Here’s a light but crabby post for a Saturday. Fits my mood.
I’ve spent a fair bit of time in Sillamäe, Estonia, and more thinking about it. So when a publication screws up the facts, I feel a need to respond.
This time, it’s Atlas Obscura doing a remarkable job of stuffing errors into a short article.
When the article was first published, they confused ä and a, but they’ve fixed that now. Quotes from the article are in italics.
Due to the building of a uranium enrichment plant in the region, it became off-limits to anyone other than those directly linked to its operations.
- One of the favorite misconceptions about Sillamäe is that it had an enrichment plant. Anyone who’s been there or cares to look at an overhead photo can see that there is no enrichment plant. What the Soviets did there was produce yellowcake from uranium ore and concentrates. Here are short and long references on that.
Even the architecture of Sillamäe is different than typical Soviet style; the buildings were built in the style of Stalinist neoclassicism.
- The original buildings were. There are also Khrushchevian and Andropovian style buildings that were added as the town grew.
The main example is the town hall building that looks just like a church but has never served as one.
- The town hall has always seemed to me to be more Estonian-style architecture, perhaps with a dash of Jugendstil. I’ve wondered about that. The apartment buildings nearby are much better examples of Stalinist neoclassicism.
In the five decades of its functioning, the plant in Sillamäe refined over 100,000 tons of uranium, which was in turn used in 70,000 nuclear weapons, including the Soviet Union’s very first nuclear bomb.
- I would have to go back to the longer of those two references to get the exact number, but simply dividing 100,000 tons of uranium by 70,000 nuclear weapons gives somewhat more than a ton of uranium per weapon, which is far too much. And the Soviet Union had more than one yellowcake plant. Perhaps the 100,000 tons refers to ore.
- The Soviet Union had 40,000 nuclear weapons at its peak, the US 30,000. So 70,000 is the maximum that existed in the world at one time.
- The story that Sillamäe provided the uranium for the Soviet Union’s first nuclear bomb is tempting in terms of timing, but the first Soviet nuclear test was of a plutonium bomb. It’s possible that Sillamäe provided the uranium for the reactors that produced the plutonium, but it’s not documented in the West, as far as I am aware.
This extended period of radioactivity did not leave the landscape unharmed and even before the fall of the Soviet Union, the operations were winding down at the plant.
- What does this – “This extended period of radioactivity” – even mean? The environmental damage that my Estonian colleagues and I faced was a gigantic tailings pond (waste depository) on the edge of the Baltic Sea. The Estonians remediated it and converted the plant to no uncontrolled emissions in 2009.
After the collapse, it was liberated along with the rest of Estonia, and the factory was adapted to process rare metals and particles.
- “It was liberated” – The Estonians liberated themselves and contributed mightily to the fall of the Soviet Union. The plant converted from yellowcake to rare earth metals and oxides in the mid-1980s. And what does “particles” mean?
the street names are often in Russian
- I recall the street signs being in the Roman alphabet, but I could be wrong, or some might have been changed back as Estonia becomes more relaxed about language.
The photos are nice – I love the town hall and Mere Puiestee (Ocean Boulevard), that wide street between the apartment blocks – but they left out the best one, the monument to the atomic workers, at the top of this post.
I wrote more about my experience in Sillamäe. I recommend that article to Atlas Obscura.
Edited to improve the format.
Cross-posted at Nuclear Diner.
Frank Wilhoit
Atlas Obscura is crowdsourced, is it not? Which means (perversely) that this article is probably the work of a single contributor and fact checked lightly if at all.
Mart
That statue is awesome. Could not figure out its context. Thought something to do with space, not atoms.
Another Scott
Thanks for this. It’s important to get this stuff right.
Not to thread-jack so early, but the picture reminds me very much of Memento Park in Budapest. I assume Donnie will want some statues like that soon. :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
Thanks for this. I’ve pretty much started ignoring things the press writes about nuclear material thanks to you, lol.
oatler.
The Baltics get so little atttention in pop cuture: George Costanza’s “conversion” to Latvian Orthodox, the Estonian stunt double in The Simpsons,… maybe we need to sexify it.
The avenue in Monopoly?
Major Major Major Major
@oatler.: I dunno, elves basically speak Estonian, that’s pretty big.
