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ogging about the unthinkable blogging about the unthinkable i m against ignorance i m against sloppy emotional thinking i m against fashionable thinking i am against the whole cliché of the moment herman kahn monday june 18 2012 my article on soviet civil defense in the journal of cold war studies the journal of cold war studies has published my article on civil defense bomb shelters in the soviet union during the early cold war here s the abstract was there a real mineshaft gap bomb shelters in the ussr 1945 1962 during the cold war the nature intent and scale of soviet civil defense were the subject of heated debate in the west some analysts claimed that the ussr possessed a massive civil defense program capable of seriously destabilizing the strategic nuclear balance this article draws on previously unexamined archival sources to investigate soviet shelter construction from 1953 when the ussr s civil defense forces began planning for nuclear war until the cuban missile crisis in october 1962 these documents indicate that shelter construction consumed the majority of soviet civil defense funding and was conducted by order of the council of ministers although the shelters were inadequate both technologically and quantitatively to protect the soviet population from an all out u s thermonuclear attack they existed in significant numbers and represented a considerable expenditure of limited soviet resources these new revelations provide important insights into soviet thinking about nuclear war during the khrushchev era posted by sovietologist at 1 37 pm 1 comment friday may 04 2012 impact factor i know that it s been quite awhile since i last posted it s not because i ve given up my nuclear studies but rather because i ve been preoccupied writing my dissertation and several articles as is seemingly the case with everyone in academia these days i m always striving for a higher impact factor which i need in order to build up my cv for when i start applying for jobs my first article came out a few months ago and i have two more appearing later this year including my piece on the history of the soviet civil defense bomb shelter program which will be featured in the journal of cold war studies later this summer i know that i had some readers who were hoping for some chernobyl goodies and may have wondered why i never posted any more about my research findings from my time in ukraine last year the reason is that i ve been composing a scholarly article on the topic which i ve now submitted for peer review my findings challenge some longstanding beliefs about the chernobyl accident so i m hoping the piece will be an attention getter in other news in july i m going to kazakhstan to tour the old soviet nuclear testing site at semipalatinsk and if i m really lucky the decommissioned bn 350 sodium cooled fast reactor desalination plant posted by sovietologist at 8 52 pm 1 comment friday may 27 2011 kiev yet again i must apologize for neglecting this blog i ve been quite preoccupied with my research i finished up my time in washington a few weeks ago and have now moved to kiev for the summer to study in the archives here i ve tracked down some very interesting documents about chernobyl that i will be using as part of my dissertation i really wish i could photograph these things and post them on the blog but unfortunately the archive they are in doesn t allow photography for instance the include reports made for the communist party about the radiation level in kiev and other ukrainian cities after the accident i ve also been hesitant to comment on the still developing situation in japan in large measure because detailed accurate information seems so hard to come by until the accident sequence is nailed down trying to draw concrete lessons from the events there will be a fool s game at the moment tepco is claiming that the earthquake was not the cause of the failures at fukushima daiichi units 1 3 and that the tsunami alone resulted in the deplorable outcome there this is hotly contested by some however who claim that the emergency core cooling system in unit 1 failed prior to the tsunami even if this were the case the availability of auxiliary power in the absence of the tsunami would presumably have allowed the operation of the standby gas treatment system and prevented the hydrogen explosion as well as captured most of the volatile radioisotopes so the end result would probably have been far less dire the great mystery to me is what happened in unit 4 which experienced damage to the refueling floor blow out panels back in march it appeared that somehow the water level in the spent fuel storage pool in unit 4 had grown so low as to expose the fuel resulting in the zirconium steam reaction and the creation of large amounts of hydrogen but tepco images of the unit 4 pool show that the fuel is basically intact it s supposedly implausible that radiolytic alone hydrogen production could have had the observed result one possibility is that hydrogen from unit 3 which apparently shared a ventilation stack with unit 4 backed up into unit 4 presumably what actually happened will become clear as efforts to stabilize the plants continue in july i m planning on a return trip to chernobyl which should hopefully include some sites i missed out on last time i m also trying to arrange a visit to an operating vver plant here in ukraine but no definite word on that yet hopefully i ll have interesting things to say about it posted by sovietologist at 6 09 am no comments saturday march 12 2011 fukushima daiichi learning from chernobyl i must apologize for my long respite from blogging i ve felt compelled to concentrate on my dissertation and several academic articles i ve been working on this effort has produced results my article about soviet civil defense has been accepted for publication and i was interviewed for a tv documentary as one might imagine however today i was distracted by the events in japan my dissertation research is about nuclear disaster i actually do basically sit around all day long reading about it thinking about it and writing about it i have dreams about it so of course recent events have distracted me from getting my work done first and foremost we should keep in mind the enormous human tragedy that has occurred due to this earthquake the death toll keeps rising and i m sure there will be no definitive estimate anytime soon but in the american media at least concerns about the nuclear plant problems have completely overshadowed the immense suffering millions of japanese are facing right now this is a national embarrassment at the same time i must admit i m absolutely guilty of it myself commentators began making comparisons to chernobyl even before there was any real indication of problems at the plants in japan such comparisons have grown increasingly common as the past two days have progressed usually however the focus is on the plants themselves and potential of actual radiation releases and not on the emergency response to the reactor problems on this score i believe that the japanese deserve our praise clearly they have learned the lessons of chernobyl and are applying them in practice by taking the steps of evacuating the region around the damaged plants and distributing potassium iodine tablets the authorities have likely avoided the most dire human effects of any possible radiation release although i cannot find any sources at the moment stating if