1
The nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl triggered public debate over the authority, credibility, and expertise of government officials, planners, and scientists. Given that some saw the disaster as a failure of the entire Soviet system, examining the political and economic contexts of Chernobyl's prehistory illuminates critical aspects of the accident and helps us understand both why it occurred and why it was significant for the Soviet system. Though hindsight colors how we view the decisions that led to the explosion, many of those decisions made sense at the time, not simply from a political standpoint but economically and technically as well. By examining how the inner workings of the Soviet system affected the development and operation of its nuclear industry, we can better understand these decisions.
The Soviet nuclear industry emerged in the unique context of a planned-administrative economy and an ideologically distinctive political system. Together, the state-party system and the planned character of the Soviet economy provided the framework within which the Soviet nuclear industry emerged. These structures offered certain options while constraining others. At the same time, the structures were themselves subject to modification. In this chapter, I explore how this larger political and economic context affected the development of the Soviet nuclear power industry. I cover the specifics of that development in the next chapter.
The decision to develop a nuclear power industry in the Soviet Union was not inevitable. In the late 1940s, the country faced no imminent energy crisis. Existing hydropower, coal, gas, and oil-fueled plants produced electricity, and the ample energy resources available didn't necessitate a shift to nuclear power. In the late 1950s, however, Soviet analysts predicted that energy demand was bound to rise drastically over the next few decades, partly due to the anticipated retrofitting of trains from coal to electricity, and partly because of a significant increase in the number of electric appliances in the home.1 More electricity was needed, just when nuclear power generation was gaining visibility all over the world.
Soviet nuclear energy developed under political and economic circumstances radically different from those in other countries like the United States. The Soviet Union had no private industry and no free market competition.2 Unlike Western economies that could draw on the rhetoric of free market forces to promote, and even subsidize, nuclear power, justifying the nuclear option in the Soviet Union took on unique forms.3 It was the Soviet state and its bureaucrats that made decisions, committed resources, and oversaw the implementation of economic plans.4 The specifics of the centrally planned economy set the parameters for the emerging nuclear power sector.
Economic concerns were paramount in the Soviet system, and the central planning apparatus required that state investments “pay off” both literally, in terms of economic growth, and figuratively, in terms of technological progress. The fact that prominent Soviet scientists backed nuclear power was tremendously important, as was nuclear energy's compatibility with Soviet ideals of electrifying the entire country and demonstrating Soviet scientific and technological prowess. As I will argue here, however, these programmatic arguments only accomplished so much: at some point, nuclear power generation had to demonstrate its cost-effectiveness—or at least establish that it had sufficient promise to become economically viable in the foreseeable future. Only by persuading decision makers of nuclear energy's economic potential could this emerging industry hope to be included in the country's long-term plans.
The idea of using controlled nuclear fission as a means of producing energy wasn't new. As early as 1922, Russian academician Vladimir Vernadskii, head of the then newly founded State Radium Institute in Leningrad, predicted: “We are approaching a tremendous revolution in human life with which nothing hitherto experienced can be compared. It will not be long before man will have atomic energy at his disposal as a source of energy that will make it possible for him to build his life as he pleases.” 5
In the immediate postwar period, many scientists and engineers who had contributed to the nuclear weapons program felt they could atone for their role in developing atomic and hydrogen bombs by directing their creative energy toward peaceful applications. They used the momentum and success of the military project, and the status they had gained from it, to promote civilian applications of nuclear energy and to expand the country's existing energy policy, which until then had relied on fossil fuels and hydropower. Their enthusiasm notwithstanding, these early promoters of nuclear power encountered significant resistance from economic planners: research and development takes considerable time before construction of a nuclear power plant can even begin, and construction itself takes many years.
The problems planners faced in simply choosing a plant location indicate how complex the issues were. Siting a new nuclear power plant required a number of prerequisites to be met: the site had to be compatible with environmental conditions, for example by possessing a sufficient water supply, having suitable seismic conditions, and being large enough so that the required occupational health and safety zone (sanitarnaia zona) could be established.6 In addition, the region where a power plant site was planned needed to present a sufficiently high energy deficit. And although nuclear power plants could connect to the country's Unified Power System (Edinaia energeticheskaia sistema), a gigantic, Union-wide grid of transmission lines that distributed electricity and heat from generating plants to industry and households and that managed this distribution through an integrated dispatch system, the proximity of existing transmission lines to a new site was another determining factor.7 Finally, the site needed to have access to a sufficiently developed industrial base nearby and to large numbers of construction workers.8
The emerging civilian nuclear industry faced additional hurdles as well. In contrast to the nuclear weapons program that began in earnest in 1945, the nuclear power industry would not be able to rely on virtually unlimited resources. Those who planned it could access some of the resources that had supported the atomic bomb project, but not enough to fulfill their ambitious goals.9 For example, the existing steel-manufacturing industry could not produce sufficient quantities of the required parts on time. This supply issue was hardly an exception: industrial capacities in general remained a bottleneck for decades. When nuclear engineers started using zirconium for nuclear fuel cladding in the 1970s, the country's zirconium industry was not up to the task.10 For several decades starting in the late 1940s, the challenge facing the scientists who favored nuclear power was to secure the government's support for an emerging technology that required long-term financial commitments and that had yet to prove its suitability for the country's energy mix.
Making Nuclear Relevant
The Soviet Union's—and the world's—first nuclear power plant started operation at Obninsk on June 27, 1954, and advocates argued that the little plant proved nuclear power's viability as part of the national power industry. Soviet nuclear physicists and engineers subsequently continued to experiment with a variety of different reactor designs that clearly demonstrated nuclear power's technical feasibility. But technical feasibility alone wasn't enough: in a national economy still exhausted by a world war and already entangled in a nuclear arms race, promoters had to make an argument that nuclear power would soon become competitive with conventional power generation. Well aware that the nuclear power program drew material resources from other sectors, scientists in the 1950s argued that nuclear power would provide an answer to many problems of scarcity by providing reliable, clean electricity and heat to all kinds of industries and to the general public. To establish the legitimacy of nuclear power, its promoters focused on three strategies. First, they invoked the international prestige of Soviet science; second, they conceptualized nuclear energy so as to make it consistent with the established ideological imagery of peace and progress; and finally, they created economic realities and leveraged political patronage to bolster their economic arguments. Let's look at each of these strategies in turn.
