The time-bombs of Tomsk

摘要

From the bluff overlooking the Tom river, where Tomsk's war memorial commemorates 60,000 dead, you can see the chimneys of Seversk smoking in the distance. This nuclear complex in western Siberia—perhaps the largest on earth and also one of the oldest—encapsulates within its wire perimeter fence all the intractable problems created by Russia's long love affair with nuclear power. The idea, back in the 1950s, was to harness the power of the atom to the service of communism. Nuclear reactors promised abundant and cheap energy; nuclear weaponry was the core-component of the Soviet Union's rivalry with the United States. If big was good, bigger was glorious. Fast-breeder reactors were to provide a never-ending stream of cheap pluto-nium, useful for both weapons and power. But big science ran amok. Russia's engineers built their reactors fast, vast and with scant regard for safety, and sometimes barely trained the people who ran them.