Today is the 38th anniversary of the Chernobyl catastrophe, which began on 26 April 1986 at 1.23 am. At the moment it is impossible to remember what happened at the downstream end of the Pripyat River without thinking about the horrible war taking place in Ukraine. What we witness right now has never happened before: a regular war fought on the territory of a highly nuclearised country, in which so-called civil nuclear power plants are used as objects of war. The recent drone attacks on Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant in mid-April 2024 are the latest and obvious examples of this. In this text I want to put Chernobyl back on our mental map while reflecting on what the ongoing catastrophe means in a context of all-out war.
By chriswanders (Pixabay)
For someone who follows my work it may come to no surprise that I have a sceptical attitude towards the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This is the case because the IAEA continues to lobby for the promotion of nuclear energy amongst the international community, downplaying the risks associated with this technological system and endorsing high-risk construction projects, such as the floating Akademik Lomonossov as a nuclearising project for the fragile Arctic and the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant in Bangladesh, prone to flooding. Despite this and regarding the hazardous situation in Ukraine right now, I have to concede that the IAEA is doing excellent work to bring the Russian and Ukrainian site together to safeguard Europe’s largest nuclear power plant called Zaporizhzhya and Ukraine’s remaining nuclear stations South Ukraine, Khmelnitsky, Rivne (Rovno), and Chernobyl.
Sure, Zaporizhzhya continues to be on the brink of a severe accident as a direct result from acts of war. But the IAEA continues their efforts despite the danger, pushing both sites to reason, trying to help to ensure that basic safety routines and operation practices can continue, even though the strain on personnel and physical structures is clear for all to witness. The IAEA’s general director Rafael Mariano Grossi repeatedly travelled with his team to Zaporizhzhya. I can only hope that these efforts prove to be fruitful, because I cannot hear any other influential voices of reason on neither the Russian nor Ukrainian side willing to engage with concrete results. The fate of the other nuclear power plants remains unclear and endangered. Given the current frontline, Zaporizhzhya is the most threatened plant, but the permanent shelling of – especially civilian – energy infrastructure by the Russian army, puts the others at risk as well.
In the meantime at Chernobyl, the power plant is recovering from the temporary occupation in the beginning of the war. Looting and warfare have led to a loss in monitoring and scientific equipment, as well as to an interruption in safety routines and operations. Being forced to spend 36.7% of its GDP for military expenditures due to the Russian aggression, the Ukrainian government is forced to neglect the efforts of maintenance and remediation at Chernobyl. While the horrible war continues, the released radioisotopes continue their decay and change their attributes, especially in regard to their mobility in both soil and water. This creates ever new challenges to containment efforts. Forest fires and the movement of troops led to small radioactive clouds that redistributed radioisotopes within the zone of exclusion. Perspectively, the whole Chernobyl site needs to be deconstructed and the scores of radwaste confined in a permanent storage, which up to date does not exist. The deconstruction of the old sarcophagus, which is currently confined under the new one, is delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the war. It is clear that the war makes Chernobyl to some degree ungovernable which will result in even larger problems as time progresses.
It is of the utmost necessity that safety routines regarding Ukraine’s nuclear power plants are being restored as quickly as possible. Furthermore, nuclear power plants have to be exempt from warfare, as the possible consequences of accidents, or even intentional attacks, will be tremendous for Ukraine and for Russia, but also for the international community. In general, this war shows that safety concepts of civil nuclear power plants need to be reassessed. 38 years after the Chernobyl catastrophe begun, Ukraine’s first nuclear power plant continues to pose threats to the environment and human societies. It serves as an example of what can happen if one (!) reactor explodes. Ukraine potentially still has 15 active ones.
On Friday afternoon, 22 March 2024, I defended my PhD at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. In hindsight it was a marvellous day, with so many people thinking of me and participating in this event that marked the end of the journey I embarked on 15 October 2018. A huge “Thank you!” to all of you!
The defence had just begun: My opponent Melanie Arndt from Freiburg University presents my work, as is the tradition at our division. By Aliaksandr Piahanau on 22 March 2024, who himself acted as “ersättare” for the defence committee.
After the defence we headed to the division at Teknikringen 74D for a mingle, while we waited for the results of the discussion of the committee. I was very happy when Florence Fröhlig declared that I had passed. What a moment! Afterwards my supervisors gave me truly memorable speeches and the division sang a self-written song (tradition that is!) which was amazing.