The Prestige of Soviet Science
Soviet scientists managed to explode nuclear weapons long before American intelligence expected them to; this success provided nuclear scientists with great authority, which they used to promote peaceful applications of nuclear energy to Soviet leaders. The power struggle following Stalin's death in 1953, however, made even the powerful nuclear elite realize that new political rulers would not automatically continue to support them.11 To secure ongoing support, scientists invoked Soviet scientific prowess and international recognition, often with reference to Obninsk. For example, on June 27, 1955, Igor Kurchatov, the director of the Institute of Atomic Energy, and Anatolii Aleksandrov, his deputy and close collaborator, approached the minister of Sredmash, Avraamii Zaveniagin, and suggested building two nuclear power plants, each with a unique power reactor, as well as two other, experimental reactors.12 These four reactor types, they argued, would allow them to choose the most promising direction for the development of a nuclear industry. They appealed to the high-tech character of nuclear energy and argued that its implementation in the country's economy would demonstrate Soviet mastery of this technology. This, in turn, would earn international recognition for Soviet science, the Soviet economy, and ultimately the country's political leadership. Nuclear power plants, the physicists maintained, were more expensive than coal plants only because nuclear energy was still at an early stage of development.
Kurchatov's and Aleksandrov's arguments proved persuasive, and their vision was included in the country's ambitious sixth five-year plan (1956–1960), which foresaw 2–2.5 million kilowatts of power generated in nuclear reactors by the end of 1960.13 Optimism prevailed that four more powerful nuclear reactors would be completed by that date.14 This would demonstrate to the international community how advanced Soviet nuclear science and reactor engineering were and would also illustrate the virtues of a centrally planned economic administration. Soviet nuclear experts were so successful in persuading political decision makers of the benefits of nuclear energy—over the objections of planners who worried about economic viability—that some have described them as one of the most successful political lobbying groups that emerged in the Soviet Union.15
The Iconography of Nuclear Power
Another strategy to promote nuclear power drew on existing narratives of intellectual achievement, prosperity, and peace to create a new, nuclear, vision of the communist future.16 As historian Paul Josephson has shown in his analysis of Soviet newspapers and journals from 1945 to 1975, Soviet nuclear physicists actively created a “culture” of atomic energy, a culture that became part of every Soviet citizen's dream of “the bright Communist future.” 17
Scientists also presented electrification as yet another “race” against the United States and its capitalist allies. The addition of nuclear energy would help the Soviet Union win this race while staying true to its civilizing mission of bringing electricity, and by extension progress and modernity, to provincial lands and remote areas. Prominent scientists thus positioned nuclear technology as a driving force of economic, and ultimately social, progress. At the same time, scientists tied into early Cold War rhetoric when they presented the Soviet Union as the country that first utilized the power of splitting atomic nuclei for peaceful purposes, while the United States was not only building nuclear weapons at breakneck speed, but had actually dropped atomic bombs on innocent civilians. A Soviet emphasis on peaceful applications of nuclear energy might even pressure the United States to deemphasize its nuclear weapons program in favor of civilian initiatives, and thus would positively affect national security.18
Promoting a vision of the enormous potential of nuclear power, establishing rhetorical legitimacy for nuclear power technologies, and ingraining the symbolic value of nuclear power in the popular imagination were important preconditions. But images and slogans were not enough to establish the economic legitimacy of nuclear power as an integral part of the country's future energy system. Only functioning nuclear power reactors could do that, and new technical and economic realities had to be created before those reactors could become operational. In the Soviet Union, this meant getting the capital investments necessary for building up a nuclear industry written into the country's plans.
Economic Arguments
In addition to convincing political leaders and the Soviet public that nuclear energy made ideological sense, nuclear promoters had to win the support of the planners, bureaucrats, and decision makers who managed the state's resources, both natural and financial. The strategy nuclear specialists adopted with these groups, the inner circle of Soviet industrial planners, was remarkably different from those discussed above. These planners didn't really care how prestigious Soviet science was, as long as it delivered tangible results: technologies to produce electricity faster, better, and more cheaply.
To appeal to this economic rationality, nuclear promoters stressed the asymmetrical distribution of the country's vast natural resources in relation to energy demand. Most fossil fuel deposits were located in Siberia, but energy was needed most in the European part of the Soviet Union. The options were either to transport raw materials from Siberia at significant cost, or to build high-voltage electricity transmission lines, which were also expensive and invariably involved significant inefficiencies. Hydropower, a major competitor for nuclear energy in the European part of the Soviet territory, required flooding vast areas, given that riverbeds were mostly flat. Such flooding, they argued, would reduce the land available for agriculture. Unlike a conventional plant, however, a nuclear power plant was independent of scarce natural resources, could be located near energy consumers, and therefore did not require long transmission lines. Despite their high initial cost, the promoters said, nuclear power plants would eventually turn out to be economically competitive.
Over time, as nuclear power gained traction, the ideological arguments in its favor faded and gave way to debates over its economic efficiency. Structural and organizational factors increasingly replaced the symbolic, ideological aspects that had been so critical for the early development of the Soviet nuclear industry. Integrating nuclear power into the national energy mix altered the country's economic planning in fundamental ways, affecting industrial sectors, regional planning, and university curricula. By the same token, the requirements of the plan pushed nuclear science and its associated technologies in new directions—affecting everything from reactor engineering to human resources to economic accounting. Before we move into these domains, we need to briefly explore the inner workings of the Soviet planned economy and examine how nuclear energy fit—or how its promoters made it fit—into these existing structures and processes.
