Fallout Memory Trajectories at Semipalatinsk 211
of clinicians. The memory work of Cold War risk assessment focused on
deriving accurate relative risk estimates attributable to radiation alone. This
contributed to a culture of research shaped by US scientific programs on the
atomic bomb survivors in Japan. Here, researchers first and foremost looked
at radiation as an isolated factor with different radiation qualities in order to
contribute data to mathematical models. It assumed regularities (with threshold, no threshold, or linear shapes of the dose-effect curve) that would be
described by purified mathematical functions, once proper study populations
and databases were established. This idea of establishing and documenting
damage by means of population studies of different exposure conditions
would result in a purified data set, catering to the improvement of universalized risk estimates and dose-response curves.
Coda
This chapter has followed selected trajectories of how Soviet nuclear legacies have been assessed and reassembled, especially concerning long-term,
transgenerational effects of fallout exposure. At Semipalatinsk, risk assessment sciences have been an integral part in memory practices and the
ongoing post-Soviet reassembling of the past in order to envision futures
for the new state. Focusing on scientific modes of documenting radiation
effects shows the ongoing scaling and calibrating of risk assessment: there
are transgenerational-individual, chromosomal-molecular as well as populational-aggregate scales and versions of risk research, each assembling
different strands, disciplines, measurement devices, and scientists. Whether
public science, open science, or secret science, scientific memory practices
do ordering work, while brought to align with nation building or globalized regulatory regimes.
Different memory practices, material objects, scientific disciplines, and
methods traditions participate in biomedical assessments of radiation effects
at various scales: the transgenerational scale is tied to reproductive medicine, the chromosomal scale to microscopes, chemicals, and technical skills
of visualizing invisible damage, and the population level to administrative
procedures in vital statistics offices and bureaucratic data labor. There are
somatic and genetic memory mechanisms at molecular levels, transgenerational effects as well as the documentation effects visible in epidemiological
data at the aggregate level. All these constitute memory configurations as
they were transformed in a long and gradual process of institutional change
after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. One of those was the transformation of the Semipalatinsk polygon from a Soviet weapons test site into
Kazakhstan’s National Nuclear Center, now overseeing radiation protection
as well as herding and mining activities on and near the site.
Closing the test site and promoting a Central Asian Nuclear-Weapons Free
Zone were part of this nation-building process, which enabled a recognition
of the suffering due to weapons tests and fallout affecting the people living
of clinicians. The memory work of Cold War risk assessment focused on
deriving accurate relative risk estimates attributable to radiation alone. This
contributed to a culture of research shaped by US scientific programs on the
atomic bomb survivors in Japan. Here, researchers first and foremost looked
at radiation as an isolated factor with different radiation qualities in order to
contribute data to mathematical models. It assumed regularities (with threshold, no threshold, or linear shapes of the dose-effect curve) that would be
described by purified mathematical functions, once proper study populations
and databases were established. This idea of establishing and documenting
damage by means of population studies of different exposure conditions
would result in a purified data set, catering to the improvement of universalized risk estimates and dose-response curves.
Coda
This chapter has followed selected trajectories of how Soviet nuclear legacies have been assessed and reassembled, especially concerning long-term,
transgenerational effects of fallout exposure. At Semipalatinsk, risk assessment sciences have been an integral part in memory practices and the
ongoing post-Soviet reassembling of the past in order to envision futures
for the new state. Focusing on scientific modes of documenting radiation
effects shows the ongoing scaling and calibrating of risk assessment: there
are transgenerational-individual, chromosomal-molecular as well as populational-aggregate scales and versions of risk research, each assembling
different strands, disciplines, measurement devices, and scientists. Whether
public science, open science, or secret science, scientific memory practices
do ordering work, while brought to align with nation building or globalized regulatory regimes.
Different memory practices, material objects, scientific disciplines, and
methods traditions participate in biomedical assessments of radiation effects
at various scales: the transgenerational scale is tied to reproductive medicine, the chromosomal scale to microscopes, chemicals, and technical skills
of visualizing invisible damage, and the population level to administrative
procedures in vital statistics offices and bureaucratic data labor. There are
somatic and genetic memory mechanisms at molecular levels, transgenerational effects as well as the documentation effects visible in epidemiological
data at the aggregate level. All these constitute memory configurations as
they were transformed in a long and gradual process of institutional change
after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. One of those was the transformation of the Semipalatinsk polygon from a Soviet weapons test site into
Kazakhstan’s National Nuclear Center, now overseeing radiation protection
as well as herding and mining activities on and near the site.
Closing the test site and promoting a Central Asian Nuclear-Weapons Free
Zone were part of this nation-building process, which enabled a recognition
of the suffering due to weapons tests and fallout affecting the people living