22 March 2024, 2:01pm: We are just about to start. By Anina Vogt.
It still has not really registered that I have truly finished this project. Tomorrow will be my last day at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, to which I will fondly look back, with so many impressive memories. After Easter I will still work on tying up a few lose ends and then I will rest for half a year, which is desperately needed. From September onwards I will start working again, finding a new position and further developing my ideas and what I learned.
If I still have not responded to your kind email or message, I will certainly do so in the near future. Please bare with me, as everything was a bit overpowering. I sincerely appreciate every single one of them!
Five and a half years ago, on 15 October 2018, I joined KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, to embark on a journey of doctoral education. Working as a doctoral student in the Nuclearwaters-Project (ERC Consolidator Grant, PI Per Högselius), I focussed on the nuclear history of Eastern Europe, especially on the territory of the former Soviet Union and its successor states. Besides Per Högselius, Kati Lindström (KTH) and Anna Storm (Linköping University) helped me on this path as supervisors.
On 22 March 2024 this journey is now finally coming to an end: my defence will take place! If you want a physical copy, don’t hesitate to contact me (achim.klueppelberg[at]t-online.de).
This public event is hosted at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Main Campus, F3-Lecture Hall, Lindstedtsvägen 26, on 22 March 2024 at 2 pm (we start sharp). We will be there from 1pm onwards, so feel free to drop in a few minutes before two o’clock. The defence might take roughly about three hours, depending on how it goes. Afterwards, we can come together at our Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment (KTH, Teknikringen 74 D) for a joint mingle. You can also join digitally: https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/63881830014
Abstract
After the development of nuclear weapons, civil applications were seen as a way through which protagonists of Soviet modernity could embrace a new future, which Josephson called atomic-powered communism. Where hydro-powered communism had reached its boundaries, nuclear energy was to take over. Crucial parts of the Soviet nuclear industry were based on the use of water. The mantle of progressiveness, innovation, and status previously embodied by the hydropower industry was taken up by emerging nuclear technocrats. While scholars have readily engaged nuclear power as a topic, they have neglected its hydraulic roots and hydro-nuclear entanglements, especially for cooling and other technological purposes. An important but yet overlooked influence came from the creation of Soviet hydraulic-hydropower technological systems.
This doctoral thesis fills a twofold gap in the existing literature. First, water is placed at the centre of an analysis of the Soviet nuclear programme. Pipes, valves, tanks, pumps, pressure mechanics and gravity approaches all use much older inventions and engineering mindsets, which are generally not considered in the existing historiography concerning nuclear energy. Aquatic systems, riverbeds, industrial improvements, watersheds, and fluid pathways of potential contamination have not sufficiently been linked to the rapid development of the nuclear industry, even though toxic radioisotopes were spread across the globe.
Second, it analyses how technocratic culture influenced nuclear decision-making processes. Therefore, discourses of siting Soviet nuclear power plants in the period between 1954 and 1991 are analysed under a water and technocratic culture perspective to tap more accurately into the links between the nuclear industry, hydraulic engineering, economic imperatives, power and hierarchy, as well as state-communist ideology. The dominant culture present at the construction site of a nuclear power plant determines the circumstances, within which regimes of nuclear safety are defined and operated. If we want to understand the underlying reasons for why nuclear safety was mismanaged in the USSR, we need to investigate the details and everyday decision-making process made by people on the ground, also in order to see which mistakes should not be repeated in the future. Therefore, this work proposes an original technocratic culture analysis to explain these issues within a Soviet context, based on three subcategories designated as political, nuclear inner circle, and safety culture.
Consequently, insights from these investigations shall serve to broaden our understanding of the phenomenon of the Soviet nuclear industry’s fast development, by answering the main research question of how technocratic culture influenced hydraulic engineering practices in the Soviet nuclear industry and how this affected safety. The two foci, water and technocratic culture, are interlinked and thus investigated together. By highlighting hydro-nuclear entanglements at crucial nuclear installations throughout the USSR, this thesis contributes to a more sophisticated understanding of the environmental consequences such a technological system entails, stressing the necessity for nuclear safety under the long shadow of the state-communist legacy that continues to influence how we live in Europe today.