The State as Chief Planner
In a centralized, tightly interconnected system like the Soviet one, every economic decision entailed a series of consequences and necessitated other decisions. The system was so complex that no single planner could orchestrate it.19 In its complexity, it appeared tedious and slow to some, but awe-inspiring and near perfect to other observers.20
Some Cold War accounts depict the Soviet economy as a system where “everyone does what he is told, and … everyone can be told exactly what to do,” an explanation that economic historian Alec Nove has called “the totalitarian myth.” 21 In fact, the goals of the centrally planned Soviet economic system were similar to the goals of Western market economies: growth, industrialization, and progress.22
State planning had been ubiquitous since the early twentieth century, because it allowed countries to concentrate their resources on certain centrally determined priorities.23 Not unlike many of their contemporaries in the rest of Europe, early Soviet leaders saw a deliberate planning process as the superior mechanism to avoid inefficiencies—in the economy as well as in industry.24 Lenin had envisioned a society “as if it were one giant enterprise, a single all-embracing factory or office.” 25 A factory, to be sure, that avoided the profit-oriented, capitalist production of commodities, and instead manufactured what was actually needed in an efficient, rational, “scientific” manner.26 Instead of trusting such abstract mechanisms as supply and demand, which were somehow embodied in “the market,” Soviet economic theorists envisioned that expert planners would monitor and adjust the system centrally: only concentrating control and authority in one center would guarantee the smooth functioning of the gigantic Soviet economy and avoid the “anarchy” of free markets. These ideas, of course, were deeply rooted in scientific rationality, but to work they had to materialize in the form of institutions and become embodied in economic and industrial practice.
Planning, then, was seen as the practical implementation of scientific rules that would ensure the rational development of society. The Communist Party would take the leading role in shepherding the country toward a truly socialist economy and an ideal polity, and it would do this in part by developing a functioning administrative and planning apparatus.27 Accordingly, the Communist Party determined not only what was to be produced, but how exactly this was to be accomplished.28 Ultimately, it was the Communist Party that would decide whether nuclear power had demonstrated its economic efficiency and could, by its success, justify and legitimize an ideology of centrally orchestrated, scientifically informed, planning.
The Soviet nuclear power industry would thus develop in the context of this “extraordinary institutional penetration of the party-state,” a uniquely Soviet feature and something that political scientist Valerie Bunce called “a fusion between politics and economics.” 29 The nuclear industry also reflected the way the Soviet government and the Party structure duplicated each other. Small pockets of nuclear expertise existed under both the governing Council of Ministers and the Communist Party's Central Committee, but no formal mechanism brought experts in these separate entities together. Personal ties facilitated some informal coordination, but otherwise collaboration simply did not occur.30 De jure, the highest executive organ was the Council of Ministers, which operated in parallel with the Central Committee. De facto, the supreme organ of government was the Politburo, a committee elected by the Central Committee.31 The Politburo's chair, known as the General Secretary, also headed the Central Committee. The Council of Ministers and the Central Committee issued decisions and ordinances about the location, kind, and schedule of any new power plant, and the Politburo ultimately approved those decisions.
Economic Bureaucracy
The number and responsibilities of Soviet ministries varied greatly over time. In chapter 2, I go into more detail about the ministries that governed nuclear power; here I briefly review how such units were organized and how they fit into the larger political scheme. Chief administrations (glavki) managed the departments that made up Soviet ministries. A board (kollegiia) that included the minister and several deputies met regularly and issued decrees coordinating plans and arranging logistics for the enterprises under its tutelage.32 A bundle of enterprises—factories, research institutes, design bureaus, universities, or power plants—belonged to the state, and one ministry controlled them all, at least in theory.33 In reality, and specifically in the case of large-scale technologies like nuclear power, several ministries collaborated. Enterprises, the units at the bottom of the economic hierarchy, worked with contractors who could be under the jurisdiction of another ministry.34
Creating plans for the national economy followed a complex schedule. First, the Party and the government set the economic tasks for the upcoming period, determined the approximate growth in industrial production, and made preliminary decisions on the geographic siting of industrial facilities.35 These directives then provided the basis for the various planning agencies (some responsible for annual plans, others for longer-term plans) to create more specific plans for the various branches of the national economy, including industry.36 According to an idealized timeline for plan submission, coordination, and implementation, the planning agencies informed the ministries what they were expected to produce over the next year (for example, what percentage of any given power plant was to be completed) and the funds and material each ministry could expect to receive.37 Individual ministries in turn passed the plans on to their affiliated regional enterprises, which used industry-specific analyses and predictions to modify the plans and resubmitted them to the ministries. Often, ministries and their enterprises applied for more inputs than they actually anticipated getting. They also stockpiled materials because they feared supply delays and workforce shortages.38 The ministries coordinated and compiled their enterprises’ requests and, in consultation with the planning agencies, crafted draft plans to be sent back to the government for approval.
