A Letter
From Chelyabinsk--April, 1998: |
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Figure 1. Shaded areas indicate levels of strontium-90 (0.1 to 2 curies per square kilometer) as a result of fallout from the 1957 explosion at Chelyabinsk-65 (the “Kyshtym disaster”). Source: Makhijani A, Hu H, Yih K. Nuclear Wastelands: A Global Guide to Nuclear Weapons Production and its Health and Environmental Effects. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1995. |
The vast industrial site and its accompanying residential city, 70 kilometers from Chelyabinsk, did not appear on the map during Soviet times, when communications were channeled through an innocuous postal code (Chelyabinsk-65), which suggested a bland new developer’s suburb at the edge of the city. The residential city has been renamed Ozyorsk (“Lake town”--ironic since large amounts of raw nuclear waste were dumped into local lakes and streams). The site remains fiercely guarded: one enters only after a lengthy approval process, and the visitor’s papers are carefully scrutinized at multiple check points, especially at the site perimeter. The residents of Ozyorsk have voted to keep it a closed city and only those who have jobs at the complex are allowed to move there.
Ozyorsk remains a privileged place to live, but is not immune to the exigencies of post-Soviet life. The number of jobs has fallen precipitously and pay raises are rare in the face of ever-increasing inflation. The streets used to be cleaner, and the buildings once wore fresher coats of paint. Those in charge are very guarded about discussing the troubles of the MIA, but many people were willing to share their stories with a stranger. “Ukase” or no “ukase,” it has become harder to stuff the genie of relatively open communication back into an authoritarian bottle.
With only a little probing one finds that one of Mayak’s central schemes for economic survival, RT-1, Russia’s first reprocessing facility for spent nuclear fuel, has been losing business since the break-up the Soviet empire and that, in any case, its natural clients in the former eastern bloc are as short of hard currency as are the Russians. Several dispassionate analyses of the economic prospects of the Russian nuclear cities are very pessimistic about their long term viability. Indeed, the director of a nuclear weapons development facility near Chelyabinsk committed suicide a few years ago: the economic bleakness of his future and of the workers and facilities under his direction is assumed to be the cause.
We were told we were only the second group of foreigners to visit MIA’s central research labs. There was only enough time to get a fleeting glimpse of the research on the ecology of the site that is one of the lab’s major responsibilities. We did see sophisticated computer models of how radioactive wastes stored in one of the local lakes is breaking through into the water table. We were unable to inquire about the implications for health and agriculture.
Secrecy and Denial
I had arrived a few days before our committee meeting, and was able to meet several people who had been exposed to radiation generated by Mayak. One was a large man in his late fifties, obviously once quite robust, but now chronically ill and profoundly disillusioned. As a teenager, he was employed by the complex as a laborer. A nuclear waste storage tank, not unlike many at Hanford, exploded in 1957. (The “Kyshtym disaster” was named after a local town because, after all, Mayak did not officially exist. The aftermath of this explosion, now known as the “East Urals Radioactive Trace,” is one of the radiation sources, originally kept secret, then denied, which now may become the subject of SRG study.)
Our informant and a group of other boys had been doing some work in the nearby woods; after the frightening explosion their supervisors disappeared and they found the nuclear complex’s gates locked to them. They soon ran out of food, and were ignorant of the need for protection from the radiation. After a week of foraging, they were able to break through the perimeter fence, whereupon the authorities confiscated their clothes, repeatedly washed them, and then swore them to lifelong secrecy. Our informant no longer believed his oath was binding: he was a sick man, which he quite understandably attributed to his earlier exposure to high doses of ionizing radiation, and he felt that after his years of loyalty both the society and the facility had abandoned him.
A Futile Focus on Compensation?
We also met people who had been exposed to the very large amounts of radioactive waste that were dumped untreated by the MIA in its early years into local river systems and lakes. While there have been several very serious breakdowns in radiation safety since the early 1950s, by far the largest amounts of pollution were during this early period, when the central and overriding task was to produce plutonium to catch up with the US in thermonuclear weapons development.
