Book: Plutopia by Kate Brown

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

An ambitious accounting (57 pages of footnotes) of the "atomic cities" of Richland, Washington, with its Hanford plant, and Ozersk, Russia, with its Maiak plant. Both cities were chosen as venues for production of plutonium (which, incidentally, has a half-life of 25,000 years). They were chosen because they were relatively remote. To date, the "only use of nuclear weapons in war" are the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima on August 6 and August 9 of 1945, in which an estimated 200,000 people were killed.

The details of the involvement of big business (DuPont, GE, Rockwell, Westinghouse, Fluor, Batelle and Bechtel Jacobs in the US) and our government are sobering, shocking and mind-boggling. A parallel and very similar story happened concurrently in Russia, and both areas have ongoing sequelae. In the beginning, ignorance was a factor but at time went on, and knowledge of radioactivity and its effects on humans and the environment became better known by more and more people, there was outright dismissal of the facts, lies, cover-ups and intimidation of the "whistle blowers" in order to keep the projects going with not enough concessions to safety or monitoring, and very little official acknowledgement of consequences (even as evidence increased). There is no immunity from exposure to unprotected radioactivity.

The folks who lived in Richland and Ozersk became very used to their safe, lovely, relatively small towns, subsidized by the governments and businesses, and most chose not to question what was involved in the production of radioactive materials. These towns were assured amenities (good schools, parks, theaters, police protection, healthcare, cheap housing, jobs), and since the damage from radioactive isotopes is usually not evident for years and is invisible, the residents and workers chose not to believe the sporadic reporting that all was not as rosy as it seemed. Richland was homogenous, white and conservative, proud of their community and liked its exclusivity. The lesser skilled workers, those of color and those of dubious character, were housed in other communities.

Over the years, select citizens, workers, journalists and scientists tried to warn of the dangers inherent in plants where safety measures were often ignored, where construction was hurried along so that Americans would win the Cold War instead of the Russians, where known radioactive materials were consciously (or in error as happened often) flushed into the rivers, or stored in containers which were prone to cracks and leakage, or released into the air where capricious winds then carried the particles far from the plants, where people began getting sick and sicker and babies were born with defects and the local fauna also began showing signs of radioactive poisoning....all was too often ignored, and still is, to some degree.

I read Plutopia over several weeks and ultimately found it fascinating. It seemed to me that the effects of too much radioactivity are not yet clearly defined or even quantifiable. Some folks live long lives; some get sick and/or die. The death toll from Chernobyl varies between "37 and a quarter of a million." Successive generations of those who lived near the plants are sometimes affected. Genes mutate, but without precise predictability, and the bad stuff silently accumulates....in bones, in soft tissues, in thyroids, in reproductive organs.

Hanford is the largest Superfund site in the US, and in 1989, DOE (the oversight agency after the Atomic Energy Commission was disbanded) "shuttered the plutonium plant admitting catastrophe in need of cleanup." Cost was estimated to be $100 billion and would take 50 years! with the imperative to "safely contain 1700 pounds of plutonium-239 scattered among 53 million gallons of other poisons and fission products."

And, just for the record, "1/4 of American communities are within four miles of a Superfund site" according to author, Sandra Steingraber.

I've driven US 14 along the north side of the Columbia River in SE Washington many times. It is a most gorgeous road, with far far fewer cars and trucks than the Interstate on the south side of the river. I will never drive that way again though without a slightly creepy feeling as I pass near Richland and Hanford.