Through her book Plutopia, Kate Brown outlines and examines the two communities of Ozersk and Richland, both victims of the Cold War’s massive plutonium production line. What Brown finds most interesting is that both of these communities belong to the Cold War’s two most prominent enemies: The United States and the Soviet Union. Ozersk, which is located in the Southern Russian Urals, sits next to the Maiak plant in the USSR, and Richland, located in eastern Washington State, sits next to the Hanford plant. Brown notes that in just four decades of operation both plants emitted at least 200 million curries of radioactivity, which was twice as much as Chernobyl emitted.
Construction of the Hanford Single Shell C Tanks in 1944
She questions why Chernobyl is such a household name, yet hardly anyone knows of the Hanford and Maiak plants just because their harm to the environment happened over the span of forty years, rather than in one giant explosion. My post will focus on the author’s analysis of the Hanford plant, and its effects on the environment. I found it extremely outrageous that the plant constructed five new reactors (between 1948 and 1955) based on the plant’s original design, despite knowing of its risky features, in an attempt to save money. What is even more surprising is that they did this due to the fact that no “serious mishaps had occurred, [therefore] the risks of contamination were manageable” (page 170). Their only means of testing radiation levels was through nearby pheasants. Radiobiologist Karl Herde conducted a study in which pheasants living 70 miles away from the plant were captured. He then tested their thyroids for radioactive iodine, which resulted in positive tests in all birds. However, a year later, only a few of the birds had trace amounts of radiation. Brown points out that when examining Herde’s study, she believed that Herde’s test would have included hundreds of birds. It turns out he only tested ten. Apparently that was all that was needed to examine the potential risks of the plant, and the plant continued to use their cost cutting design to get by. In the end, however, this design proved to not be so cheap as future generations would spend nearly one hundred billion on cleanup costs and heath problems.
Present day photo of Hanford
Throughout this course we have been examining how communism has negative effects on the environment. However, the Hanford plant is living proof that Democracies are not always much better.
communism and the environment 