Meanwhile, the central planning agency adjusted and amended the supply requirements from economic sectors and Soviet Socialist Republics according to the resources available Union-wide. The planners submitted a material supplies request to the Council of Ministers, which then informed the ministries and union republics of how it would allocate resources. The Council of Ministers, often in conjunction with the Central Committee, subsequently issued official decrees that confirmed the general plan for the country and also detailed tasks and deadlines for each ministry and each republic, sometimes introducing corrections on high-profile issues.39 Typically, individual ministers or another member of the Council of Ministers would oversee and report on how these decrees were implemented. In effect, the complexity of this coordinating system led to delays: sometimes enterprises did not receive their production plans until well into the year the plan supposedly covered. Even after the Council of Ministers had approved a plan, modification was often standard practice.40
Thus, despite the fact that central planners were formally in command, the functioning of the Soviet economic system depended on the information and the proposals that the ministries, enterprises, and other economic units provided and received. For example, the directors of individual nuclear power plants (and other enterprises) could, and did, influence centralized plans by actively negotiating with representatives of the respective ministries.41 In contrast to common ideas about “the country of the plan,” where allegedly nothing was left to chance, the ability to work with unanticipated changes was in fact crucial—and widespread at every level of the system. As Alec Nove put it, “Inspired improvisation often enabled rough calculations to be somewhere near correct; the many grievous errors were ‘cushioned’ by the existence of non-priority sectors which took the brunt of shortage; and, thirdly, some centrally-held stocks could be used in ad hoc rescue operations.” 42
Centralized Planning
The promoters of nuclear energy had to convince planners nuclear power was necessary and beneficial, and they had to get their proposals included in the country's long-term plans. Since 1921, the “State General Planning Commission,” usually referred to as Gosplan, had integrated output, supplies, and demand.43 Gosplan and other planning agencies played a crucial role in resource allocation and in determining priorities. Gosplan's exact range of responsibilities continued to change, but the commission kept its key position at the heart of the planning process and could usually count on government and Party support for its decisions.44 The Soviet style of government typically and consistently featured organizational rearrangements; in part, they reflected the government's attempts to help Gosplan facilitate cooperation among ministries as the economy grew and became more complex.45
Within Gosplan, nuclear power fell under the tutelage of Aleksei Pavlenko, head of the commission's Department of Energy and Electrification. This department prepared and coordinated plans for the hundreds of institutes, enterprises, and other organizations involved with the nuclear industry. Its plans included detailed production goals; during the construction period of a nuclear power plant, the plan determined (among many other things) the exact amount of money to be spent on various types of construction work (most prominently, the construction of industrial buildings and of apartment buildings in the satellite towns); the time frame, down to specific months, when work was supposed to be completed; the kind and amounts of construction materials and machinery, and which factories would deliver them.46 Later in the construction process, the plan established the month (or at the very least, the quarter of the year) in which the reactor would start up, and after that, exactly how much electricity it would produce, as well as the dates for maintenance and repair shutdowns and even for announced inspections.47
Nuclear Power in a Planned Economy
Persistent imbalances and glaring inefficiencies repeatedly prompted reforms in the economic system as a whole.48 Soviet leaders intended these reforms to optimize the country's administrative structures and accelerate socioeconomic transformation, while staying true to political ideals.49 Over the decades during which the nuclear power industry developed, these leaders experimented with segmenting planning tasks along sectors of the economy (e.g., the nuclear sector), along functional lines (e.g., separating or merging supply, investment, and accounting), or along a territorial principle (planning in regional units).50 Often, reforms aimed to perfect the planning process itself.51 In fact, socialist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were “addicted to change.” 52 As Valerie Bunce has argued, constant reforms, in combination with rapid economic growth, resulted in an unstable system and eventually undermined the very foundations of Soviet institutions.53 Even though the nuclear sector survived many sweeping reforms relatively unscathed, the ongoing changes did affect the supply industry that the nuclear sector relied on.
Khrushchev: Temporary Decentralization
Nikita Khrushchev, who won the battle to succeed Stalin, launched a set of economic and political reforms in 1956 and 1957, just a few years after the Obninsk reactor started up.54 In an effort to strengthen regional autonomy vis-à-vis the center, Khrushchev fundamentally altered the administration of the Soviet economy, and his first step was abolishing the all-Union ministries and transforming them into regional economic councils.55
Second, Khrushchev introduced a separation between industry and agriculture and assigned separate agricultural and industrial managers to every region, again to redistribute responsibilities between the center and the regions. Khrushchev also deprived enterprise directors of what he perceived as too much independence. Until World War II, these enterprise directors had to negotiate every decision with trade union representatives and local Party officials. Stalin abolished this “triangle” as too inefficient, and as a consequence, enterprise directors gained considerable influence, becoming “industrial czars.” Khrushchev decided to reverse that trend by prescribing mandatory agreements with trade unions and by reinstating Party control over directors.56
And finally, Khrushchev changed the role of the Communist Party by merging the responsibilities of the Party and the government. Previously, the Party had been a small elite of thinkers, generalists, and visionaries, distinct from the larger crowd of economic planners and managers. Khrushchev brought Party cadres closer to the actual management of the economy and simultaneously made access to Party membership easier. This led to an increase in Party membership numbers but to a decrease in individual Party leaders’ power.57 Mikhail Pervukhin, one of the managers of the Soviet nuclear weapons program, was among Khrushchev's most outspoken critics. He opposed Khrushchev's attempt to weaken the central ministries’ power, in part because he saw the centralized structure of industrial administration as the backbone of the Soviet nuclear sector. Khrushchev's reforms, in his view, put the nuclear industry at a disadvantage.58
In the late 1950s, Soviet planners realized that the scientists’ initial predictions of how quickly and cheaply nuclear power would become competitive with conventional power generation had been overly optimistic, and there is evidence that at least some planners subsequently became quite skeptical toward nuclear power. Although Kurchatov and Aleksandrov had, in 1955, successfully persuaded the authorities to approve the construction of nuclear power plants, authorities delayed construction and deferred financial allocations, and some skeptics questioned the technical feasibility as well as the projected profitability of nuclear power.59 Kurchatov decided to use his authority as a leading physicist, head of the Institute of Atomic Energy, and Party member to reach out to political decision makers to support civilian nuclear power. In 1957, together with his deputy, Aleksandrov, Kurchatov wrote a letter to Mikhail Pervukhin, then minister of Sredmash, and his first deputy, Efim Slavskii, asking for support to speed up the construction of the designated power reactors. In 1958, Kurchatov convened a meeting of Sredmash's Scientific and Technical Council at the Institute of Atomic Energy. Among the participants were representatives of the Council of Ministers; Iosif Kuzmin, the head of the State Planning Commission and deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers; Aleksei Pavlenko, then minister for power plants; and representatives of other relevant agencies. Though its conveners formally devoted the meeting to discussing the development of nuclear power, they clearly intended it to sell the idea of nuclear power to the country's top decision makers.
