy rooted in creating materials used for harm, it is even more horrifying to see the actual health consequences with children developing high levels of cancer, and people dying in their 30s. Downwinders’ culture is a topic for further investigation that I look forward to reading more about.
Overall, this was a great book and if this is a topic you are interested in, please give it a read.
Brown looks at Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia, two of the first cities in the world to engage in plutonium manufacturing. Both were subsidized and presented as modern-day communities where the nuclear family could achieve a better future. In reality, the role of the nuclear family (juxtaposed to an extended family) mainly thrived as the more isolated an individual was, the more dependent they grew on their respective community.
The strongest element in this book, is how Kate Brown recounts her interviews with an almost post-processual reflection, and in a way that humanizes the accounts. It’s one thing to read about how young women were hired without being notified of the risks and given little to no protection from radiation, and another to see a firsthand account recalling how a climate of secrecy prevented college educated colleagues from sharing basic safety information with their working-class counterparts operating in the same lab.
In the end, each of these communities’ work were exploited, not rewarded. While in the spiritual sense it’s hard to envision any type of Utopia forming around an economy rooted in creating materials used for harm, it is even more horrifying to see the actual health consequences with children developing high levels of cancer, and people dying in their 30s. Downwinders’ culture is a topic for further investigation that I look forward to reading more about.
Overall, this was a great book and if this is a topic you are interested in, please give it a read.
October 27, 2020
Well, I was not expecting this book to teach me about the history of the American suburb, or the etymology of the term "nuclear family," but there you have it. While I was previously aware of the problems that has plagued the nuclear industry - cancer clusters, indigenous environmental injustices, ecological degradation, (lack of) waste management, and more, my critiques of plutopia are now more specific and strengthened by data. Ugh, the failures of the American experiment are so abundant...
I became interested in reading this book when I noticed it was added to the curriculum for the freshman writing seminar in my college when I was a senior. I never learned all that much about the looming Hanford nuclear reactor 60 miles from where I went to school, and I thought it would be interesting to book up on the subject. And wow, this book revealed some horrifyingly interesting radioactive nuggets, confirming hunches I had and now making me wonder if living in the area exposed myself to more than a "healthy" amount of radiation.
The American education system does a horrible job teaching all of history, but especially so for anything occurring after World War II, such as the Cold War. The descriptions of conditions building the Maiak reactor was chilling and was so much more effective at communicating the Soviet poverty of the Stalin years than a classic history textbook sparing one sentence to say "the Soviet Union had a hard time rebuilding after World War II." I feel like I learned so much about the Cold War just by diving into this case study, and it helped all the more because I was familiar with the American location.
I am very appreciative of the short-but-sweet chapters that made bite-sized reading possible before bed and during lunch breaks. The abundant storytelling helped turn the pages. While I sometimes tire of the "navel gazing" authors and reporters engage in telling of how they felt when talking to their interview subjects, Brown's narration tended to be critical of her own assumptions. She would comment on how she underestimated poor villagers, jeopardized her welcome as a guest by refusing to eat what she believed to be radioactive food, and then later correct her initial assumptions showing that the villagers--not her--were correct, which I appreciated. Over all, a solid read.
I became interested in reading this book when I noticed it was added to the curriculum for the freshman writing seminar in my college when I was a senior. I never learned all that much about the looming Hanford nuclear reactor 60 miles from where I went to school, and I thought it would be interesting to book up on the subject. And wow, this book revealed some horrifyingly interesting radioactive nuggets, confirming hunches I had and now making me wonder if living in the area exposed myself to more than a "healthy" amount of radiation.
The American education system does a horrible job teaching all of history, but especially so for anything occurring after World War II, such as the Cold War. The descriptions of conditions building the Maiak reactor was chilling and was so much more effective at communicating the Soviet poverty of the Stalin years than a classic history textbook sparing one sentence to say "the Soviet Union had a hard time rebuilding after World War II." I feel like I learned so much about the Cold War just by diving into this case study, and it helped all the more because I was familiar with the American location.
I am very appreciative of the short-but-sweet chapters that made bite-sized reading possible before bed and during lunch breaks. The abundant storytelling helped turn the pages. While I sometimes tire of the "navel gazing" authors and reporters engage in telling of how they felt when talking to their interview subjects, Brown's narration tended to be critical of her own assumptions. She would comment on how she underestimated poor villagers, jeopardized her welcome as a guest by refusing to eat what she believed to be radioactive food, and then later correct her initial assumptions showing that the villagers--not her--were correct, which I appreciated. Over all, a solid read.
February 25, 2025
The core concept developed in this work, a “plutopia”, is relatively simple: a society built upon and centrally geared toward nuclear industry. A plutopia is also a society that, as a result of the tremendous expense and highly sensitive and dangerous work involved, is created, sustained, and molded by a government. Brown develops the idea of plutopias and explains their impacts by describing two real places: Richland, WA built for the Handford plant and Ozersk, former USSR for the Maiak plant. Brown provides a highly persuasive argument; despite the seeming differences between post war American Society and the Communist Soviet Union, these nuclear cities are hauntingly similar in a variety of ways that extend deep into modern life for Americans and Russians alike.
Fans of riveting untold stories will be enthralled and unabashed lovers of industrial accidents (like myself) will be surprisingly horrified. The material may be technical at times, but never distractingly so. The reportage and presentation of history is well cited and serves the arguments. Above all this book is highly readable and I was delighted to find myself forcing breaks to prolong the experience.
Kate Brown has some very consequential things to say about plutopias, contemporary middle class life, safety, the environment, biological rights, and perhaps most importantly, the lives of the people we don’t see who bear the tremendous consequences of unchecked human ambition.
Fans of riveting untold stories will be enthralled and unabashed lovers of industrial accidents (like myself) will be surprisingly horrified. The material may be technical at times, but never distractingly so. The reportage and presentation of history is well cited and serves the arguments. Above all this book is highly readable and I was delighted to find myself forcing breaks to prolong the experience.
Kate Brown has some very consequential things to say about plutopias, contemporary middle class life, safety, the environment, biological rights, and perhaps most importantly, the lives of the people we don’t see who bear the tremendous consequences of unchecked human ambition.
September 18, 2022
Crazy. A lot of this is pretty unbelievable. The Hanford and Ozersk Plutopias are fascinating and seem fictional. The view into the Nuclear Complex is a bit terrifying when you see the public health crises surrounding plutonium production, the massive military industrial complexes necessary, the environmental degradation surrounding these facilities, and the long-term invisible consequences of them... The production of nuclear weapons was the front-line of the Cold War. Its soldiers were normal civilians in search of a steady job.
Idk how I feel about nuclear energy until these problems are sorted out...
Idk how I feel about nuclear energy until these problems are sorted out...
September 18, 2014
Plutopia (2013) tells the shocking, utterly credible story of plutonium production in two nations and of the government-owned and administered towns that housed plant workers. Written in a clear, erudite, occasionally lyrical style, Plutopia is the result of Kate Brown’s historical and archival research, travels, and interviews in two countries. Equally fluent in Russian and English, Kate Brown “worked in more than a dozen archives in the United States and Russia” (8) and conducted interviews with persons whose “bodies themselves now serve as nuclear waste repositories” (336-7). Startlingly, Plutopia demonstrates that the two closed, government-owned communities, Richland (eastern Washington State) and Ozersk (Russian Urals) were are mirror images of one another. Brown says of the mutual awareness and cross-influences: “People in Ozersk used to say that if you drilled a hole straight through the earth, you would end up in Richland. That is how I imagine the two cities: Orbiting each other, linked on the same axis” (4). Though the two communities served the interests of societies radically different ideologically and economically, the social engineering that produced them was identical.
Brown is deeply interested in the motivation of the Richland and Ozersk workers dedicated to the hazardous business of manufacturing plutonium, as well as in the workers’ two-tiered social order. Residents in both gated communities lived comfortably, but gave up civil liberties. Both the U.S. and Soviet workers Brown interviewed were content to endure scrutiny by informants, phone taps and mandatory medical exams in exchange for good schools, freedom from crime, cheap housing, and abundant consumer goods. Besides the residents of these heavily subsidized enclaves, both the U.S.and the Soviet Union employed “jumpers”: a work force composed of soldiers, prisoners, or ethnic minorities. The employment of these disposables ended when they became too sick to work.
Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union displayed callous disregard both for human life and the environment. During the Cold War arms race, but, shockingly, even after the breakup of the Soviet Union, U.S. and Russian plutonium plants secretly poured radioactive waste into rivers and stored it in leaky containers. Scientists in Richland and Ozersk knew that radioactive isotopes, the byproduct of plutonium production, “saturated the food chains and entered bodies—plant, animal, and human—where they lodged in organs and damaged cells (6). Nevertheless, the administrators of the Hanfoird and the Maiak plutonium plants knowingly polluted rivers and farm land. Though far less known than Chernobyl, the Hanford and Ozersk plants emitted, respectively, a total of 200 million curies of radioactivity—twice what Chernobyl emitted-- over their four decades of operation.
In my reading about nuclear accidents, I’m struck with how invisible and amorphous is the threat posed by radioactive isotopes in the soil, food chain, rivers, and human body. At high levels of exposure to nuclear radiation is lethal, but at lower levels, the human body exhibits symptoms that may readily be attributed to other causes. While radiation in plants and animals may be measured with dosimeters, the naked eye may not detect the damage to woods and farms. Brown writes of her visit to Techa, the most radioactive river in the world: “Usually when you are looking at an environmental catastrophe, you know it. . .. In my mind, disasters should smell, smoke, or produce ugly scars. Yet nothing was out of place along this inviting little stream. The air was fresh. Swallows darted back and forth over the current. . . . I had never encountered a disaster more lovely and tempting, one less worthy of its name” (305).
Radioactivity disseminated by nuclear accidents and plutonium production has no boundaries and no distinct signature. According to Brown, “as the firmament became saturated with fission products, monitors had an even harder time distinguishing Hanford’s by-products from atmospheric contamination floating in from Nevada, the Pacific testing grounds, Kazakhstan, and the Russian Arctic, where Soviets carried out mega-tonnage tests. . . . Radioactive isotopes, so readily combining with biological forms, had no discrete boundaries. In time, they were no longer distinct from the local environment, from scientists bodies, or from human evolution” (183). Because radiation is so difficult to detect or trace to its source, money-hungry corporations and desperate governments played fast and loose with human and environmental safety.
Kate Brown is an extraordinary researcher and writer. She has also written A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland. According to amazon.com, it is about the ethnic communities on the border of Russia and Poland that existed until 1925. Brown describes the process of ethnic cleaning, carried out by Stalin and the Nazis, that homogenized the region. I have placed her earlier book (2005) on my Want-to-Read list.
June 29, 2019
A disturbing, eye-opening read. Highly recommended.
March 11, 2022
A quality look at two competing nuclear production communities during the Cold War, with as many questions as answers.
June 13, 2024
“The political hostilities that fueled the Cold War have ended, but the nuclear chapter of world history is far from over.”
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