Acknowledgments

This book is partially based on research supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SES-0240807 (Dissertation Improvement Grant). I also received generous support from Cornell University's Institute for European Studies, which awarded me a Luigi Einaudi Graduate Fellowship for my research in Russia. Cornell's University Committee on Human Subjects (UCHS) approved the human subjects protocol for this project (Protocol ID# 02–08–010). The Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University supported me with multiple travel grants during my postdoctoral appointments, and with a very generous contribution to the final book editing. I am indebted to the Society for the History of Technology for awarding me the 2006 Brooke Hindle Postdoctoral Fellowship, to help turn the dissertation into a book. Finally, I am grateful to my colleagues in the Department of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech for keeping teaching and service obligations in check, and especially to our chair, Ellsworth “Skip” Fuhrman, who decided to spend substantial amounts of money on my project in times of exceptionally tight budgets.

Apart from financial support, numerous people have contributed over many years to this book. Iouli Andreev and Wolfgang Kromp from the Forum für Atomfragen at the University of Vienna (now the Institute of Safety and Risk Sciences at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna) nurtured initial ideas about this topic, and mastered the patience to explain the basics of nuclear physics and engineering to me—then a student in the humanities. I have benefited tremendously from the time I spent with Irina Andreeva and Iouli Andreev at their home over tea and Russian candy, discussing nuclear reactors, the Soviet system, and their experiences during the cleanup work at Chernobyl. Ulrike Felt, of the Department of Social Studies of Science at the University of Vienna, introduced me to the world of science and technology studies and provided a stimulating environment where I could discover theoretical and methodological approaches that would eventually frame my project. Cornell's Department of Science & Technology Studies supported my project from the minute I entered the graduate program and treated me to one of the most rewarding learning experiences of my life. My dissertation committee members, Bruce Lewenstein, Michael Dennis, Stephen Hilgartner, and Peter Holquist, were exceptionally helpful throughout the dissertation process and beyond, but I also benefited from discussions with Hélène Mialet, Christine Leuenberger, Ron Kline, Mike Lynch, and Trevor Pinch. Judith Reppy was my source for contemporary policy discussions that linked nuclear power to nuclear weapons, and generously supported me in ways I never expected. Last but not least, a number of friends and fellow graduate students provided continual inspiration, generous advice, and constructive criticism, especially Shobita Parthasarathy, Anna Maerker, John Downer, and Florian Charvolin. The department's staff, Judy Yonkin and Deborah Van Galder, kept me funded and helped me navigate Cornell's bureaucracy.

At Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, I found a wonderful community to sharpen and expand the focus of the project. I want to thank in particular Lynn Eden and David Holloway for their mentoring and generous support over the years, Rebecca Slayton, Pavel Podvig, and Charles Perrow for reading and commenting on preliminary chapters, and Siegfried “Sig” Hecker for putting me in touch with phenomenal interviewees in Russia (and for the unexpected opportunity to reminisce about our Styrian homeland). The Hoover Institution, and particularly Anatol Shmelev, made one last round of relevant interviews possible and simultaneously laid the groundwork for an important oral history collection. I also thank Robert McGinn, former director of the Program for Science, Technology, and Society at Stanford, for giving me the time and space to think and write, and Bill Potter, as well as Elena Sokova and Nikolai Sokov, who helped me understand some of the broader security dimensions of nuclear energy while I was a postdoctoral fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey.

At Virginia Tech, I benefited from the valuable pretenure mentoring initiative offered by the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. In my department, I thank especially Daniel Breslau, Matthew Wisnioski, Janet Abbate, and Barbara Allen, for providing mentoring, feedback, strategic advice, and practical support (from taking over teaching to babysitting). The faculty in the nuclear engineering program at Virginia Tech has warmly welcomed me and walked the walk by allowing me to get involved with teaching their students. The interaction with these students (in nuclear engineering and STS) makes me realize how fortunate I am to work in a community of exceptional learners who continue to teach me how to look at the world in yet another way, and how to put my own views in perspective.

A significant part of the research for this project took place in Moscow. My starting point was the Institute of the History of Science and Technology (part of the Russian Academy of Sciences). I am indebted to the Institute's director at the time, Vladimir Orel, and to Aleksandr Pechenkin of the “Sector for Theoretical and Methodological Issues in the History of Science,” for writing and signing countless letters to archives and other authorities for me. Larisa Belozerova and Lada Lekai in the International Office provided much-needed advice and practical help with everything from visas and registrations to fielding occasional inquiries about my scholarly integrity (“No, she is not a spy!”). Dmitrii Baiuk, managing editor of the quarterly Studies in the History of Science and Technology (Voprosy istorii estestvoznanii i tekhniki), Dmitrii Saprykin, and Elena Aronova supported me intellectually and morally, when key archives remained closed to me. Vladimir Vizgin and Igor Drovennikov from the “Sector for the History of Physics and Mechanics” welcomed me to the monthly seminar series on the history of the atomic project. At these seminars I met Mikhail Grabovskii, whose stories—both in person and in writing—were absolutely eye-opening, and Mikhail Gaidin from Obninsk, who subsequently introduced me to some of the most fascinating personalities involved in the Soviet nuclear program at his Museum Club in Obninsk.