Sammanfattning (på svenksa)
Med historiska rötter i det sovjetiska atombombsprojektet sågs civila tillämpningar av atomtekniken som ett sätt för förespråkare av sovjetisk modernitet att omfamna en ny framtid, vilket Josephson har kallat “atomdriven kommunism”. Detta innebar att där den vattendrivna kommunismen hade nått sin kapacitet skulle kärnkraften ta över. En betydande del av den sovjetiska kärnkraftindustrin kom att baseras på användningen av vatten. Det nexus av progressivitet, innovation och status som tidigare hade förespråkats av vattenkraftindustrin, antogs även av kärnkraftteknokrater. Medan tidigare forskning har intresserat sig för kärnkraftshistoria i stort, har de hydrauliska och hydro-nukleära aspekterna, särskilt för kylning och andra tekniska ändamål, förbisetts. Skapandet av sovjetiska vatten- och vattenkraftsystem är väsentliga för en heltäckande förståelse av kärnkraftindustrin.
Denna doktorsavhandling fyller en dubbel lucka i den befintliga litteraturen. För det första sätts vatten i centrum för en analys av det sovjetiska kärnkraftsprogrammet. Rör, ventiler, tankar, pumpar, tryckmekanik och gravitationsmetoder använder mycket äldre uppfinningar och tekniskt tänkande, som i allmänhet inte tas i beaktande i den befintliga historieskrivningen om kärnenergi. Vattensystem, flodbäddar, industriella förbättringar, vattendelare och vattnet som en väg till potentiell kontaminering har inte i tillräcklig utsträckning kopplats till den snabba utvecklingen av kärnkraftindustrin, även om giftiga radioisotoper kom att spridas över hela världen.
För det andra analyserar avhandlingen hur den teknokratiska kulturen påverkade beslutsprocesser inom kärnkraftindustrin. Diskurser rörande placeringen av sovjetiska kärnkraftverk under perioden mellan 1954 och 1991 analyseras med fokus på vatten samt den teknokratiska kulturen för att beskriva kopplingarna mellan kärnkraftindustrin, vattentekniken, de ekonomiska imperativen, hierarkier, och den statskommunistiska ideologin. En utgångspunkt i avhandlingen är att den dominerande kulturen som finns på byggarbetsplatsen för ett kärnkraftverk bestämmer under vilka omständigheter kärnsäkerhetsregimer kan definieras och verka i. För att förstå de bakomliggande orsakerna till varför misskötsel av kärnsäkerhet förekom i Sovjetunionen, behöver detaljerna undersökas. Här görs det med fokus på vardagens beslutsprocess – det som görs av människor på plats, vilket också kan ge insikter i vilka misstag som inte bör6upprepas i framtiden. Detta arbete föreslår en teknokratisk kulturanalys, baserad på tre underkategorier: (1) den politiska, (2) den inre cirkeln av kärnteknik samt (3) säkerhetskulturen, för att besvara dessa frågor i ett sovjetiskt sammanhang.
Insikter i denna avhandling bidrar till en bred förståelse av den sovjetiska kärnkraftindustrins snabba utveckling, genom att besvarandet av den huvudsakliga forskningsfrågan om hur teknokratisk kultur påverkade vattentekniska metoder och praxis i den sovjetiska kärnkraftindustrin och hur detta i sin tur påverkade säkerheten. De två fokusområdena, vatten och teknokratisk kultur, är sammanlänkade och undersöks därmed tillsammans. Genom att lyfta fram hydro-nukleära sammanflätningar vid viktiga kärntekniska anläggningar i Sovjetunionen, bidrar denna avhandling till en bättre förståelse av de miljömässiga konsekvenserna av ett sådant tekniskt system, och betonar nödvändigheten av kärnsäkerhet under den långa skuggan av det statskommunistiska arvet som fortsätter att påverka hur vi lever i Europa idag.