Cheap Jim, formerly Cheap Jim
@oatler.:Well, there’s always Cole Porter.
In Spain the best upper sets do it.
Lithuanians and Letts do it.
Lets do it; let’s fall in love.
Sadly, data on Estonians is still incomplete.
Major Major Major Major
@Cheap Jim, formerly Cheap Jim: I knew an Estonian once. He was not the falling in love type. He’s also decided he isn’t gay any more, which is sad.
Ruckus
I worked with a man from Estonia back in the 60s. He was in the merchant marine when WWII started and asked for asylum in Canada when his ship stopped there. He tried to get his wife out of Estonia but could not. So they decided to go their separate ways. He emigrated to the US and married again. He liked to eat whole raw onions, like an apple. That’s my extensive knowledge of Estonia.
James Powell
@oatler.:
A handful of NBA players is all I can think of.
trollhattan
2 degrees of Kevin Bacon: spouse just returned from a conference in San Diego and one of the scheduled featured presenters was murdered in Las Vegas.
Steve in the ATL
@oatler.: I always confuse Estonia and Elbonia
trollhattan
@Steve in the ATL:
They’re separated by Latvinia.
jl
Oh, I thought it was a post about wrong facts about Estonia.
First time I went there, the border guard told me, after stamping my passport: “you’ll love it here, great beer, great food, beautiful countryside, pretty women…”
So, I thought it was about that.
After I get over the disappointment, I’ll read the post.
J R in WV
Cheryl,
Great article about the tailings pond, the remediation work, and learning about Estonia. It sounds like a wonderful place, with so much to learn, history, culture, etc.
The pictures with your article, are there larger versions somewhere? Having spent the majority of my career with WV’s Department of Environmental Protection, gigantic poisonous dumps interest me. On a rock-collecting trip to Colorado my friend and I found an interesting heavy-metals site in the mountains.
Once a lead-silver-gold mine, it was abandoned, bankrupted at least a couple of times by the time we wandered by. As you went up the hollow from the “town” there were adits at different levels. The town (pop. 16 recently) is at 9,478 feet, and the mine’s small buildings were falling down. There was a huge pile of tailings below each portal, and the creek was mostly in a corrugated plastic pipe, so as to prevent leaching heavy metals into the water flowing out of the ghost town. Somewhat, at least.
We met some Forest Service guys who were working on the remediation plan, they showed us maps and talked about the plans to minimize continuing pollution. Looking at it now on Google Maps, it looks like quite a bit was done, but there’s still a mess, big surprise. At least it isn’t radioactive.
A good friend is both an engineer and a lawyer, and worked for the Army Corp of Engineers in Colorado. He wouldn’t drink Coors, because he knew what was in the Rocky Mountain surface water. Heavy metal contamination, and he doubted that Coors bothered to pre-treat the water destined to become Coors Beer. Also because it’s crummy beer, of course.
Thanks for the Estonian education. I wish I had more faith in clay caps over pits full of poison, but I also don’t have any better ideas to deal with the vast tonnages of waste left by industrial development and extractive industry. At least it’s much better than it was when independence happened.
jl
@Steve in the ATL:
” I always confuse Estonia and Elbonia ”
You auditioning for next Secty. of State?
trollhattan
@J R in WV:
The western legacy of abandoned mines is flabbergasting, as they number in the tens of thousands and many still present a danger to the unwary and continuing environmental damage. We’re still in the 19th century.
Wastewater from one in northern California has the lowest pH recorded in nature.
Ryan Zinke would like to return us to the 19th century and cadres of Cliven Bundys are there to jump right in.
Cheryl Rofer
@J R in WV: The cap over the Sillamäe tailings pond is an engineered cover: layers of clay, sand, cobble, and soil designed to shed rain. If caps like this are maintained, they are okay. The Sillamäe cap is nicely covered with grass, and the last time I was there, I saw brown hawks hunting rodents. You can see it easily if you go to Sillamäe on Google Earth. The problems in the US that I’m aware of come from lack of maintenance. And, of course, a simple clay cap is not enough.
The photos in the Lab to Lab article are from my collection, and I have larger versions, scanned from slides. Heavy metals are the biggest issue, but there is some thorium, uranium, and decay products.
Colorado has a lot of that.