Kurchatov also lobbied for nuclear power by writing letters to local Party representatives, ministers, councils of the people's economy, and others; he invited Party representatives to his institute, explained what nuclear power could do, and asked for equipment to support further development. Often, these conversations ended with a cup of tea at Kurchatov's home. And yet, in 1958, the authorities cut back their ambitious plans for nuclear power development, and the plan for the year 1959 even lacked a list of equipment for the nuclear power plants then under construction at what came to be known as Beloiarsk and Novo-Voronezh. The revised plan also lacked deadlines for the delivery of turbines, steam generators, large-scale steel structures, and even stainless steel pipes.60
The seven-year plan that began in 1959 also reflected this cautious attitude: while planners had not completely abandoned the goal of developing a nuclear power industry, they curtailed what had initially been an ambitious program. During a visit to the United States in the summer of 1959, Deputy Premier Frol Kozlov remarked that “Soviet planners had been misled by their scientists on the economic aspects [of nuclear power].” 61 Costs for nuclear power plants were in fact ballooning.
In March 1959, Kurchatov wrote another letter to Kuzmin, the head of Gosplan, and urged him to secure supplies for the nuclear power plants: “The industrial nuclear power plants currently under construction in the Soviet Union are crucial for determining the most economical and reliable reactor types for future construction, for gaining operating experience with nuclear power plants, and for the preparation of operating personnel.” 62 Kuzmin instead proposed to the government a drastic reduction in nuclear power plant construction, including a complete halt to construction at the Novo-Voronezh plant. Kuzmin's proposal won approval, an unexpected blow to the nuclear physicists whose ideas Kuzmin had previously supported.63 Kurchatov was determined to block these plans; he and Aleksandrov again wrote letters to Party leaders and to Premier Kosygin promoting the continuation of the nuclear power program.
And yet Kuzmin's proposal could not have come as a complete surprise to Kurchatov and his fellow nuclear promoters: the nuclear industry suffered a chronic shortage of equipment and uranium supplies had been overestimated. Kurchatov agitated tirelessly for civilian nuclear power until his death in 1960, and his successors’ continued efforts eventually yielded results. In 1962, construction work resumed and the nuclear power program was restarted, albeit with an amended trajectory.64 Two reactors, at the Beloiarsk and Novo-Voronezh nuclear power plants, would start operating in 1964.
Once authorities restarted the nuclear power program, plans for the ensuing decades identified regions with scarce natural resources and high energy demands. The Russian and Ukrainian republics in particular were screened for suitable sites for nuclear power plants.65 Planners also considered requests from other regions, like Armenia and the Baltic republics.66
As it would for decades, the nuclear power industry struggled in the late 1950s and early 1960s with the supply and quality of essential equipment. In addition, troubles with repair and maintenance as well as with the workforce turned out to be permanent rather than passing problems. Ongoing reforms aimed to address these problems, but by preventing any kind of meaningful stabilization or continuity, in many cases they aggravated them instead. Like other big technologies, nuclear power drew on a number of ministries and their respective enterprises, either directly or through subcontractors (podriadchiki). A specialized support industry for nuclear power plants had yet to be created, and contractors often lacked the experience and skills to complete assignments to the high quality standards required in the nuclear industry. Faced with such problems, nuclear power plant managers were supposed to amend plans, which involved cumbersome paperwork; when they decided instead to speed up construction by tweaking the plan without prior authorization from the central authorities, they risked prosecution.67
For example, in 1962, a group of inspectors found problems at the construction site of the Novo-Voronezh plant, and they reported their findings to Kosygin, then first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers. The Kirov works in Leningrad had delivered defective circulation pumps to the site, and workers there had sent them back for repairs. Another factory significantly delayed delivery of the reactor vessel.68 The Beloiarsk nuclear power plant site reported similar issues. Kosygin requested a joint examination of the situation by Gosplan, the Ministry of the Construction of Power Plants, the State Committee for the Utilization of Atomic Energy, and Sredmash. He also sought measures to improve the situation at the Novo-Voronezh site. In February 1962, Gosplan reported to Kosygin that the Central Committee had already requested a similar investigation of the situation at the nuclear power plants under construction.69 Clearly, the Soviet government did not always act in a coordinated fashion, no matter how well Gosplan kept track of orders and problems and attempted to eliminate undesirable duplication.70
Post-Khrushchev: Return to Reforms-as-Usual
In October 1964, the Party reacted to the transformation of its cadres into administrative managers by ousting Khrushchev. It then almost immediately reversed his policies: the Party overturned the division between the agricultural and industrial sectors, reasserted its position as the elite ideological leadership, and once again clearly separated Party and government functions.71 While Khrushchev had taken on the roles of general secretary and chairman of the Council of Ministers simultaneously, the new Party leader, Leonid Brezhnev, and the new chairman, Aleksei Kosygin, now split these tasks.72 The Party reinstated ministries and stopped—even partly reversed—decentralization. New opportunities emerged for the fledgling nuclear sector, which relied heavily on a centralized support structure.
The following year, Kosygin implemented his own reforms, some of which profoundly affected the emerging nuclear power industry.73 Kosygin had served in high government positions under Stalin and Khrushchev—for example, as minister of finance, first deputy chairman of Gosekonomkomissiia, first deputy chairman and chairman of Gosplan, and deputy chairman and chairman of the Council of Ministers.74
Both contemporary economic theory and past failures in the Soviet planning system inspired his reforms.75 Many of Kosygin's changes marked a return to pre-Khrushchev principles, but he also retained some Krushchev-era reforms and introduced some entirely new features.76 For example, he retained the 1957 separation of the supply organization (Gossnab) from the production planning agency (Gosplan).77 Kosygin's reforms also marked a return to the industrial-sector principle, where each industrial sector was directly subordinated to a specific ministry.78 The reforms abolished the industrial State Committees—among them the State Committee for the Peaceful Utilization of Nuclear Energy, which was reintegrated into the Ministry of Medium Machine Building (Sredmash). The “State Industrial Committee for Power and Electrification” became a ministry again, the Ministry of Energy and Electrification (Minenergo).79 As I detail in the next chapter, rivalries and turf wars between these two ministries determined how the nuclear power industry would evolve. Both ministries were powerful. At the point when Kosygin was instituting his reforms, Sredmash had a monopoly on all things nuclear and it had great autonomy thanks to the national security relevance of much of its work. But in the grand scheme of Soviet economics, Minenergo was a giant with wide-ranging authority and long-standing support from political leaders who believed that electricity was the country's backbone. It was Minenergo's “steamroller” mentality (and minister) that would expand the nuclear industry rapidly.
Minenergo's long-standing minister, Petr Neporozhnii, was a talented hydropower engineer, loyal Party member, and industrial manager who was close to Kosygin and would become an ardent supporter of nuclear power. His opposite number, Efim Slavskii, minister of Sredmash, also had considerable clout, having been highly decorated during the atomic bomb project.80 The shifting balance of power between the two ministries ultimately affected who would control—and who would ensure the safety of—the use of nuclear energy for both military and peaceful ends.
The tangible consequences of these reforms varied. At the very least, they seem to have provided opportunities for the redistribution of responsibilities: when ministries changed their name and scope of responsibilities, the individual factories and institutes associated with the previous ministry were not always automatically transferred to the new organization.81 For example, when Minenergo regained ministry status, Neporozhnii immediately began to compile a list of enterprises, factories, and colleges that he argued should be subsumed under this new ministry, “in connection with the reorganization of the industry's management.” 82
Neporozhnii pursued an aggressive and remarkably successful strategy of negotiating with Gosplan for more money—a strategy that also benefited the struggling nuclear power industry.83 In 1964, for example, he requested authorization to use flexible schemes for reimbursing contractors and autonomy in amending not just monthly plans, but three-month plans.84 The Central Committee and Gosplan granted his request, which fundamentally altered the handling of the huge capital investments necessary in the nuclear industry.85 Neporozhnii could now pay contractors after they completed intermediate goals, rather than withholding payment until the completion of one massive contract. This, in turn, enabled contractors to operate more efficiently, and thus quietly revolutionized nuclear power plant construction.
In February 1966, Neporozhnii wrote directly to Kosygin to suggest streamlining the planning and construction of power plants by uniting the management of tasks and investments under his ministry, essentially bypassing considerable state bureaucracy.86 Neporozhnii also requested the flexible disposal of funds allocated specifically for industrial construction and for the construction of housing and communal infrastructure. He probably calculated that once Gosplan granted him the authority to allocate these funds, this decision could not easily be reversed. He attached draft decrees and even suggested deadlines for the decisions. On March 28, 1966, Gosplan responded positively to this request.87 The fact that Neporozhnii's strategy worked illustrates not only how he used his extraordinary talent as an industrial manager to his sector's advantage, but also that the Soviet economic system had highly idiosyncratic and remarkably flexible aspects.
Still, only a year later, Neporozhnii complained to the Council of Ministers about the way Gosplan was handling investment funds earmarked for developing the power industry, including nuclear power, in 1968–1970.88 He argued that Gosplan undervalued the development of the industry and persistently failed to allot capital investments that the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers had already approved. In the meantime, costs had increased, and further funding was needed to build new power lines that would help distribute the newly introduced power capacities.89 He claimed that investments were insufficient to start the construction of the new power plants scheduled to be completed within the current five-year plan. In addition, Gosplan had decided to cut back on the construction of hydropower plants—a big mistake in Neporozhnii's eyes, since these plants were crucial for covering peaks in electricity demand.
Meanwhile, poor-quality parts also contributed to the continual delays in nuclear plant construction.90 Pervukhin and Pavlenko from Gosplan's Department of Energy and Electrification took stock of work on the second reactor unit at the Novo-Voronezh site in a letter dated November 22, 1968. According to their assessment, just as had been the case in 1962, the start-up was behind schedule because of problems with the Kirov works in Leningrad. The Council of Ministers had approved the purchase of eight main circulation pumps on December 27, 1966, but the factory had not delivered all of them. Worse yet, the pump they had manufactured according to blueprints provided by Sredmash's central engineering bureau failed after just two days on the test stand. To save time, factory workers decided to patch up the new, already-mounted parts with older ones. Gosplan considered this unacceptable and urged leaders from the ministries involved to exert pressure on their enterprises to enforce extremely tight deadlines. Gosplan also enrolled additional factories and arranged for the surrounding electricity network to compensate for the lack of the planned, and therefore expected, productive capacities.91 Clearly, nuclear energy had become a considerable factor in the national energy supply system by the late 1960s, and the failure to bring new reactors online as planned resulted in a need to rearrange available resources and allocate funds for additional energy costs.
Administrators continued to defer the deadlines for the completion of new nuclear power plants. In May 1969, minister Neporozhnii requested an extension for starting construction work on the Armenian and Chernobyl plants.92 To accommodate this request, the Council of Ministers ordered the Construction Bank of the Soviet Union to finance these plants independently of the originally planned schedules.93 Pushed to their limits, nuclear power managers sometimes even requested supplies imported from Western countries, arguing that Soviet industry could simply not keep up with demand. Although Soviet industry de facto bought and borrowed Western technologies on a regular basis, Soviet leaders criticized Western technologies on an ideological level.94 The import option was therefore politically tricky, especially given the prestige and pride associated with the Soviet nuclear program. Suggestions to cooperate with allied countries within the framework of the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) were more acceptable, but the CMEA countries’ nuclear industries were at the time even less developed than the Soviet industry was.95 In 1969, too, Neporozhnii began to advocate for nuclear plants with increased power output (800 MW and more), arguing that this would improve their economic efficiency.96 He called for the creation of additional facilities with 12,000 MW capacities by 1976—that is, over the next seven years. He made the case for this ambitious program by comparing it with programs in the United States, Great Britain, and West Germany, implying that the USSR needed to catch up to these countries.97
Kosygin's administrative reforms were later revoked, but the period when he was at the zenith of his power as chairman of the Council of Ministers (1964–1980) was a crucial time in the formation of the nuclear power industry. His organizational reforms, especially the reestablishment and empowerment of Minenergo and the continued separation of planning and supply agencies, may have supported the economic arguments in favor of the RBMK. This was the new 1000 MW reactor introduced in the late 1960s, which came online in the mid-1970s and was used at Chernobyl and other plants. In addition to the previously adopted plans for the ambitious expansion of nuclear-generated electricity, Kosygin's emphasis on economic accountability and profitability helped both nuclear reactor designers in Sredmash and nuclear industry promoters in Minenergo justify the construction of the huge new RBMK rather than incrementally improving and scaling up existing designs.