Zusammenfassung (Deutsch)
Nach der Entwicklung der Atomwaffen wurden zivile Anwendungen der Kernkraft als legitime Wege gesehen, mit denen die Protagonisten einer sowjetischen Moderne in eine neue Zukunft starten konnten. Diese Zukunft nannte der Historiker Paul Josephson einen durch Atomkraft angetriebenen Kommunismus. Als die Expansionsmöglichkeiten der Wasserkraftindustrie ausgereizt worden waren, sollte die Kernkraft übernehmen. Der Nimbus der Fortschrittlichkeit und der Innovation, der vorher durch die Wasserkraftindustrie verkörpert worden war, wurde nunmehr von den aufsteigenden Technokraten der Atomindustrie übernommen. Obwohl viel zur Kernkraft geforscht worden ist und entscheidende Teile der sowjetischen Atomindustrie auf die Nutzung von Wasser angewiesen waren, blieben die hydrotechnischen Wurzeln und Verflechtungen größtenteils unbeachtet. Ein wichtiger aber bislang vernachlässigter Einfluss kam durch die vorherige Erschaffung des technologischen Systems der Wasserkraftwerke, Kanalbauten und anderer hydrotechnischer Anlagen. Die sowjetische Atomindustrie wurde auf der Grundlage dieser Errungenschaften aufgebaut.
Diese Doktorarbeit hilft zwei Lücken in der bisherigen Literatur zu schließen. Erstens wird bei der folgenden Analyse des sowjetischen Atomprogramms das Element Wasser ins Zentrum gerückt. Rohre, Ventile, Tanks, Pumpen, Hydraulik und Schwerkraftansätze gingen alle auf viel ältere Erfindungen und Baudenkweisen zurück. Wassersysteme, Flussbette, industrielle Ameliorationen, Wassereinzugsgebiete und fließende Verbreitungswege von möglicherweise kontaminiertem Wasser wurden nicht hinreichend berücksichtigt und mit der schnellen Entwicklung der Atomindustrie angepasst. Eine Gefahr bildeten dabei giftige Radioisotope, die mittlerweile über Atomkraftwerke in die Umwelt abgegeben und über den ganzen Globus verteilt worden waren.
Zweitens wird in dieser Arbeit analysiert, wie eine technokratische Kultur den Entscheidungsfindungsprozess in der Atomindustrie beeinflusst hat. Deshalb werden hier unter anderem Diskurse beleuchtet, in denen Entscheidungen zur Standortwahl von Atomkraftwerken getroffen worden sind. Hierbei wird sich auf den Zeitraum zwischen 1954 und 1991 konzentriert. Außerdem wird dies in einer Perspektive getan, die sich auf die Aspekte Wasser und technokratische Kultur fokussiert, um sich den Verbindungen zwischen der Atom- und Wasserkraftindustrie, ökonomischen Imperativen, Macht, Hierarchie und8staatskommunistischer Ideologie anzunähern. Die dominierende Arbeitskultur, welche beim Bau eines Kernkraftwerks vor Ort vorherrschend ist, bestimmt jene Umstände, in denen Sicherheitsregime definiert und umgesetzt werden. Wenn wir die tiefgreifenden Gründe verstehen wollen, weshalb es zu einem Fehlmanagement im Bereich der Atomsicherheit in der UdSSR gekommen ist, müssen wir die Details und den alltäglichen Entscheidungsfindungsprozess derjenigen untersuchen, die vor Ort konkret gearbeitet haben. Dann können wir auch sehen, welche Fehler dabei in Zukunft nicht wiederholt werden sollten. Deshalb schlägt diese Arbeit eine technokratische Kulturanalyse vor, die auf den drei Unterkategorien der politischen, der Atominsider- und der Sicherheitskultur basiert, um diese Sachverhalte im sowjetischen Kontext zu erklären.
Folglich tragen die Ergebnisse dieser Untersuchung dazu bei, unser Verständnis des Phänomens der schnellen Entwicklung der sowjetischen Atomindustrie zu verbessern. Dazu wird die Hauptforschungsfrage beantwortet, inwiefern technokratische Kultur Wasserbaupraktiken in der sowjetischen Atomindustrie beeinflusst und wie sich dies auf die Sicherheit ausgewirkt hat. Indem hydronukleare Verflechtungen an wichtigen Atomanlagen in der UdSSR herausgestellt werden, trägt diese Dissertation zu einem besseren Verständnis derjenigen Umweltfolgen bei, die solch ein technologisches System hervorruft. Hierbei wird betont, wie wichtig nukleare Sicherheit unter dem langen Schatten des Erbes des real-existierenden Sozialismus ist.
Today many brave people are demonstrating in Germany against the fascist AfD (Alternative for Germany). It would be great if the party could be forbidden on the basis of extreme rightwing propaganda, which denounces the right to live for everyone.