Origuy
The World Orienteering Championships were in Estonia this summer. I know some people who went. One was on the American team, the others were spectators and participants in the spectator races. Couldn’t afford it myself.
Susan
I too love Estonia. Tartu has the most amazing Science Museum in the world. I need to go back with my grandkids.
MoxieM
Not unlike Pizza Man in Jakarta (whence my Ex hailed). Although the Estonian statue is appropriately Nordic in expression by comparison.
Pizza Man
MoxieM
try again with the link: Pizza Man
Chris T.
@Major Major Major Major: Tom of Estonia? (insert eyebrow quirk)
sharl
Atlas Obscura‘s business model is explained in part by its very name, though what makes it a success – assuming it is successful – is regularly providing aesthetically pleasing and attention-grabbing stories. Unfortunately, getting the story factually correct often takes a back seat, especially given the realities of limited (labor) resources and the need to post a minimum number of times per day or week.
As you and other public scientists know, this is a huge and commonly encountered problem in how the journalism business presents scientific news, with scientists complaining that a news outlet’s reporters and/or editors dropped the caveats and precautions presented in a research report or interview, instead sticking with the “WOW” eyeball-attracting aspects of the news for the headlines. Sometimes a researcher’s university or organization press/media relations department is an accomplice in this, driven by a separate agenda to maximize good press and favorable attention from would-be sponsors, state legislatures or the U.S. Congress.
This happens all over the place. It kinda-sorta showed in a front page post here a couple days ago, with a link to a tweet with a beautifully produced National Geographic video purporting to show how much the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone Park resulted in huge and unpredictable changes in the ecosystem of the park. As I’ve come to expect from stuff like that lovely bit of eco-porn, along came killjoys in the replies to that tweet with the boner-killing news that “things are more complicated than that,” or “that assertion has been disproved,” etc.
Whatever; I loved the video, but I also appreciate the rebuttals. And while it’s not quite the same thing as Atlas Obscura‘s inexcusable carelessness on the Estonian story – which I suspect comes from a combination of a limited staff, and (after the story’s posting) maybe a wish to not draw negative attention which might get folks wondering what other stories of theirs are wrong – it falls within the same general kind of behavior IMO. I hope they respond to you eventually Cheryl, but if they don’t, maybe it will motivate them to be better for future stories.
sharl
@sharl: Hahaha, I just went back to that linked tweet and scrolled further down in the replies. It looks like that video was a rip-off of something done by George Monbiot (yes, that George Monbiot):
Monbiot’s video runs a bit longer (4:33) and generally covers the same territory – why wouldn’t it, if it’s the original? – but has narration and some nice background music.
Sir Bedevere
@Susan: I visited the science museum in Tartu this summer. It has a Foucault pendulum. The ruined cathedral that the museum is in was staging an Estonian language dramatization of The Name of the Rose. That those two statements coexist is something Eco himself would have approved of, I suspect.
Wag
We spent a couple of days in Tallin while in a trip to Finland in 2013. The Old Town is a spectacularly well preserved example of Middle Age architecture. I would absolutely go back.
Wag
Photos Of Tallin
sharl
@Wag: Your link is missing the colon after the https – this works: https://www.instagram.com/p/cCOLA6CEYb/.
That’s a sumptuous photo – I love the richness of the colors.
ETA: Looks like you fixed it already…
Ruckus
@Wag:
Very nice!
sm*t cl*de
@oatler.:
Hey, don’t forget Piotr Skut!
sm*t cl*de
Please to enjoy an Estonian heavy-metal band with their cover version of Veljo Tormis’s “Curse Upon Iron”, with backing vocals from the Estonian National Male Choir.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXcup1ZsJXA
Performed in the ruins of Pirita Convent, on the outskirts of Tallinn.
Ruckus
Maybe someday I’ll be able to take another trip to Europe and see how much it’s changed, or not, in 45 yrs since I was there last. I wanted to move there after the last time, I wonder if I’d still have that fantasy.
sharl
@sm*t cl*de: I enjoyed that a lot more than I thought I would (based on your description and my usual musical tastes). The music itself was OK, but the stage production really took it to another level for me. Even the usually worthless YouTube comments offered enticing clues as to the backstory of the number. I now have a couple tabs open for later reading on this group and related stuff.
Thank you, Mr. cl*de! I feel a bit further edumacated now.