I am indebted to the administrators of several archives, to the individuals handling documents in the stacks (which in my case often involved preparing files that had been requested for the very first time), and especially to the reading room staff: in Moscow, the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ARAN), the Russian State Archive for the Economy (RGAE), the Russian State Archive for Social and Political History (RGASPI, Komsomol branch), and the Russian State Archive for Contemporary History (RGANI); and in Samara, the Russian State Archive for Scientific and Technical Documentation (RGANTD, Samara branch).

While in Moscow, I kept up to date with publications on nuclear energy by visiting the Central Scientific and Research Institute “Atominform” (TsNIIAtominform) and the publishing houses “IzdAt” and “Energoatomizdat”; many thanks to their thoughtful staffs. Vladimir Iuzin from the journal Atomic Energy (Atomnaia energiia) helped me get in contact with some important interviewees and a couple of times even provided much-needed quiet space at the editorial office. I also wish to thank Viktor Sidorenko for making time to discuss my ideas and for referring me to his advisee Maria Vasilieva, who subsequently shared her work with me. I am grateful for Lenina Kaibysheva's help in locating her two volumes Posle Chernobylia (“After Chernobyl”), and to Vladimir Gubarev for sharing insightful stories about science, technology, and the mass media in the Soviet Union.

Paul Josephson's work has inspired me from the outset, and I owe him much for the success of this project. Mentioning his name has always opened doors in Russia, because he seems to be personal friends with every archivist, historian, and scientist even remotely connected to nuclear energy. I am particularly grateful to him for putting me in touch with Vladimir Iarovitsin, who arranged a number of interviews for me in Obninsk, and with Aleksandr Bolgarov, who showed me the Lithuanian nuclear power plant inside and out, and whose family hosted me during my visit to Visaginas.

Most of all, however, I am indebted to a number of nuclear experts who I promised to keep anonymous. No doubt many of them had some concerns that I worked for a foreign intelligence agency. And yet they not only eventually shared their personal accounts with me and agreed to be recorded, they often referred me to their friends and colleagues, or helped me find books otherwise unavailable. Many who I did not end up formally interviewing have nevertheless supported me in various ways (for example, by inviting me to exhibitions or conferences, or by trying to get permission for me to access archival collections). Without their interest in my work, and their trust in my sincerity as a researcher, this book would not have been feasible. Some of them have passed away since I talked to them, and while I regret that I won't be able to share the fruit of my labor with them, my hope is that I have accurately represented their points of view in my account.

Over the years this book was taking shape, I have benefited from interacting with individuals whose research areas overlap with mine, and who have stimulated my thinking in various ways, among them Slava Gerovich, Michael Gordin, Hugh Gusterson, David Kaiser, John Krige, Martha Lampland, and Verena Winiwarter. Asif Siddiqi not only invited me to participate in terrific conference panels, but offered encouragement and invaluable advice at exactly the right times. Gabrielle Hecht inspired me with her work on France's nuclear program, her determination to put the French story in a global context, and her approval of a fellow “nuclear nerd.”

One person who joined this project late in 2013 deserves special thanks. The stars aligned mysteriously and fortuitously to connect this story with Kathleen Kearns. A master book editor, with no connection to nuclear energy matters or Soviet history, she expertly massaged what was still a rough manuscript into a book that I started looking forward to reading. I am still amazed at how much her gentle and diligent approach transformed the manuscript, without ever misrepresenting my ideas or argument.

I am grateful to MIT Press, in particular Wiebe Bijker, Marguerite Avery, Katie Persons, and Marcy Ross, for their patience, encouragement, and diligence. Many thanks to Olga N. Orobei from the publishing house “Master” in Moscow, and Anna Korolevskaia from the National Chernobyl Museum in Kiev for providing invaluable support with image permissions, and to Dane Webster, who transformed my clumsy drawings into elegant graphs.

Finally, I need to thank my friends and family. Edward Biko Smith met me on the eve of my departure for Russia and has stuck with me through thick and thin since then. He moved with me multiple times, left jobs and found new ones, and always cooked delicious dinners. He kept me sane when the balance between teaching, writing, and having a life threatened to spiral out of control. Our son Konstantin, who arrived in 2008, has recentered my life in ways I never thought possible. I am deeply grateful to both of them for giving me the time to complete this project. My Austrian family and friends, both in Austria and in the United States, have helped me maintain my appreciation for homemade food, good company, and my native language. My parents have steadfastly supported me over the years, and although I know they would prefer for me to live a lot closer, they never questioned my choices. Growing up with their confidence in me has given me the courage to take on ambitious projects. For all the things they have done for me, big and small, I dedicate this book to them.

Note on Transliteration and Translation

I have used a modified version of the Library of Congress system, except for well-known names (Beria, not Beriia; Yeltsin, not El'tsyn, Gorky, not Gor’kii). For readability, in the main text I have dropped the apostrophe, which denotes a Cyrillic letter (e.g., Chernobyl, not Chernobyl’; Dollezhal, not Dollezhal’; Podolsk, not Podol'sk), or replaced it when appropriate (e.g., Emelyianov instead of Emel’ianov, Maryin instead of Mar’in, Petrosyiants instead of Petros’iants, Grigoryiants instead of Grigor’iants). I kept the apostrophe in the references and biographical notes, however. Note also that different versions of Russian names are sometimes used in English publications. In those cases, I have kept the published spelling and added the spelling I use in square brackets. All translations, unless otherwise noted, are mine.

Acronyms and Abbreviations

Introduction

Expertise on Trial

On a warm Tuesday in July 1987, a bustling crowd of people swarmed around the nondescript “House of Culture” in the otherwise deserted city of Chernobyl. Inside, six men were being held accountable for the worst accident at a civilian nuclear facility in human history.¹ In the early morning on a fateful Saturday in April 1986, reactor number 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant had exploded, spewing radioactive material all over the plant, its surroundings, and into the atmosphere, where wind and weather eventually distributed it across the globe.² News of the event gradually spread around the world as well, making the name of this Ukrainian city a household word. Now, some fourteen months later, the trial of those accused of having caused the accident would begin, less than ten miles from the destroyed reactor.

People all over the world were watching the proceedings closely. The Western media had reacted quizzically to the announcement that a trial would take place in the spring of 1987. After all, a high-ranking Soviet commission had already informed the International Atomic Energy Agency the previous August that human error had caused the accident.³ Furthermore, Soviet newspapers had reported in July 1986 that the Communist Party's Central Committee had condemned and punished not only the director of the Chernobyl plant but also members of the institute where the reactor was designed, the nuclear oversight committee, and top representatives of the two ministries responsible for nuclear power plants.⁴ And now these decisions were to be reenacted in a semipublic show trial. Calling the trial “a superfluous attempt to apportion blame,” the London Times stated: “For those directly involved, knowledge of the aftermath is probably punishment enough. For the rest, the chain of responsibility extends far beyond the power station and far beyond Chernobyl.” ⁵

The trial was a strange anachronism in the context of Mikhail Gorbachev's wide-ranging reforms. The late 1980s had been a time of rapid social and political transformation in the Soviet Union, and public attitudes toward the accident, the culprits, and the management of the disaster mitigation were evolving in unpredictable ways. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, Soviet authorities had granted international media unprecedented access to the accident site, the local communities, and knowledgeable professionals (doctors, for example), but they soon reversed course.⁶ Touting Gorbachev's promise of glasnost (openness, or transparency), many hailed the trial as public. But authorities restricted access to the city of Chernobyl: it was, as Nikolai Karpan, a Chernobyl employee who attended the proceedings, put it, “an open trial in a closed city.” ⁷ In a sense, the trial was an effort to reestablish control over the public display of political authority,⁸ and in the weeks leading up to it, carefully worded press releases announced that those responsible for the accident would be prosecuted.⁹

The city was deemed clean enough for the trial to proceed even though it was within the zone—roughly 2,800 square kilometers or 1,100 square miles—that Soviet authorities had declared contaminated.¹⁰ Before the trial began, workers had renovated the façade of the House of Culture and converted its main performance hall into a courtroom in which the judge and attorneys would literally be on stage. Although the authorities also set up a center for the press, the choice of location minimized attendance by journalists, one indicator that the trial would not be a typical show trial. One of the most important industrial show trials of the Stalinist period, the Shakhty trial, had been “arranged for maximum publicity … nearly one hundred reporters, Soviet and foreign, were present.” ¹¹ The proceedings at Chernobyl, by contrast, had “the atmosphere of a small village trial.” ¹² Only a handful of foreign journalists were allowed to attend, supposedly due to the confined space in the courtroom and limited accommodations in town.¹³ These journalists were transported to Chernobyl by bus under police escort, the New York Times reported.¹⁴

On the trial's opening day, the journalists, relatives of the defendants, and workers from the nearby plant passed through an improvised admissions point, where they had to wipe their shoes on a piece of wet carpet and walk through a radiation detector. Apart from police cars, the streets were empty, houses stood deserted, and abandoned gardens were overflowing with fruit trees.¹⁵

Dressed in jackets and open-necked shirts, and sweating under the bright television lights, the defendants listened as the charges were presented (figure 0.1). Viktor Briukhanov, former director of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, was the chief defendant.¹⁶ He had been put in charge of the plant during its first planning stages; now fifty-one, he had spent most of his career there.¹⁷ A few months after the accident, the party had dismissed him from his post and revoked his party membership, and he had spent the previous year in a Kiev prison.¹⁸ His wife still worked at the Chernobyl plant as an engineer.

Figure 0.1 At the Chernobyl trial. In July 1987, a Soviet judge tried six former employees of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant for criminal actions leading directly to the accident on April 26, 1986, the worst accident at a civilian nuclear facility. The director, Viktor Briukhanov (left), the chief engineer, Nikolai Fomin (right), and his deputy, Anatolii Diatlov (center), are shown here. They each received ten years in labor camps; the others received lesser sentences.

The former chief engineer, Nikolai Fomin, was fifty years old at the time of the trial. He too had lost his post and his party membership after the accident and was arrested and imprisoned in the summer of 1986.¹⁹ During the trial he would admit to feeling overwhelmed by his responsibilities at Chernobyl. Though Soviet authorities had not revealed it at the time, while Fomin was in a Kiev prison, he apparently suffered a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide. He was discovered in time and saved, and the authorities had postponed the trial until he recovered.²⁰

Fomin's deputy, Anatolii Diatlov, was fifty-six at the time of the trial. He had been on duty in the control room of reactor number 4 when the accident occurred, and the dose of radiation he received had threatened his life. After undergoing treatment in a specialized hospital in Moscow, he too had been transferred to a prison in Kiev to await the trial.²¹

The other three defendants had been allowed to return to their jobs at the Chernobyl plant until the trial: Boris Rogozhkin, fifty-two at the time of the trial, had headed the early morning shift at the reactor; Aleksandr Kovalenko, forty-five, had been in charge of reactor number 4; and Yurii Laushkin, a fifty-year-old engineer, had been an inspector from the State Oversight Committee for the Safe Conduct of Work in the Nuclear Power Industry (Gosatomenergonadzor).

Presiding over the trial was judge Raimond Brize, deputy chairman of the Supreme Court and a senior member of the Soviet judicial system.²² Judge Brize made it clear on the trial's first day that his court would limit itself to scrutinizing the errors made by the reactor operators and the officials in charge and not delve into the details of the reactor design.²³ At the time, the trial was intended as the first in a series of legal proceedings to examine the Chernobyl disaster, and therefore deliberately excluded all materials not pertaining to personnel errors.²⁴ The later hearings would address all other charges, though some journalists doubted that the additional trials would ever take place, especially given that the Central Committee had already expelled several high-ranking officials from the party.²⁵

Before the Chernobyl trial began, common knowledge attributed the accident to multiple causes, among them unauthorized actions by plant workers, managerial shortcomings, defects in the reactor design, and poor site choice.²⁶ By the time the trial started, the Soviet nuclear industry had initiated reforms that addressed all these areas, implicitly acknowledging that human error was only one factor in a complex technological system. The industry had already taken steps to improve training programs, introduce performance incentives, and make more general management reforms and technical upgrades. Yet the state continued to seek to assign individualized blame for the disaster, and its persistence in doing so suggests that it intended the trial as nothing short of a chance to revisit the historical record and set it straight.

Some fifty witnesses would testify.²⁷ The clerk read the indictment, which took most of the four-hour opening session.²⁸ The prosecution charged the accused under article 220 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code, which covered violations of technical safety rules and other serious breaches of regulations at “explosion-prone plants.” ²⁹ Interestingly, this was the first time nuclear power plants were assigned to this legal category.³⁰ The defendants had been given time to study the allegations brought against them, charges that they had allowed “unsanctioned experiments to be performed by workers without adequate training.” ³¹ The prosecution also charged Briukhanov, the former director, with having given false information about the scale of the disaster, a move that allegedly delayed the evacuation of the affected population.³² As citizens of the Soviet Union, the six men may have known that those conducting the trial would require some admission of guilt, and perhaps even public repentance, from them. They probably also knew that the judge would not drop the charges, that he would sentence them no matter what they said, and that their convictions would be highly symbolic.

The Soviet state cared deeply about how the history books would portray Chernobyl and whether critics would blame the accident on industry mismanagement, human error, or reactor design flaws. Focusing on any one of these possible culprits implied adherence to a particular set of ideas about high-risk technologies, human-machine interactions, and technical and organizational methods for guaranteeing safety and reliability. Each view also implied a particular attitude about the legitimacy of the Soviet state and the Marxist doctrine that state was based on. Blaming the reactor designers, nuclear regulators, and top ministerial agents would question the foundation of the Soviet nuclear industry, its economic plans, its bureaucratic apparatus, and its internal controls. Worse yet, prosecuting the reactor designers and their organizations would cast doubt on Soviet science and engineering, the cornerstone of the entire communist project.³³ Mikhail Gorbachev could not afford to shatter the very foundations of what he was trying to save: the Soviet Union, a state built on scientific reason and technocratic ideals. Viewed in this light, putting six Chernobyl managers and operators on trial communicated the Soviets’ willingness to clean house, symbolically as well as literally. Just as nuclear engineers installed a concrete sarcophagus in an attempt to control the destroyed reactor physically, the state attempted to use the trial of these six men to contain the disaster politically.

Soviet authorities allowed foreign journalists to report from the trial only on the opening day and during the announcement of the verdict.³⁴ And while many of these journalists complained that they witnessed only preapproved portions of the trial, Soviet reporters noted that just a couple of years earlier, any reporting at all on nuclear matters would have been unthinkable.³⁵ Many foreign observers assumed the Soviet media would cover the rest of the trial but, to their disappointment, the major Soviet newspapers reported very little on the proceedings, an omission that reinforced the impression of a cover-up.³⁶

All six defendants denied the charges against them either completely or in part. In contrast to Briukhanov and Fomin, former deputy chief engineer Diatlov was very emotional on the first day of the trial. Reacting to the charges against him, he said: “With so many human deaths, I cannot say I am completely innocent.” ³⁷ However, he denied that he had violated safety rules, and instead blamed the reactor's design for the accident, an allegation echoed by other defendants.³⁸ As a United Press reporter observed, the defendants directed the court's attention to the state's failure to provide training, and—the judge's orders notwithstanding—to design issues, which put the Soviet nuclear industry itself on trial.³⁹

From the perspective of Soviet information control, the fact that foreign journalists witnessed the defendants denying all or some of the charges on the very first day was a glitch. The Soviet media reported only that the three main defendants accepted professional responsibility—not the fact that they denied criminal liability for the accident.⁴⁰ Even though the official court transcript has not been released, alternative publications suggest that the defendants did have a chance to argue their case as the trial continued, although they spoke from the dock, as defendants.⁴¹ Diatlov in particular rose to the occasion. He was clearly convinced of his innocence and while in prison had prepared exculpatory material, which he presented in great detail both throughout the trial and afterward.⁴²

Though the defendants kept bringing up the reactor's design features, the prosecution categorically refused to address them, delegating the topic to one of the projected future trials. The defendants’ testimony made clear that even experienced operators at the Chernobyl plant had not thoroughly understood either the specifics of the plant's reactor type (known as the RBMK⁴³) or—more significantly—the risks of operating this reactor under certain conditions.

In addition, Soviet officials reportedly investigated the scientists and engineers responsible for the reactor design and the crews in charge of constructing the Chernobyl plant. The authorities also scrutinized those responsible for the evacuation of the plant's satellite town, Pripyat, and for the evacuees’ medical care.⁴⁴

Many of the nuclear scientists and reactor designers who testified at the trial were either directly or indirectly affiliated with the institute that had designed the RBMK. Though these expert witnesses did not themselves face criminal charges, they had a stake in deflecting blame from the reactor's specific features. It was therefore hardly surprising that they dismissed the interpretation that a design flaw had caused the accident.⁴⁵

In addition to the possible causes identified before the trial, another, even more complex, explanation emerged (if only inadvertently) in the courtroom at Chernobyl, namely that the very nature of the Soviet economic system had caused the accident. Though its designers and supporters touted the centrally planned economy as rational, efficient, comprehensive, and superior to “capitalist anarchy,” it had never lived up to this image. The race to fulfill plans by a centrally set date, typically the last day of the year or quarter, put enormous pressure on those trying to overcome problems caused by production bottlenecks, delivery delays, and an unstable, transient workforce. Nuclear power plants faced these problems too: administrators considered their operational plans fulfilled only if they spent every kopek in their budgets, regardless of whether the goods these funds were intended to buy had actually materialized. Planners expected new reactors to start delivering electricity to the grid on the target date and to conform to exacting specifications. Often, high-ranking party officials arrived on site for the start-up of a new reactor, adding to the haste in which work was completed. As one would expect under these circumstances, sometimes plant operators would postpone tests until after start-up, and the trial revealed that such delays occurred at Chernobyl. It is also safe to assume that in an attempt to oblige the authorities, Soviet plant managers had taken worse shortcuts in the past than rescheduling a nonessential test. Maintaining success within a centrally planned system involved a generous amount of improvisational talent, along with robust networks of patronage and an ability to focus on the ultimate goal, not to mention a good measure of personal assertiveness and patience. An able Soviet manager knew the consequences of complying or failing to comply with state-issued targets. He (far less often she) knew how to play the system with both legal and semilegal strategies: trading favors, putting pressure on subcontractors, and getting items even when they were officially unavailable.⁴⁶

Although Soviet authorities tried to regulate the information that would reach the international press, the trial raised the question of whether the organizational structure underlying the centrally planned economic system in general, and the nuclear complex in particular, created unique problems for the management of the nuclear industry. The defendants’ testimony also called attention to the competing pressures exerted by professionalism and Party politics on personnel recruitment and management in the Soviet economy. Finally, the testimony demonstrated that the decision to produce this particular reactor, the RBMK, on a massive scale and build it near large urban centers created other serious problems.

During the trial, prosecutors and some witnesses severely criticized the Chernobyl management team, but little-known aspects of their work also came to light, especially during Briukhanov's testimony. For example, the public learned that people with no specialized training in nuclear physics or nuclear engineering fulfilled very high-level, responsible tasks, often without expert supervision. Despite the director's repeated requests for accident simulators and the fact that they were a common best practice in most nations operating nuclear power plants, Chernobyl had none. In his testimony, Briukhanov also pointed out how difficult it had been to attract a thousand qualified workers for the launch of a new reactor and that only a recent decree had given him the financial authority to reserve budget funds to hire personnel well in advance so they could undergo training on site.⁴⁷

The plant's former chief engineer, Fomin, was a case in point: originally trained as an electrician, he took short, intensive courses in nuclear reactor physics when he accepted the position at Chernobyl. But, according to his own statement, once his regular work schedule started at the plant, he no longer had time to study. He then relied on people like Diatlov, his deputy, who had expertise with nuclear reactors, albeit naval reactors with very different technical parameters.

The trial also brought up the issue of who was responsible for which aspects of operating a nuclear power plant. Those on the inside may have intuitively found their way through complex administrative channels and parallel hierarchies, but the bureaucratic maze made it hard to determine who had which duties. In particular, the trial underscored the tensions between the Ministry of Medium Machine Building (Sredmash) and the Ministry of Energy and Electrification (Minenergo), each of which had a role in administering the plant.⁴⁸

Despite the testimony that identified alternative factors, on the final day of the trial Judge Brize convicted all six defendants of criminal negligence. In a ninety-minute summation, he found the men guilty of repeated violations of safety and operating regulations. In particular, he found Briukhanov guilty of having conveyed distorted information about the accident and of having been a poor plant manager.⁴⁹ He also blamed Briukhanov for the lax discipline among workers, who reportedly played cards or dominoes while on duty at the plant. He sentenced all the defendants to terms in labor camps: Briukhanov, Fomin, and Diatlov received ten years each, the other three defendants two, three, and five years respectively.⁵⁰ Brize gave Briukhanov an additional five years for abuse of power, to run concurrently with his ten-year sentence.⁵¹ As a Newsweek correspondent poignantly observed,

