Nuclear Energy in the Soviet Union (USSR) - 1984 (translated documentary)

#Chernobyl #HBO #Energy

We are launching another Soviet documentary 35 years after the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

Produced two years before the fateful accident of April 26, 1986, and five years after a minor accident at the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, the documentary addresses the process of building nuclear power plants and development of more efficient reactors in the Soviet Union. Starting with the Obninsk Power Plant, the world's first nuclear power plant, the documentary takes us back to the country's pioneering spirit and the importance of academic Igor Vassilievich Kurchatovin this development. Throughout the documentary, there are excerpts from the interview with the President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Anatoli Petrovich Alexandrov. The implantation of nuclear power plants is defended mainly in the western part of the USSR, devoid of combustible resources, and it is also approached regarding the new fast neutron reactors, which made possible the reprocessing of the uranium used in the plants to obtain plutonium, also a component of nuclear fuels. The large number of projects in Ukrainian SSR draws attention, with the launch of the fourth 1,000 MW Chernobyl reactor and the construction of the Khmelnytski, Southern Ukraine, Crimean, Rovno and Zaporozhia nuclear plants. More to the end, the implementation is also justified by the environmental bias, which in the Soviet Union had no doctrinal character, although deficient in several aspects, including the deposit of nuclear waste, which was not always intended as demonstrated.

A very relevant part is also the production of nuclear equipment, in which the great example is the Atommash project in Volgodonsk, that, with Soviet computer engineering, was able to produce grandiose equipment with minimal tolerances on a scale.

Also focused on the security of operations, we perceive the distance from the Western discourse, starring, for example, the HBO series, with the environmental discourse shown by the Soviet media. In the Soviet Union, there was also a concern to show efforts against any type of accident involving these plants, even if inserted at a time when no nuclear accident had gained such proportions and relevance as that of Chernobyl.

Finally, one of the aspects that led to the translation of this documentary is that there is a type of mentality that is increasingly rare today: of optimism in technological development as a creator of general well-being, in which everyone would be distant from the problems of scarcity that drive world a lot of conflicts. The city of Bilibino, receiving light and heat through its plant, reminds us of the image of an oasis in a desert. Today, more than scarcity, we realize that we are also guided by the need to stand out, and to create new needs in a process of individualism, this being one of the causes of the slow degeneration of the planned Soviet economy. And if we look at the documentary beyond mere factuality, I venture to consider that it is also a work of art that portrays in its succession of images, speeches and soundtracks, meticulously assembled, this mentality.

"I am convinced that the common sense inherent in peoples will triumph, and the time is not far away when the precious uranium and plutonium will be used in atomic engines that propel peaceful ships and in power plants, bringing light and heat to the people's homes." - Academic Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov.