Title: Plutopia
Description: In Plutopia, Brown draws on official records and dozens of interviews to tell the stories of Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia-the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium. To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias--communities of nuclear families living in highly-subsidized, limited-access atomic cities. Brown shows that the plants' segregation of permanent and temporary workers and of nuclear and non-nuclear zones created a bubble of immunity, where dumps and accidents were glossed over and plant managers freely embezzled and polluted. In four decades, the Hanford plant near Richland and the Maiak plant near Ozersk each issued at least 200 million curies of radioactive isotopes into the surrounding environment--equaling four Chernobyls--laying waste to hundreds of square miles and contaminating rivers, fields, forests, and food supplies. Because of the decades of secrecy, downwind and downriver neighbors of the plutonium plants had difficulty proving what they suspected, that the rash of illnesses, cancers, and birth defects in their communities were caused by the plants' radioactive emissions. Plutopia was successful because in its zoned-off isolation it appeared to deliver the promises of the American dream and Soviet communism; in reality, it concealed disasters that remain highly unstable and threatening today. --from publisher description
Subjects: Case studies, Government policy, Working class families, Industrial safety, Accidents, Plutonium industry, History, Family, russia (federation), Family, united states, Russia (federation), history, Washington (state), history, Nonferrous metal industries, Plutonium, Adverse effects, Radioactive Pollutants, Radiation Effects, Nuclear Family, History, 20th Century, History, 21st Century, Plutoniumverarbeitung, Reaktorunfall, Framställning, tillverkning, Sociala aspekter, Kärnkraftsolyckor, Historia, Richland (Wash.), Ozërsk (Cheli︠a︡binskai︠a︡ oblastʹ, Russia), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (U.S.), PO "Mai︠a︡k.", Kombinat "Mai︠a︡k" (Russia), Federalʹnoe gosudarstvennoe unitarnoe predprii︠a︡tie "Proizvodstvennoe obʺedinenie "Mai︠a︡k"" (Russia), Hanford Works, Hanford Laboratories, Pacific Northwest Laboratory, Social aspects