The sentences, though harsh by American standards, were relatively mild compared with the punishment meted out in other Soviet cases involving white-collar violations. Stalin had people shot for “errors,” and in Khrushchev's day at least two gold and currency dealers were executed for economic crimes. As recently as June [1987], the former party leader of Uzbekistan was condemned to death for corruption.⁵²

The defendants showed no emotion during sentencing. They sat silent, with their heads bowed, while relatives in the courtroom wept.⁵³ In its official press release on the sentences, the Soviet news agency ITAR-TASS noted that the ten-year sentences were “the maximum penalty provided for in the penal code for the crime committed.” ⁵⁴ The agency singled out the former director, Briukhanov, as the main culprit in the accident:

Serving as a manager of a technologically complex enterprise, he failed to ensure its reliable and safe operation and the strict compliance of the personnel with the established regulations. Lack of control, low production and labor discipline existed at the plant before the accident. Not infrequently instances of breach of technological instructions were concealed with his knowledge and the causes of such breaches were not dealt with. … [This] led to an “anything will do” attitude and an atmosphere of complacency and unconcern among the management of the nuclear power plant and some of its specialists. … Having displayed confusion and cowardice, [Briukhanov] failed to take measures in order to limit the scope of the accident, did not put into operation the plan for protecting the personnel and the population from radiation, and in his reports deliberately understated data on the level of radiation—a factor which hindered the timely evacuation of people from the danger zone.⁵⁵

According to TASS, Briukhanov knew the correct radiation levels, and his decision to deliberately misinform authorities was directly responsible for the delay in evacuating the satellite town.⁵⁶ TASS went on to say that Fomin and Diatlov had failed to provide adequate training for the operating personnel, that they had not enforced compliance with technological regulations, and that they had even breached instructions and directives themselves.⁵⁷ The former director of reactor number 4, Aleksandr Kovalenko, reportedly had not followed proper procedures when setting up the fateful test that set off the explosion, and Boris Rogozhkin, shift chief at reactor number 4 that morning, had failed to activate the emergency notification system to inform personnel of the danger.⁵⁸ Finally, the report maintained that the state inspector, Iurii Laushkin, had failed to enforce nuclear safety rules on several occasions. The press release concluded with the assertion that human error had led to the disaster, thus backing up not only the sentencing, but also the tenor of the Soviet government's earlier report to the International Atomic Energy Agency.⁵⁹ Both the report and the trial had considered the reactor's specific design features, at least to a limited extent, but both confined blame to the Chernobyl plant managers and reactor operators. The fact that the additional trials that had been planned never occurred made this version the only version: six individuals were solely to blame for the Chernobyl disaster.⁶⁰

The Trial's Relevance

What was perhaps the last show trial of the Soviet era quite predictably ended with the sentencing of the Chernobyl plant's senior management, and yet the trial was not just about the guilt of six individuals who led or operated the plant when the accident occurred. That courtroom also saw other explanations for the nuclear disaster first appear in a semiofficial manner—if only to be postponed, delegated, or dismissed.

In fact, expertise itself was on trial. The proceedings raised questions about what circumstances justified, or even required, deviation from rules and regulations. Who made these decisions, and who should be making them? What counted as acceptable evidence that workers had followed or violated the rules? When did deviations from set rules become punishable in an economic context where improvisation was not only tolerated but often necessary, and how was one to know? In the case of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Judge Brize ruled that the practical expertise of the plant's director and reactor operators was inferior to that of the nuclear scientists and reactor designers at the Moscow-based research institutes and that the accident had occurred after operators deliberately violated regulations. His ruling thus reaffirmed a social and institutional hierarchy that had contributed, as I show in more detail later, to the deficiencies in knowledge transfer in the first place.

By its sheer magnitude, the Chernobyl disaster had put more at stake than the reliability of a team of workers, the managerial competence of the country's administrative organizations, or even the quality of a particular reactor design. The disaster threatened the authority of science and thus the very foundation of the Soviet state's principles. But political leaders and nuclear scientists would manage to integrate Chernobyl into a narrative of successful nuclear development and codify an official version of events. Thanks to Chernobyl, this version claims, the Soviet nuclear industry was now safer than ever.⁶¹ For this statement to be credible, the judge had to assign responsibility solely to the operators. Undermining the legitimacy of the country's revered nuclear elite, and by extension that of the Soviet state, was unfathomable in a geopolitical universe in which the Soviet Union was a nuclear superpower on a par with the United States.

The Chernobyl trial exemplified how the Soviet leadership wanted the world at large to interpret and deal with the disaster. Not secrecy, but well-controlled information management was the order of the day.⁶² This approach, and its uneasy transformation in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, points to a problem intrinsic in the nuclear industry and its many sensitive, potentially dual-use aspects. Who knew how much, and who was supposed to know what? Who controlled what kind and what amount of information, how was it distributed to the various nonnuclear branches of the industry, and what remained classified even for operators of a nuclear reactor? For example, while designers had promoted the Chernobyl-type reactor to economic and military planners as a design that could easily be converted from electricity generation to plutonium production, to the public—and to the organizations operating these reactors!—they advertised it as a safe and economical machine, yet another grand achievement of Soviet science and technology.

