HISTORY 224 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Boris Yeltsin, Hanford Site, Threshold Model
10 Dec 2016
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What is covered in the lecture: cold war battleground, real world manifestation of the threshold approach, contradictions of nuclear exceptionalism. Boris yeltsin: president of russia after gorbachev, end of cold war, commissioned reports on environmental secrets/costs of the ussr regime or nuclear weapons, hired alexiei yablokov to do research. Found that ussr had routinely broke rules and dumped radioactive materials into rivers and the arctic ocean. Found that ussr had thrown whole reactors were thrown into shallow water, still filled with nuclear fuel: after yablokov released report, there was outrage. Onlookers said that this was proof that capitalism/west was best. Belief that production at any cost was the soviet way. Ironically, the us and uk were disposing nuke waste itself, and at the beginning of the cold war, the ussr used this as propaganda against the. Why was waste dumped into the ocean at all: belief that dilution and assimilative capacity of oceans made it okay; ocean could recovery quickly.