A Shift in Justification: Decoupling Economics from Ideology
The start-up of the Beloiarsk and Novo-Voronezh reactors in 1964 proved the technical feasibility of industrial-scale nuclear power plants. It took until the early 1970s, however, when the first VVER-440 units started up at Novo-Voronezh, to substantiate the claim that nuclear power plants could compete economically with traditional power plants, and that nuclear plants could therefore be considered a legitimate part of the country's electricity system.
The period from 1966 to 1970 (the period covered by the eighth five-year plan) marked a turning point at which planners began to consider nuclear power seriously as an energy source (figure 1.1). This plan envisioned nuclear power plants producing a total of 3.5 million kW, and, with Neporozhnii's strong support, planners projected a steep rise thereafter (over 6 million kW in the ninth five-year plan, and over 12 million kW in the tenth).98 In 1971 they planned on 26.8 million kW for the period 1971–1980, and in 1980 on 66.9 million kW for 1981–1990 and 100 million kW until 1993. In other words, in the period from 1956 to 1990, power generation at nuclear power plants would increase from zero to roughly 70 million kW (70,000 MW).99
Figure 1.1 Map of Soviet Nuclear Power Plants. Nuclear power plants were sited according to a set of criteria that included proximity to a metropolitan area with high energy demand, great distance from fossil fuel resources, a significant reservoir of water for cooling, existing infrastructure (roads, transmission lines, etc.), and the availability of large contingents of construction workers. The map indicates the location and type of reactors installed at the nuclear power plants in the territory of the former Soviet Union (RBMK, VVER, others). Graphic design by Dane Webster.
Once the nuclear power industry had won a stable place within the country's long-term plan in the early 1970s and economic considerations had moved to center stage, new plants began coming online at an increasing pace. The successful start-up of the RBMK reactor in the mid-1970s renewed the optimism of both nuclear scientists and political decision makers regarding the potential of nuclear power and allowed a huge capacity to be added in a very short time. Under the banner of increasing nuclear power's economic efficiency, the industry scaled up nuclear reactors and streamlined the construction process. Increasingly, industry managers, and in particular minister Neporozhnii, aggressively pushed the construction of new nuclear power plants and presented planners with faits accomplis. Whenever a plant was under construction, Minenergo simultaneously contracted to build living quarters for the permanent workers at that particular plant. These living quarters included apartment buildings, healthcare facilities, and other basic social and cultural amenities. According to Viktor Riabko, head of one of the largest construction associations at the time (Soiuzenergozhilstroi), it had become “fashionable” in the 1980s to set up construction factories as well as the town for power plant employees itself in the immediate vicinity of a nuclear plant, within the required occupational health and safety zone. This was considered convenient, since it saved time for commuting workers and cut the cost for power and other communication lines.100
In the 1970s and 1980s, Neporozhnii persistently supported the idea of a production-line-like system of constructing nuclear power plants (potochnoe stroitel'stvo). He envisioned mobile teams of highly skilled workers serving at one nuclear power plant construction site after another; they would constitute the backbone of an extremely ambitious development plan for the nuclear power industry.101 He also made the strategic decision to construct multiple reactors simultaneously. Almost all Soviet nuclear power plants would contain several reactors, and Neporozhnii saw the advantages of starting the construction of additional reactors before the first one was completed: given the chronic production bottlenecks, delays, and changes in plans, this parallel construction process offered latitude that a strictly consecutive construction process would not have allowed.102
As he continued to promote nuclear power, Neporozhnii justified his repeated requests for additional capital investments by pointing to the need to increase power capacity due to rising electricity demands.103 He explicitly compared the new nuclear reactors with fossil fuel plants and concluded that their investment costs were approximately the same, while the electricity produced at nuclear plants was actually cheaper than that produced at conventional plants. Nuclear power plants, he argued, promised to free up laborers previously engaged in the mining and transportation industry.104 According to Neporozhnii, farming out the manufacturing of equipment for the nuclear power industry to a variety of nonspecialized factories and experimental production facilities was problematic because their output was often lacking in quality. Sredmash had guaranteed it would supply nuclear power plants with nuclear fuel, so he needed the financial means to support the expansion of the supply industry for these plants.105
At Gosplan, the staff of the Department of Energy and Electrification responded that Neporozhnii's suggestions were not new; on the contrary, his plan actually lagged behind what the Council of Ministers’ Presidium had already agreed on in August 1969. They stressed that Minenergo and Gosplan needed to determine jointly how much advance financing future nuclear power plants would require. They also argued that Minenergo was responsible for choosing sites for new nuclear power plants in the central regions, Ukraine, and the northwestern territory of the country, where energy demands were highest and coal, oil, or gas insufficient and expensive. Minenergo also needed to choose the type and capacity for each new nuclear power plant, in cooperation with “interested ministries.” 106
Neporozhnii's conflict with Gosplan escalated in 1971, when the agency's deputy chairman, Vasilii Isaev, fiercely rejected Neporozhnii's latest funding request, this time for additional workers’ pay and housing, to meet the intended plan goals.107 Isaev wrote, referring to the minister's discretionary funds: “It is unacceptable that every year, the funds allocated to Minenergo specifically for nonindustrial construction work turn out to be insufficient specifically for nuclear power plants.” 108 Undeterred, Neporozhnii continued his quest and approached the deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers, Veniamin Dymshits, directly. Neporozhnii justified his financial requests by citing the unique needs of nuclear power plants, including a very large number of workers, who needed housing, which in turn required construction workers.109 The Council of Ministers forwarded this proposal to Gosplan, whose agents agreed to meet Neporozhnii's request, with the explanation that “in February 1972, Minenergo had decided to reduce the estimated cost of [a number of] nuclear power plants.” Also, the requested amount was smaller than that estimated reduction.110