Looked at another way, the trial illustrates how different versions of a story gain or lose legitimacy and how, ironically, a public trial can silence some aspects of a story. The following chapters unpack what this verdict sought to close once and for all. They bring to light conflicting stories and situate them in the broader historical, economic, and political context of the post–World War II Soviet Union and its nascent nuclear industry. More specifically, I show who told these stories, why some voices appeared more credible than others, and ultimately, how such accounts gave legitimacy to a distinct technopolitical system. By laying out the complex history of the Soviet nuclear industry, I identify the dimensions these different narratives could draw on for legitimacy.

In contrast to the Chernobyl trial, which gave legitimacy to one single explanation, my story emphasizes the multitude of legitimate accounts. I show how each of these versions makes sense, but also why some continue to enjoy more authority than others. Although Chernobyl serves as an illuminating framework for my story, this book is emphatically not another “definitive account” of how the Chernobyl accident “really” happened.⁶³ In fact, the existence of different, and at first glance incompatible, versions of what caused the accident is precisely what makes this story so compelling.

Explanations of the Chernobyl disaster, whether they originate within the former Soviet Union or abroad, typically emphasize one of the causes mentioned above: human error, design flaws, or mismanagement. At the time the trial ended, the plethora of contradictory reports from the government commission and from various ministries, groups, and individuals were only starting to appear in public, and representatives of different groups fought over who would, or would not, sign off on a particular statement. But for the first time, and thanks to Gorbachev's new policies, the omnipresent party control over industry and the involvement of the KGB in many of the accident investigation brigades became issues of debate, rather than unquestionable realities.

The design-flaw version gained traction when reports were leaked to the press that individual scientists had warned the director of the Kurchatov Institute, Anatolii Aleksandrov, about the reactor's potential to explode. The institute served as the scientific director for the RBMK, meaning it oversaw the development and construction of that reactor design as well as critical phases in its use. Aleksandrov further fueled speculation about the role of design when he stepped down as president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences after Chernobyl, reportedly to devote all his attention to improving the RBMK. As mentioned earlier, a Soviet delegation had officially informed the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1986 that human error caused the accident, yet internal responses to the disaster included design modifications, further evidence that the authorities considered design flaws a factor.

Reactor designers countered criticism directed at them with an analogy. When a driver hits a tree, they argued, you wouldn't blame the car's designer for the accident, but the bad driver. Likewise, when the operators at Chernobyl conducted unauthorized experiments, bypassed important safety systems, and violated numerous regulations, they effectively mistreated an otherwise perfectly safe and reliable reactor.⁶⁴ Designers also pointed to the dozen other reactors of the same design that were (and still are) operating all over the country. Aleksandrov was one of the most prominent advocates of this claim.

During the final years of the Soviet Union, some reactor specialists challenged the driver-error analogy. Their version went like this: When a driver hits the brakes and the car accelerates instead of stopping, this is fundamentally a design flaw and cannot be blamed on the driver. The driver in fact becomes a victim of bad design, or, worse yet, of bad information, because designers failed to disclose the potential consequences of operating a car with a known design flaw. Those who made this argument pointed out that the type of reactor at Chernobyl was difficult to operate and also notorious for its lack of redundant features that would protect against operator error. Moreover, one of the first reactors of this kind near Leningrad had suffered a similar but smaller-scale accident in 1975. Instead of alerting operators everywhere, however, authorities covered up the incident and restricted information about the problem it had revealed, even within the nuclear industry itself.

The third popular explanation for the Chernobyl disaster is mismanagement, a catchall term that incriminates the plant's executive staff, industry management, or the Soviet system in general. This explanation alleges that the work ethic at Soviet nuclear plants was generally poor, that operator training was insufficient or altogether lacking, and that managers sacrificed nuclear safety for the sake of meeting the production targets of the centrally planned economy. This explanation tends to miss the fact that despite the Chernobyl disaster, the Soviet nuclear industry as a whole neither failed nor developed in isolation from the West. Soviet nuclear specialists started to exchange ideas and experiences with their international peers as early as 1955, at the First United Nations Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva.⁶⁵ In the following decades, they continued to evaluate strategies, compare achievements, and even justify design choices with reference to international engineering preferences. The system explanation also tends to ignore the fact that a small but steadily growing segment of Soviet electricity production came as reliable base-load power from nuclear reactors, which often replaced polluting fossil fuel plants. Furthermore, the sector's growth and high-tech appeal, along with comparatively generous salaries and unparalleled social services (such as housing), attracted a well-educated, ambitious, and pragmatic workforce. In other words, the system worked, and continued to work, quite well, Chernobyl notwithstanding.

In the Soviet Union, the debate over these diverging explanations began immediately after the accident. It spread to the international arena and intensified in the years following the Chernobyl trial, even continuing after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Public outrage over mismanagement and reckless work habits at Chernobyl dominated the posttrial debate within the country and triggered unprecedented environmental activism.⁶⁶ Encouraged by the loosening of media censorship and diminishing Party control, newly formed public groups demanded that all nuclear power plants be shut down immediately. If human error was the single cause of the accident, these groups reasoned, this was the only rational action: after all, human error can never be avoided completely.

