Dissertation Research: Envisioning a Technological State: Reactor Design Choices and Political Legitimacy in the Soviet Union and Russia

该项目支持论文研究，以调查苏联民用核计划早期阶段的技术与政治交织。它将分析影响特定反应堆类型选择的技术、社会、经济和政治因素，并展示这些设计选择如何为进一步的技术发展设定参数。首先，它将探索苏联两种主要反应堆类型的历史，并试图解开围绕决定采用这些类型作为苏联民用核工业标准反应堆的技术和政治讨论。然后，它将确定这些反应堆的“技术政治”，即反应堆设计师、工程师和核电站运营商如何利用这段历史的特定版本，以及科学和技术的成功如何被部署为政治合法性的有力工具。该项目旨在重建关于反应堆设计的偶然的、有争议的、有时是武断的决定是如何转化为线性的、逻辑发展的技术进步叙事的。为了了解与“非官方”故事有关的国家认可的核能陈述，它将把与苏联民用核计划早期阶段有关的档案文件与对反应堆设计师和核电站操作员的深入采访结合起来。苏联反应堆设计的社会史是理解科学、技术和国家之间的决策过程的独特场所。它旨在通过展示像核反应堆这样的技术产物如何成为挑战或维持政治和社会秩序的强大修辞资源，来澄清技术选择与政治议程之间的联系。这个项目可以帮助我们理解当代的反应堆安全概念，它可以照亮国家制定的科学技术普及的困境。

This project supports dissertation research to investigate the interweaving of technology and politics in the early stages of the Soviet civilian nuclear program. It will analyze the technological, social, economic and political factors that influenced the choice of particular reactor types, and show how these design choices set the parameters for further technological developments. First, it will explore the history of the two major Soviet reactor types and attempt to unpack the technological and political discussions surrounding the decision to adopt these types as standard reactors for the Soviet civilian nuclear industry. It will then identify these reactors' "techno politics," i.e., how reactor designers, engineers, and nuclear power plant operators appropriated particular versions of this history, and how scientific and technological success was deployed as a powerful tool for political legitimacy. The project aims at reconstructing how the contingent, controversial, and sometimes arbitrary sets of decisions concerning reactor designs were transformed into linear, logically developing narratives of technological progress. In order to understand the state endorsed representations of nuclear power in relation to "unofficial" stories, it will combine archival documents relating to the early stages of the Soviet civilian nuclear program with in-depth interviews of reactor designers and nuclear power plant operators. The social history of Soviet reactor design is a unique site to understand decision-making processes at the interface between science, technology, and the state. It intends to clarify the connections between technological choices and political agendas by showing how technological artifacts like nuclear reactors served as powerful rhetorical resources to challenge or sustain the political and social order. This project can contribute to our understanding of contemporary notions of reactor safety, and it can illuminate the quandaries of a state-enacted popularization of science and technology.