22 Stefan Guth
Adopting recent coproduction theorems, this chapter analyzes Shevchenko
as an envirotechnical system 5 – a hybrid space where technology and ecology
were purposefully reblended in historically specific ways, the study of which
provides insights into the particular “sightedness and blindness” 6 guiding
Soviet nuclear technopolitics at the apex of atomic-powered communism. 7
Tracing later developments reveals a learning process in which the authors of
the nuclear technopolis came to acknowledge not only the graveness of technology’s unintended detrimental effects on the environment, but also the latter’s
unforeseen potential to interfere with technology in beyond-design-basis
events such as earthquakes and rising sea levels of the Caspian Sea, thereby
posing the danger of large-scale envirotechnical accidents. Finally, the chapter
looks at how, in the new millennium, an ambitious, multibillion city expansion
project predicated on the construction of a contemporary nuclear power plant
(NPP) revealed the multiple problems of mapping a new atomic-powered
future onto the unresolved legacy of a nuclear past.
Improving – and Exploiting – Nature
The decision-making process which led to the creation of Shevchenko was
both more involved and more mundane than the later, streamlined narrative
of single-minded nature improvement would have had it. Initially, military
considerations took precedence over the requirements of atomic-powered
communism. It was the discovery of large uranium deposits in Mangyshlak,
resulting from an all-union prospecting effort carried out in 1954–1956 under
the impression of a critical dearth of fissile material for the atomic bomb project, which brought the remote region into the focus of Soviet industrial and
infrastructural development for the first time. 8 In 1959, a joint resolution by
the CPSU Central Committee and the Council of Ministers commissioned
the nuclear ministry (Minsredmash) to build a uranium mining and processing
combine based on the Mangyshlak deposits, which later came to be known
as the Caspian Metallurgical Mining Combine (Prikaspiiskii gorno-metallurgicheskii kombinat – PGMK). 9 Likewise, the future showpiece of Shevchenko’s
nuclear complex, the BN-350 FBR, was initially designed and commissioned
as a breeder of weapon-grade plutonium in 1960, and the subsequent decision
to site it on the peninsula owed much to the intention to isolate the unproven
technology in a remote region where it would do limited harm in the case
of malfunction. 10
Nonetheless, as the nuclear arms race geared up to reveal the absurdity of
nuclear war through the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, peaceful applications
of atomic energy assumed an ever increasing importance in both of the two
superpowers’ efforts to prove that they, rather than their competitor, “represented the last, best hope for the rescue of a rational, transcending modernity
from the horrors of war.” 11 Less than a decade after the nuclear bombings
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1953 Atoms for Peace
initiative offered the Soviet Union a perfect opportunity to juxtapose the
Adopting recent coproduction theorems, this chapter analyzes Shevchenko
as an envirotechnical system 5 – a hybrid space where technology and ecology
were purposefully reblended in historically specific ways, the study of which
provides insights into the particular “sightedness and blindness” 6 guiding
Soviet nuclear technopolitics at the apex of atomic-powered communism. 7
Tracing later developments reveals a learning process in which the authors of
the nuclear technopolis came to acknowledge not only the graveness of technology’s unintended detrimental effects on the environment, but also the latter’s
unforeseen potential to interfere with technology in beyond-design-basis
events such as earthquakes and rising sea levels of the Caspian Sea, thereby
posing the danger of large-scale envirotechnical accidents. Finally, the chapter
looks at how, in the new millennium, an ambitious, multibillion city expansion
project predicated on the construction of a contemporary nuclear power plant
(NPP) revealed the multiple problems of mapping a new atomic-powered
future onto the unresolved legacy of a nuclear past.
Improving – and Exploiting – Nature
The decision-making process which led to the creation of Shevchenko was
both more involved and more mundane than the later, streamlined narrative
of single-minded nature improvement would have had it. Initially, military
considerations took precedence over the requirements of atomic-powered
communism. It was the discovery of large uranium deposits in Mangyshlak,
resulting from an all-union prospecting effort carried out in 1954–1956 under
the impression of a critical dearth of fissile material for the atomic bomb project, which brought the remote region into the focus of Soviet industrial and
infrastructural development for the first time. 8 In 1959, a joint resolution by
the CPSU Central Committee and the Council of Ministers commissioned
the nuclear ministry (Minsredmash) to build a uranium mining and processing
combine based on the Mangyshlak deposits, which later came to be known
as the Caspian Metallurgical Mining Combine (Prikaspiiskii gorno-metallurgicheskii kombinat – PGMK). 9 Likewise, the future showpiece of Shevchenko’s
nuclear complex, the BN-350 FBR, was initially designed and commissioned
as a breeder of weapon-grade plutonium in 1960, and the subsequent decision
to site it on the peninsula owed much to the intention to isolate the unproven
technology in a remote region where it would do limited harm in the case
of malfunction. 10
Nonetheless, as the nuclear arms race geared up to reveal the absurdity of
nuclear war through the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, peaceful applications
of atomic energy assumed an ever increasing importance in both of the two
superpowers’ efforts to prove that they, rather than their competitor, “represented the last, best hope for the rescue of a rational, transcending modernity
from the horrors of war.” 11 Less than a decade after the nuclear bombings
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1953 Atoms for Peace
initiative offered the Soviet Union a perfect opportunity to juxtapose the