Understandably, the local population is preoccupied with obtaining compensation for past exposure to radiation either on the job or because they lived near the nuclear complex. The legal system in Russia can be even more arbitrary and irrational, in these matters, than that in the US A law was passed in 1992 to compensate radiation victims. Then, when Mayak was sued, the courts ruled that the law could not be applied retroactively, and that only exposure since its passage was compensable. This has led local antinuclear activists to search for examples of recent radiation exposure rather than trying to complete the historical record of past exposure. This focus may be futile: almost all of the complex’s reactors are now shut and, in any case, current technology is far less polluting than that of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Nonetheless, we owe a profound debt of gratitude to our Russian activist colleagues: they have few resources; they are very vulnerable to retaliation by the authorities; and without them it would be far more likely that Russia could revert to a closed and authoritarian way of doing business.
Whether the current research on radiation exposure and human health assessed by the SRG (the results of which assessment are not yet available for publication) is going to be successful remains an open question. Some profound impediments must be overcome, however, to produce credible results. These include:
The result of this unwillingness and/or inability to coordinate among the interested parties has the potential to cause replication, inefficiency, and incompleteness. Unless corrected, it may undermine our chances to understand this unique and important, albeit tragic, experience.
A New Openness to Scientific Exchange
I have learned over and over that “secret science” is an oxymoron. Without openness, challenge, and the free exchange of ideas, mistakes and prejudices become institutionalized. Our Russian colleagues are, overwhelmingly, highly intelligent and dedicated scientists. But they and their work were totally shielded from outside influence until only 10 years ago: they attended no international conferences, they produced no publications; they engaged in no dialogue. Many (though by no means all) of the older scientists are therefore defensive on a series of fronts. They assert that what they did was not from selfish or immoral, but from patriotic motives (which is almost surely true) and that they are just as smart as (or smarter than) their colleagues in the West--which is also true. Their vast practical experience, however, is often not matched by the underlying breadth and flexibility that follows from the Western model of doctoral training and a culture of open scientific interchange and challenge. It is therefore all the more exciting to observe the emergence of new cohorts of scientists who are clearly beginning to practice “normal” science: publishing, talking, travelling, and polishing their skills. They appear less political than their predecessors and seem to identify with the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of science, defined not by mindless nationalism, but by high and universal professional standards. It will be to our benefit--and to that of the world--to foster their development.
Our counterpart Russian review group was meeting face to face for the first time. Clearly, someone had found it more convenient (and cheaper) to make decisions without a functioning peer review process. Some of the formalities of peer review, such as attempting to avoid conflict of interest, seemed new to at least some of our Russian colleagues: one older reviewer attacked the work of a younger Russian presenter. I found his vehemence embarrassing, since the work being presented was highly competent. We were later told that the reviewer was a direct competitor with the presenter for the contract to do this piece of the project work.
Overcoming Bureaucratic Obstacles
Our group of scientists had to deal with the irrationalities and rigidities of US bureaucracies as well. It is important that we not feel in some way say superior to our long suffering Russian colleagues. One central project, the effects of radiation on illness other than cancer among the Mayak work force, is being funded by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which has decided to review and manage this work independently of the SRG, a decision that is destructive for many reasons. The SRG remains responsible for the activities of the radiation dose-reconstruction that is the basis for the NRC project, but is not being told how the dose reconstruction is to be applied. More important, the NRC is not a dispassionate and impartial group of outside experts. As an agency that has as one of its goals the promotion of nuclear power, the NRC has an interest in what levels of radiation are determined to be permissible; for its purposes, higher levels may appear to be better. NRC control over this project may taint the results in the eyes of the scientific community and the public. Thus, we have our own struggle to remain focussed and coherent in a world often very much in opposition to these goals.
Democratic institutions and the health and well being of this generation, our grandchildren, and our grandchildren’s grandchildren, whether in Russia, in the US, or elsewhere, depend directly and immediately on the open exchange of ideas and data, as well as on the availability of the resources and conditions needed to optimize these processes. Bureaucracies, East or West, will always seek control over sensitive information and data and they will always be uncomfortable with openness. Citizens and scientists familiar with the facts clearly threaten current power arrangements. Information can supply the motivation for change and justice and can provide clues about how to achieve these goals. Yeltsin’s “ukase” and American bureaucratic turf wars are both bad and retrogressive. The emergence of credible and open science should be acknowledged and supported in both of our countries. A civil future hangs in the balance.
DR is Professor of Nutrition, Community Health, and Pediatrics, Tufts University, and Head of the Epidemiology Program, Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. Address correspondence to: David Rush, M.D., 68 Foster St., Cambridge, MA 02138 USA.
© copyright 1998 Medicine and Global Survival
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