In 1973, Pavlenko of Gosplan's Department of Energy and Electrification reported that the plans for nuclear power plants for the years 1974–1980 had been overly ambitious. He pointed out problems with the supply of specialized materials and equipment and mentioned that construction work at nuclear power plant sites was falling behind schedule. He argued that not even importing equipment for the nuclear power industry could remedy this situation fully. His letter ended with no recommendation, but with a telling comparison: power plants running on natural gas were cheaper, in terms of both capital investment and annual investments.111
In response, Gosplan's leadership appointed an expert commission, consisting of economists and engineers, to conduct an authoritative assessment of whether gas or nuclear power plants were likely to be more profitable in the European part of the Soviet Union.112 The commission confirmed Pavlenko's original assessment and concluded that until 1980, natural gas power plants would have 20 to 25 percent better economic indicators than nuclear power plants. Additional start-ups of nuclear power plants until 1980 were unrealistic due to significant delays in construction work and problems with the supply of specialized equipment.113 The Volgodonsk reactor vessel plant (Atommash), which would relieve the Izhora works by mass-producing reactor pressure vessels, was already behind schedule, and the anticipated production period for a reactor vessel there was 2.5 years.114 The experts expressed optimism, however, that after 1980, “technical progress in the development of the nuclear power industry” would make nuclear power plants competitive with gas power plants. The expert commission also concluded that in order to boost the gas industry, natural gas might be exported to capitalist countries, if the profit would be directed to developing the national gas industry, and to importing equipment the Soviet Union lacked.115
In 1974, the State Committee for Science and Technology (GKNT), Gosplan, and Minenergo discussed the optimal capacity of future power plants and that of the overall power engineering industry.116 They reported to the Council of Ministers that by late 1974, the first RBMK-1000 at the Leningrad site had reached its intended output level of 1000 MW and compared this to the general trend of scaling up the power output of industrial plants. Their report anticipated reactors (both pressurized water and graphite-water) with 2000 MW output after 1980. But the experts recommended that for the European part of the Soviet Union, standardized 800 MW reactors, grouped in ensembles of six (for a combined output of 4800 MW), would be the ideal size.117
A year later, in 1975, a similar group (GKNT, Gosplan, and several ministries) wrote a seventeen-page report on the development of the power industry for the Council of Ministers to discuss at their next session.118 In contrast to earlier strategic plans, nuclear power had now become an important player in the country's energy mix. The current five-year plan foresaw 59,000 MW in power generation, with nuclear power plants providing almost 9 percent of this new capacity. In 1971–1975, the VVER-440 was the most common new reactor, but in 1976–1980, planners projected a shift toward the more powerful “tysiachniki,” 1000 MW reactors (both VVER and RBMK), followed by the launch of the RBMK-1500 and an improved version of the VVER-1000 in 1981–1985.119 The rationale for this continuous scaling up was, not surprisingly, economies of scale, which would allow decreased capital investments in construction work, labor costs, and fuel prices, as well as reductions of up to 50 percent in operating personnel.120 The report further identified transmission lines and automated operating systems as major fields of activity within the power engineering industry.
By the late 1960s, the change in how proponents justified nuclear energy was complete. The industry's fundamentally altered institutional status allowed a rhetoric of economic efficiency to dominate arguments over nuclear energy's role in the country's development.
Conclusion
By the early 1980s, nuclear power had overcome its initial setbacks. Its proponents had convinced Soviet strategic planners it was the way to produce the electricity that economic progress required.121 Promoters had successfully integrated into Soviet iconography visions about how nuclear power would help achieve the bright communist future.122 Perhaps surprisingly, the rhetoric of economic efficiency had more success than earlier efforts to portray nuclear power as a driving force facilitating technical and societal progress.
In the long run, the key to the industry's advancement was its integration into the bureaucratic prose of long-term state plans. This is not to say that nuclear power lost its propagandistic value; in fact, in the former Soviet Union, it remains to this day one of the most widely promoted forms of energy production. Even after official plans were written and approved, proponents had to continue to argue that nuclear power plants were both necessary and feasible; after all, plans could be changed. But as the Soviet nuclear industry matured, the significance of the ideological rhetoric diminished, while economic and technical criteria moved to the forefront of decision makers’ agendas.123
Although promoters of nuclear energy argued early on for the scientific merit of a variety of different reactors (a topic I discuss in detail in chapter 4), they increasingly bolstered their political and economic arguments by stressing the international context and the country's future energy needs. Scaling up power capacities would meet the system's hunger for growth and progress, they argued, and the nuclear sector could contribute a rapidly increasing share of the country's energy mix.
By starting construction work at multiple sites at once, minister Neporozhnii did everything in his power to prevent plans for new nuclear power plants from being curtailed. Despite continuing supply problems, the successful start-up of the new RBMK power reactor in the mid-1970s renewed the optimism of both nuclear scientists and political decision makers regarding nuclear power's potential. Faith in scientific and technological progress was strong, and nuclear power had become both ideologically convincing and technically feasible. It also promised to be economically profitable, especially in the European part of the Soviet Union.
The state played a crucial role in nuclear power programs all over the world, and the Soviet Union was no exception. The nuclear industry could not have expanded so rapidly if Soviet decision makers had not made massive investments and long-term commitments.124 Only the full incorporation of the civilian nuclear industry into the economic planning process allowed industry managers to justify nuclear power in terms of rational development and economic efficiency.125 Once they had done so, the high-level commitment to peaceful uses of nuclear energy refashioned both economic planning and ideology in the Soviet state.