Author : Leslie Dienes
Publisher : Hodder Education
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 23,79 MB
Release : 1979
Category : Nature
ISBN :
Analyses energy needs and policies within the Soviet Union.
Author : Margarita M. Balmaceda
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 421 pages
File Size : 13,24 MB
Release : 2021-05-11
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 023155219X
Russia’s use of its vast energy resources for leverage against post-Soviet states such as Ukraine is widely recognized as a threat. Yet we cannot understand this danger without also understanding the opportunity that Russian energy represents. From corruption-related profits to transportation-fee income to subsidized prices, many within these states have benefited by participating in Russian energy exports. To understand Russian energy power in the region, it is necessary to look at the entire value chain—including production, processing, transportation, and marketing—and at the full spectrum of domestic and external actors involved, from Gazprom to regional oligarchs to European Union regulators. This book follows Russia’s three largest fossil-fuel exports—natural gas, oil, and coal—from production in Siberia through transportation via Ukraine to final use in Germany in order to understand the tension between energy as threat and as opportunity. Margarita M. Balmaceda reveals how this dynamic has been a key driver of political development in post-Soviet states in the period between independence in 1991 and Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. She analyzes how the physical characteristics of different types of energy, by shaping how they can be transported, distributed, and even stolen, affect how each is used—not only technically but also politically. Both a geopolitical travelogue of the journey of three fossil fuels across continents and an incisive analysis of technology’s role in fossil-fuel politics and economics, this book offers new ways of thinking about energy in Eurasia and beyond.
Author : P. Högselius
Publisher : Springer
Page : 559 pages
File Size : 41,26 MB
Release : 2012-12-28
Category : History
ISBN : 1137286156
This book applies a systems and risk perspective on international energy relations, author Per Högselius investigates how and why governments, businesses, engineers and other actors sought to promote – and oppose– the establishment of an extensive East-West natural gas regime that seemed to overthrow the fundamental logic of the Cold War.
Author : Mr.Manmohan S. Kumar
Publisher : International Monetary Fund
Page : 18 pages
File Size : 28,92 MB
Release : 1991-12-01
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1451854765
Energy exports, which are already the primary source of Soviet convertible currency earnings and an important contributor to the budget, could bring in much more revenue if the Soviet Union were to reduce its extremely high levels of energy consumption. To encourage this process, energy prices need to be raised substantially. Under plausible assumptions, it is shown that an increase in prices could yield sizable foreign exchange earnings. Large increases in energy prices could, however, threaten the solvency of industrial enterprises, precipitate major economic and social dislocation, and severely strain interrepublican economic relationships.
Author : David Holloway
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 507 pages
File Size : 36,73 MB
Release : 2008-10-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0300164459
The classic and “utterly engrossing” study of Stalin’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb during the Cold War by the renowned political scientist and historian (Foreign Affairs). For forty years the U.S.-Russian nuclear arms race dominated world politics, yet the Soviet nuclear establishment was shrouded in secrecy. Then, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, David Holloway pulled back the Iron Curtain with his “marvelous, groundbreaking study” Stalin and the Bomb (The New Yorker). How did the Soviet Union build its atomic and hydrogen bombs? What role did espionage play? How did the American atomic monopoly affect Stalin's foreign policy? What was the relationship between Soviet nuclear scientists and the country's political leaders? David Holloway answers these questions by tracing the dramatic story of Soviet nuclear policy from developments in physics in the 1920s to the testing of the hydrogen bomb and the emergence of nuclear deterrence in the mid-1950s. This magisterial history throws light on Soviet policy at the height of the Cold War, illuminates a central element of the Stalinist system, and puts into perspective the tragic legacy of this program―environmental damage, a vast network of institutes and factories, and a huge stockpile of unwanted weapons.