Greetings especially go out to the protesters in Dortmund, Gießen and Göttingen. I hope the demonstrations are going to turn out massive and powerful. AfD needs to be stopped!
But of course, demonstrations are just one way to articulate legitimate progress. It is also important to not tolerate fascist tendencies among your fellow neighbours, family and friends. If we are not vigilant, AfD might get the chance to influence the future government of Germany, just as they have already demonstrated in Thüringen and Saxonia.
2023 was a turbulent year for me. I am grateful for many great experiences that helped me to grow as a novice scholar and as a person. In the following I would like to reflect in a few paragraphs on this past year. But before I start: Merry Christmas and happy end-of-the-year holidays to everyone! I hope you will have a marvellous New Year’s Eve and that you will find the strength to follow up on your new year’s resolutions.
My 2023 started unconventional as I stayed for six weeks in the 180.000-people-town of Darmstadt in Western Germany (close to the Frankfurt with the airport). As visiting scholar at the Division for History of Science led by Martina Heßler, I was able to discuss our work in a new environment and to pick up on some new theory perfectly fitting for my dissertation. I also found new (and old) friends there, which was great. This stay certainly also helped to keep the connection between our division at KTH and Darmstadt alive.
On 20 March 2023 it was time for my final seminar (80%) of my doctoral education. Eglė Rindzevičiūtė from Kingston University in London travelled from the United Kingdom to Stockholm to discuss the development of my dissertation. This seminar was a key event in my education at KTH and it helped me to improve my text tremendously. Following this seminar I regrouped and then created a plan for finishing the dissertation. A plan that later had to be revised.
In 2023 I presented my research in Darmstadt (Germany), Tübingen (Germany), Bern (Switzerland), and at different venues in Stockholm. As always, presenting helps to sharpen the arguments and the feedback from the audience supports the writing process. Personally, I enjoy public speaking and while these events were stressful, they were also all very rewarding.
From spring until the end of 2023 I also acted as PhD-representative at our Department of History and Philosophy at KTH. This was a new experience for me on a doctoral level of student administration; a responsibility I at first did not want to take over but eventually fit in reasonably well.
As 2023 was coming to a close, the writing and finalisation process of my dissertation took over all my work. Slowly I finished all my teaching responsibilities and focussed on improving the kappa and the individual articles. In the end, the writing took longer than we previously planned. Nevertheless, the defence is now scheduled for 22 March 2024. After some brief holidays, I will start again working on the dissertation on 2 January in the new year.
“Thank you” to everyone who impacted my work so positively during the past twelve months! Let’s hope 2024 will be even better, with lots of Nuclearwaters-publications coming up.
Resulting from an exciting PhD-course on Public Humanities at Uppsala University, headed by Maria Ågren and Sven Widmalm, recently an edited volume on public history was published. When I came to the office a couple of weeks ago, I found a handful of freshly printed copies, which made me very happy!
In “Public History in Action. Past and Present Practices of Making History Public”, we have explored several ways and techniques of how to engage the general public with academic historiography. Some examples are the creation of historic boardgames, Reddit threads, acting as an expert witness in land-disputes, worker’s history written by labourers themselves, and innovative ways of rethinking museal exhibitions. But the book contains many more.
I am grateful that I was able to contribute a chapter about an exciting event, Johan Gärdebo, Siegfried Evens, and I organised back in June 2019. At KTH’s former nuclear reactor hall (“R1”), we viewed together the last episode of HBO’s miniseries “Chernobyl”. It was a fascinating session that resulted in inspiring disccusions afterwards.
If academic history is supposed to be relevant to our societies, academics need to regularly interact with the broader public. This book provides several ideas on how this can be done.
Klüppelberg, Achim: Using Historical Media to Start a Public Debate on Nuclear Energy. Watching HBO’s “Chernobyl” 25 Metres Underground, in: Cornu, Armel/ Smedberg, Carl-Filip/ Vorminder, Sarah (eds.): Public History in Action. Past and Present Practices of Making History Public (Opuscula Historica Upsaliensia 61), Uppsala (Opuscula Historica Upsaliensia) 2023, 93-111.
Siegfried Evens, Achim Klüppelberg, and Johan Gärdebo at the event in R1 in 2019. Picture by “Ny Teknik”.