Like public groups, nuclear experts who disagreed with the official version of events took advantage of the new possibilities offered by Gorbachev's policies of glasnost. As I show in greater detail in chapter 5, in marked departure from their own practice, these nuclear experts started to speak out independently and publicly. In contrast to popular concerns about nuclear energy, which had been dismissed as “radiophobia,” these experts’ scientific authority afforded legitimacy to their dissenting perspectives. Even without additional trials, then, the management of the Soviet nuclear industry and especially the designers of the Chernobyl-type reactor became the target of harsh public criticism. But in the long run, even as the reactor technology was overhauled and a massive reorganization of the entire nuclear industry took place behind the scenes, the designers’ version of events prevailed.

The designers’ version continues to shape the common understanding of the Chernobyl disaster today. This book introduces alternative accounts, not to discredit one or the other, but to highlight what was at stake for the advocates of each version. It also investigates the underlying assumptions of these different versions: What notion of accountability motivated people to make these contradictory claims, during and after the Chernobyl trial? How do different versions of the disaster conceptualize safety and reliability?

Throughout the book, I emphasize the history leading up to the Chernobyl disaster. I argue that it would be a mistake to focus only on the accident and its immediate causes. Instead, the ensuing chapters illuminate the origins of the particular reactor design used at the Chernobyl plant in relation to the other designs chosen for mass implementation. I describe the considerations that drove specific developments in the Soviet nuclear power industry and demonstrate why this design made sense—economically, technically, and politically. Only a thorough examination of Chernobyl's prehistory will allow us to understand fully how and why the accident occurred, what it meant for the Soviet system and the Soviet nuclear industry, and ultimately how it matters to the international nuclear energy community today.

The Chapters Ahead

Chapter 1 provides a historical and functional overview of the Soviet economic system and shows how scientists and engineers persuaded planners to incorporate civilian nuclear power into the country's economic strategy. Because it traces how Soviet experts established nuclear power as a driving force of social, not just technical, progress, the chapter also offers a glimpse of the inner workings of the Soviet political and economic system. Understanding this broader context reveals not only some of the ideals underlying Soviet governance, but also how the pressure to make nuclear power competitive with fossil fuel plants contributed to what would happen at Chernobyl.

Chapter 2 examines in detail the nuclear industry's organizational framework and its dual origins in the countrywide electrification program on the one hand and the weapons program on the other. It shows that nuclear power plants held a contested position at the intersection of these two programs—with Minenergo running the former and Sredmash emerging from the latter—and it explains the role various institutions played in delineating spheres of influence and plant management responsibilities. In particular, the chapter highlights the ongoing rivalry between Sredmash and Minenergo and illustrates how organizational stresses fundamentally shaped the nuclear industry, its technical choices, personnel policy, and safety norms.

Chapter 3 traces how nuclear power plant operators emerged as a professional community, and explains how this community defined itself through the work it performed and through organizational alliances. The chapter covers what it meant to be a Soviet nuclear engineer, especially in terms of social mobility, prestige, and privileges. It looks at how the nuclear industry recruited and trained workers, what shaped those workers’ professional identities, and how these identities evolved over time. The chapter contrasts the self-conception and ideals of nuclear experts working at elite research institutes with those of the professionals who handled the pressures of sometimes arbitrary economic plans at actual nuclear plants. It also identifies similarities that reached across these communities, such as a sincere sense of patriotic duty.

Chapter 4 presents a novel history of nuclear reactor design choices and shows how personalities and institutional and political wrangling played into those choices. The chapter argues that during the Cold War, achieving peaceful nuclear applications became yet another race, although the Soviet government went on to support a broad and multifaceted reactor research-and-development program much longer than many Western nations. Rather than condemning the RBMK as a flawed design and an altogether bad choice, this discussion shows that competing economic, technical, and diplomatic imperatives influenced Soviet nuclear industry leaders to choose the RBMK.

Chapter 5 returns to the Chernobyl accident. It briefly recapitulates how disaster mitigation progressed and then focuses on the extended period during which various bodies investigated the causes of the accident and assigned blame. The chapter recounts the fate of early whistleblowers and also lays out how Chernobyl fundamentally changed (and sometimes failed to change) the Soviet, and by extension global, nuclear industry.

In the conclusion, I debate whether the Chernobyl disaster was the predictable outcome of the plant's circumstances or an unexpected, improbable, catastrophe that nevertheless had underlying—and intertwining—long-term, systemic causes. I advocate taking a historical perspective and considering multiple complex causes because anything less will not help us avoid similar accidents. Ultimately, I argue that we cannot dismiss the Chernobyl disaster as an outcome specific to the Soviet system. The context could have been different—democratic and capitalist, for example—and still disaster could have struck.

Sadly, disaster did strike again, twenty-five years later, on March 11, 2011, at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant. In the epilogue, I grapple with the challenge of comparing nuclear disasters, despite significant differences, and with writing about one nuclear catastrophe while another is still unfolding. The accident investigation reports of Fukushima are already producing competing narratives, but if the aftermath of Chernobyl is any indication, the nuclear industry worldwide will soon resume normal operations.⁶⁷

Source: Photograph by Volodymir Repik, 1987. Courtesy of National Chernobyl Museum, Kiev, Ukraine.