Author :
Publisher : Elsevier
Page : 3656 pages
File Size : 16,63 MB
Release : 2021-07-15
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 9780128197257
Encyclopedia of Nuclear Energy provides a comprehensive and reliable overview of the many ways nuclear energy contributes to society. Comprised of four volumes, it includes topics such as generating clean electricity, improving medical diagnostics and cancer treatment, improving crop yields, improving food shelf-lives, and crucially, the deployment of nuclear energy as an alternative energy source, one that is proving to be essential in the management of global warming. Carefully structured into thematic sections, this encyclopedia brings together the vast and highly diversified literature related to nuclear energy into a single resource, with convenient to read, cross-referenced chapters. This book will serve as an invaluable resource for researchers in the fields of energy, engineering, material science, chemistry, and physics, from both industry and academia. Offers a contemporary review of current nuclear energy research and insights into the future direction of the field, hence negating the need for individual searches across various databases Written by academics and practitioners from different fields to ensure that the knowledge within is easily understood by, and applicable to, a large audience Meticulously organized, with articles split into sections on key topics and clearly cross-referenced to allow students, researchers and professionals to quickly and easily find relevant information
Author : Andy Bruno
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 311 pages
File Size : 14,37 MB
Release : 2016-04-11
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 110714471X
This in-depth exploration of five industries in the Kola Peninsula examines Soviet power and its interaction with the natural world.
Author : Jonathan Coopersmith
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 392 pages
File Size : 43,36 MB
Release : 2016-11-01
Category : History
ISBN : 1501705369
The Electrification of Russia, 1880–1926 is the first full account of the widespread adoption of electricity in Russia, from the beginning in the 1880s to its early years as a state technology under Soviet rule. Jonathan Coopersmith has mined the archives for both the tsarist and the Soviet periods to examine a crucial element in the modernization of Russia. Coopersmith shows how the Communist Party forged an alliance with engineers to harness the socially transformative power of this science-based enterprise. A centralized plan of electrification triumphed, to the benefit of the Communist Party and the detriment of local governments and the electrical engineers. Coopersmith’s narrative of how this came to be elucidates the deep-seated and chronic conflict between the utopianism of Soviet ideology and the reality of Soviet politics and economics.
Author : Eglė Rindzevičiūtė
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 307 pages
File Size : 42,46 MB
Release : 2016
Category : History
ISBN : 1501703188
The International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), an international think tank established jointly by the United States and Soviet Union in Austria in 1972, was intended to advance scientific collaboration. Until the late 1980s, the IIASA was one of the very few permanent sites where policy scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain could work together to articulate and solve world problems, most notably global climate change. One of the best-kept secrets of the Cold War, this think tank was a rare zone of freedom, communication, and negotiation, where leading Soviet scientists could try out their innovative ideas, benefit from access to Western literature, and develop social networks, thus paving the way for some of the key science and policy breakthroughs of the twentieth century.
Author : Sonja D. Schmid
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 395 pages
File Size : 46,2 MB
Release : 2015-02-06
Category : History
ISBN : 0262538806
An examination of how the technical choices, social hierarchies, economic structures, and political dynamics shaped the Soviet nuclear industry leading up to Chernobyl. The Chernobyl disaster has been variously ascribed to human error, reactor design flaws, and industry mismanagement. Six former Chernobyl employees were convicted of criminal negligence; they defended themselves by pointing to reactor design issues. Other observers blamed the Soviet style of ideologically driven economic and industrial management. In Producing Power, Sonja Schmid draws on interviews with veterans of the Soviet nuclear industry and extensive research in Russian archives as she examines these alternate accounts. Rather than pursue one “definitive” explanation, she investigates how each of these narratives makes sense in its own way and demonstrates that each implies adherence to a particular set of ideas—about high-risk technologies, human-machine interactions, organizational methods for ensuring safety and productivity, and even about the legitimacy of the Soviet state. She also shows how these attitudes shaped, and were shaped by, the Soviet nuclear industry from its very beginnings. Schmid explains that Soviet experts established nuclear power as a driving force of social, not just technical, progress. She examines the Soviet nuclear industry's dual origins in weapons and electrification programs, and she traces the emergence of nuclear power experts as a professional community. Schmid also fundamentally reassesses the design choices for nuclear power reactors in the shadow of the Cold War's arms race. Schmid's account helps us understand how and why a complex sociotechnical system broke down. Chernobyl, while unique and specific to the Soviet experience, can also provide valuable lessons for contemporary nuclear projects.