As my last credited course during my PhD-education, I participated in the Occupy Climate Change Online School during this spring term. The online school, being organised by a team of renowned international scholars headed by Marco Armiero and administered by Anja Moum Rieser, brought together many different lectures about political ecology, environmental justice, and political science with a focus on the climate crisis, decolonialism, and just energy transitions.
I am glad that I was able to participate and to learn so much. My thanks and regards go to the many teachers in this course, who, and that is the most important thing in my view, taught us things that were dear to their hearts, with a conviction that change is indeed possible. The course was characterised by its international participants from many corners of the world. Being part of something that combines so many different worldviews and opinions on the basis of one joint struggle was very inspirational to me.
Of course, we also had to fulfil a final course assignment. Mine was about the climate crime that took place in January this year in Lützerath, Western Germany. As it is usus in this course, the finished products are published in the Atlas of the Other Worlds. In the following I will give a brief introduction to my piece. If it catches your interest, you can find the full version here, in the atlas.
On 14 January 2023, the international climate movement met at the lignite open pit coal mine Garzweiler in Western Germany to protest the continuous mining business of the corporation Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk, better known as RWE. The culmination point of years of protests was the little village of Lützerath, which was squatted for about two years to prevent RWE’s large digging machine to destroy its houses and to get to the coal beneath it. On this day, 30,000 – 39,000 people travelled to the pit colloquially known as “Mordor”, an huge desert-like moonscape, with coal power plants blowing their climate-destroying fumes into the air, clearly visible at the horizon. It was a powerful protest, but it was futile in the end. Lützerath was destroyed and the coal is being dug up, public climate commitments, the Paris climate agreement, and protests notwithstanding. To add injury to insult, the German green party both ruled the federal energy ministry and the regional environmental ministry concerned with Lützerath: Instead of fighting RWE, they embraced the company’s goals and sanctioned the destruction of the village.
Together with others I travelled to Lützerath and took part in the protests. In the following I have interviewed five fellow protestors in a semi-structured manner. Following their testimonies, a small article has been written that documents what happened there and how the climate injustice took place in Germany.
Rheinisches Braunkohlerevier made by Thomas Römer with Open Street Map data. CC BY-SA 2.0.
At this point I would also like to point to the Environmental Humanities Lab, which recently became a centre, at my division of history of science, technology and environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Marco Armiero used to be its director and created together with others this excellent research hub. The online school was organised under its umbrella. If you want to, check out their website and their wonderful programme for the upcoming autumn term. At the moment, Adam Wickberg acts as interim director, until Robert Gioielli takes over as new associate professor for environmental humanities at out division from 01 January 2024.
Right now I am sitting in a study room at a hotel in Bern. The Suisse capital is beautiful. At the moment we are living through a heat wave that at least for me is the hottest I have felt this summer. I guess that is no surprise, given the fact that I am regularly based in Stockholm. I am participating in this year’s ESEH-Conference here. The European Society for Environmental Humanities had invited panel proposals on environmental topics. Aske Hennelund Nielsen from Erlangen and me worked together and created the panel “Nuclear Environments. Waste, Animals, Water and Infrastructure in the 20th and 21st centuries.”
The panel, chaired by Melina Antonia Buns (Stavanger University), features apart from Aske’s and my presentation excellent contributions from our colleagues in Linköping. Axel Sievers will speak about “Nuclear Space and Storage Natures. Fixation of Ecologies, Naturalization of Waste and Uneven Development”. Anna Storm and Rebecca Öhnfeldt will talk about “Caring for wild animals at nuclear power plants. A local emotion management device?”.
If you are also in Bern and joining the conference, please consider joining us at Unitobler (Yes, Toblerone!) F 022 on Friday morning 9-10.30am.
Abstract:
Nuclear technologies have played a decisive role in shaping natural environments since 1945. Atomic weapons have shaped landscapes and geographies through sustained nuclear testing, creating topographies of craters and distributed radioactive isotopes throughout the atmosphere on a global level. Nuclear power plants have through their construction upset waterways and shorelines and created new environments to better suit the placement of atomic energy installations. Animals have found themselves trapped within these changing environments, at the mercy of the Nuclear Industry and the personal of nuclear sites. Nuclear technologies have not only created physical craters and contaminated landscapes, but also mental craters, forcing scientific and local actors to mediate these changed environments. The mounting challenges of nuclear waste storage and re-naturalisation of formerly nuclearized landscapes pose theoretical and epistemological questions.