the evacuation effort is yet complete once all residents have left the area the human effects of even a very large radiation release should be reduced to negligible levels this is in contrast to chernobyl where authorities chose to pretend the situation was not serious and left the residents of pripiat in place well after the explosion similarly the japanese government has decided to assume the worst in managing the stricken reactors at fukushima daiichi as of this moment chief cabinet secretary yukio edano has stated that even though it has not been confirmed officials are presuming partial meltdowns at fukushima daiichi units 1 and 3 in the case of unit 1 the decision had already been made to use seawater to cool the containment effectively destroying any hope of repairing the reactor by presuming the worst officials will escape the error of their soviet forebears of allowing wishful thinking to prevent taking decisive action to prevent a wider catastrophe are these officials being overly pessimistic possibly but they have a responsibility to prevent this accident from becoming another chernobyl and they appear to be taking those steps if the japanese government is indeed assuming the worst then they are almost certainly readying plans for reducing the amount of radiation released by a possible containment failure at these reactors whereas the soviet union had to plan and carry out the construction of the sarcophagus over chernobyl unit 4 in incredibly hostile and uncertain conditions the japanese have the ability to plan ahead in this task they enjoy further advantages while the bwrs suffering major faults have frankly not performed satisfactorily under the circumstances they are still far superior to the rbmk design even if the containment ruptures the fact that the design includes a containment would make the task of entombing these reactors far easier furthermore the plants are far more structurally intact than chernobyl unit 4 was after it exploded even fukushima daiichi unit 1 which suffered the dramatic hydrogen explosion therefore even if the worst case scenario unfolds there is reason to believe that proactive measures on the part of the japanese can forestall a catastrophic radiation release and it appears that they have the foresight to be thinking ahead unlike the soviets who hid behind a veil of secrecy and buried themselves in denial the japanese government has been forthright with its concerns and willing to face the possibility that things will not work out as hoped i pray that their concerns will not be borne out and that emergency measures at the plants will prevent further core damage still they are absolutely right to approach the situation as they are posted by sovietologist at 9 53 pm 3 comments saturday october 23 2010 wait fema got to edit the script of the day after i apologize that i haven t been posting much lately as i ve been very busy researching the american aspect of my dissertation i m currently living in college park maryland and working through civil defense records in the national archives annex here it s fairly exciting as a great deal of this material is unexamined i m the first person to look at it since it was packed away decades ago the documents i ve looked at date from the truman to the reagan administrations so far the material from the 40s and 50s hasn t been all that ground breaking a lot of it is neat but it hasn t really challenged my longstanding thesis about the federal civil defense administration and its many problems the stuff from the 80s is quite another matter only a very limited amount of documents from fema are available in the national archives and half of the boxes i ve ordered so far were withheld and i was told that i would need to file a foia request to look at them those i ve been able to access so far however have forced me to seriously reconsider some of my assumptions about civil defense in the reagan era fema public affairs memorandum about the day after august 13 1982 one of the big surprises so far was this august 13 1982 memorandum from fema public affairs chief jim holton about the day after one would hardly suspect that this 1983 abc television movie had been edited at the request of fema to be more flattering to civil defense but it was as holton noted the attached script for the forthcoming abc tv prime time movie was given to us last week and as you ll notice on the cover sheet it is the latest in a series of revisions this version reflects a number of changes which dod insisted on before agreeing to support in the making of the film support such as the use of national guard troops certain unclassified facilities military vehicles and aircraft etc unfortunately our only contribution to the production is some dosimeters the withdrawal of which would not bother abc films it should be noted however that the revised script has been changed to reflect suggestions we made to the producers several months ago and which had not been included in the draft before this one dod in using their clout to get the changes they wanted also leaned on abc to make the fema requested amendments nearly all of which they responded to they are on pages 30 31 176 177 and 178 what precisely were these changes unfortunately i do not have my dvd of the film here in college park so i am forced to rely on memory the problem is complicated by the fact that the day after as originally filmed was intended to to be a four hour film aired in two parts and a great deal of it ended up on the cutting room floor as a result i m not sure how much fema impacted the film as aired but its impact on the shooting script appears undeniable from the the revision of the script in fema s records i suspect the changes were that skeptical references to crisis relocation planning the evacuation scheme being pushed by fema in the early 1980s were toned down as was the post attack scene where an agronomist is attempting to convince skeptical farmers to scrape off their topsoil and one of them makes an angry outburst fema got to edit the script of the day after who would ve thought posted by sovietologist at 5 47 pm 3 comments thursday october 21 2010 basics of soviet civil defense 1980 1980 soviet civil defense propaganda film основы гражданской обороны civil defense basics posted by sovietologist at 5 38 pm 1 comment wednesday august 04 2010 rbmk control room control room of chernobyl npp unit 1 these gauges indicate position of control rods in the active zone black boxes are neutron flux indicators these are the controls for some of the many control rods in the rbmk you hold down the appropriate button and use the joystick on the left to move them in or out of the active zone six emergency shutdown switches аз5 switch top row center initiated rapid emergency shutdown posted by sovietologist at 10 40 am 5 comments older posts home subscribe to posts atom about me sovietologist i am a history grad student with a special interest in soviet atomic culture view my complete profile blog archive 2012 2 june 1 my article on soviet civil defense in the journal may 1 2011 2 may 1 march 1 2010 13 october 2 august 2 june 3 march 1 february 2 january 3 2009 31 december 2 october 5 september 1 august 2 july 1 june 1 may 1 april 2 march 2 february 6 january 8 2008 112 december 2 november 6 october 3 september 2 august 13 july 2 june 5 may 11 april 20 march 12 february 14 january 22 2007 26 december 7 november 13 october 6 2006 4 july 1 may 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