From Legacy to Heritage
This article examines Russia’s post‑Soviet efforts to deal with military nuclear waste that has been accumulating since the dawn of the nuclear age. It focuses on two major areas affected by radioactive waste mismanagement: the extensive territories in the Ural region polluted by the Maiak Productio...
| Published in: | Cahiers du monde russe |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
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Éditions de l’EHESS
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.4000/monderusse.11277 http://journals.openedition.org/monderusse/11277 |
| Summary: | This article examines Russia’s post‑Soviet efforts to deal with military nuclear waste that has been accumulating since the dawn of the nuclear age. It focuses on two major areas affected by radioactive waste mismanagement: the extensive territories in the Ural region polluted by the Maiak Production Association and nuclear waste dumps in the Arctic. The article traces public debates about the remediation of waste that initially met with resistance from the Russian military and state security in the 1990s and shows how in the 2000s and 2010s this resistance gradually faded as the government began to inventory radioactive waste more systematically, assess its environmental and social costs, and find ways to contain it. Parallel to these attempts, the semantics of military waste have evolved. Radioactive waste has been transformed from a toxic legacy whose disclosure could damage Russia’s international image to part of the national heritage, the country’s glorious military past and its continued nuclear might. This article shows how and why this reframing has occurred, and how this has facilitated a shift in attention away from nuclear programs’ damage to public health and the environment to their patriotic history and meaning. L’article étudie les efforts faits par la Russie postsoviétique dans le traitement des déchets nucléaires militaires qui se sont accumulés depuis l’avènement de l’ère nucléaire. L’auteure concentre son étude sur deux grandes régions affectées par une mauvaise gestion des déchets radioactifs, les vastes territoires de l’Oural pollués par le complexe nucléaire Majak et les poubelles nucléaires de l’océan Arctique. Elle retrace les débats publics sur le traitement des déchets qui se heurtèrent tout d’abord à la résistance de l’armée russe et des services de sécurité de l’État dans les années 1990 et montre la disparition progressive de cette résistance dans les années 2000 et 2010 lorsque le gouvernement commença à inventorier les déchets nucléaires de façon plus systématique, à évaluer leur ... |
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