With this panel, we wish to examine some of the many ways that nuclear technologies have impacted, shaped and transformed environments as well as the scientific discourses on these altering settings. The panellists discuss how different nuclear technologies and their usage has (re)formed environments since 1945, using different both national and international cases. In particular we examine France, the western Soviet Union, Sweden, the UK, and the US in an international perspective.
The panel consists of both junior and senior scholars from different research institutions in Germany and Sweden working with new perspectives and approaches on how to make sense of the nuclear environment of the past and today.
Hopefully you have all had a great summer, including some well-deserved vacation, icecream, sunshine, and – depending where you are – some refreshing swims! As my doctoral education is slowly but surely coming to a close, it is time to give a brief overview where I am and what the stepping stones are, I still need to reach.
In Lahemaa National Part, close to Tallinn during this summer. Photo by Anina Vogt.
As of now, there is only about half a year left to finish my dissertation. All parts of my cumulative dissertation based on articles are fairly developed. In my kappa, the text that frames the thesis and discusses theory, research questions, and the actual technocratic culture analysis, I am focussing right now on updating the literature review. Here I am thankful for the valuable comments that I got from Eglė Rindzevičiūtė during my final seminar at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH. It is important to relate my work, especially my theoretical contribution regarding technocratic culture, to that of established scholars in the field. Apart from the literature review, I need to adjust the conclusion accordingly. Then I only need to shorten and improve the text.
My first article discussing South-Ukraine Energy Complex is already accepted in the journal Europe-Asia Studies and is scheduled to be published in 2024. Apart from the proofs, I am not expecting to do anymore work on this one.
The second text is the book Per Högselius and me have been writing together about the Soviet nuclear archipelago. Here the main work has been done and the finalised manuscript is with the publisher, Central European University Press. There will be one last round of edits, which cannot be substantial.
Number three about the creation of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the genesis of a technocratic working culture on-site had been handed in to NTM Technikgeschichte at the beginning of this week. I expect quite a lot of work that still needs to flow into this one before it can be published. But regarding the dissertation, it has developed far enough.
Article number four is also about Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. But it focusses purely on an interpretation of this nuclear power plant from an hydropower planning perspective. Chernobyl will be interpreted as the 7th extension to the Dnieper Cascade, a series of six subsequent hydropower plants along the Dnieper. In another future article I will discuss the knowledge transfer that took place here. But for this dissertation, article number four will focus on the links between the Dnieper Cascade and Chernobyl. A draft exists, but it needs substantial work to go into it. If you are interested about that one, you can listen to my presentation at the upcoming ESEH Conference in Bern in the Panel “Nuclear Environments” that Aske Hennelund Nielsen and me have organised and that takes place on Friday morning next week.
Text number five is a chapter in the edited Nuclear Water Nexus Volume about the fishing enterprise in the contaminated cooling pond of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. This text as well as the volume is with the publisher now. I assume there will be major edits needed to it. Once again, for the context of the dissertation it should be in decent form though.
The last article of my dissertation is written together with Kati Lindström about the Estonian Nuclear Power Plant never actually built at Võrtsjärv. This text is in the writing stage and our developed draft needs to be finished.
Apart from the finalisation of all of these texts, my manuscript needs to pass the evaluation of an external reviewer first. I will hand it in most probably in September and hope for it to be accepted soon. Next, a lot of formalia need to be in place and the committee as well as my opponent need to agree upon a date. But this is taken care of by my main supervisor, Per Högselius. Last but not least the dissertation needs to be printed and distributed. All in all I hope to defend my dissertation in February 2024. But in the past I that date has been postponed because of reasons outside of my influence, so we need to be realistic about this.
In general I will focus on my writing during the höst termin. Apart from that I will continue to act as the PhD-representative for history and philosophy at our department. Occasionally I might step in as a teacher in our Swedish Society course. Next week I will be presenting in Bern at this year’s ESEH Conference. In September there will be a workshop on energy transitions at Södertörn University in Stockholm which I helped to organise and I was invited to the KTH WaterCentre to give a talk about my research. Besides these tasks, I will try to stay away from any more time-consuming commitments. Let’s hope that everything works out! Any major updates will be posted here.
A stunning mural seen in Tallinn. Photo by Achim Klüppelberg.
Achim Klüppelberg 