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

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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.