Jaime da Costa Oliveira, Memórias para a História de um Laboratório
do Estado. Santarém: O Mirante, 2013. 189 pp. ISBN 978-989-98799-0-4.
By JúliaGaspar*
The
author of Memórias para a História de um Laboratório de Estado is a retired
physicist and former administrator of the State Laboratory created under the
name Laboratório de Física e Engenharia Nucleares (Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Engineering) (LFEN). This book offers a
first-hand account of this institution, since its creation in 1959 until its
extinction in 2012, and provides historians of science with a perfect example
to reflect upon the virtues and pitfalls of personal institutional histories.
The
author offers an explanation for the vicissitudes the Laboratory endured
through five periods of crisis — 1962–1963, 1973–1978, 1992–1994, 2000–2005,
2009–2011, and five mutations — 1968, 1979, 1985, 1995, and 2007. The
identification of crises and mutations are Jaime Oliveira’s own interpretation:
the first as perceptions resulting from his experience; the second as the
consequence of legislation issued by successive governments.
Built
in the Lisbon’s outskirts at Sacavém, the Laboratory
was born out of a proposal of Junta de Energia Nuclear (Nuclear Energy Board), to António de Oliveira Salazar, the dictator
and president of the ministers’ council, in December 1955. The Board’s
relevance was due to its commitment to uranium oxide production, exported under
a contract to the USA, until 1962. The Laboratory was constructed for the
purpose of housing the nuclear reactor offered by US Atoms for Peace Program,
investing the income from the uranium oxide export. Its history is, therefore,
closely intertwined with the Board’s, until its extinction in 1979, but despite
the troubled life of the Laboratory its essential premises at Sacavém have been kept to this day.
In
January 1959, the Board comprised two technical departments, the State
Laboratory (LFEN) and another department devoted to the geological survey of
uranium ore, and uranium oxide production. According to Jaime Oliveira, the
cancellation of the US uranium oxide contract gave way to the first crisis
period, 1962–1963. The first mutation, taking place in 1968 is associated with
the creation of the third technical department of the Board to supervise the
nuclear power plants program, depriving LFEN from one of its previous main
goals, and confining it to personnel training, and applied and technological
research.
The
author claims that the second (extended) period of crisis, 1973–1978, began at
the end of the rule of office of Marcelo Caetano, who succeeded Salazar in
1968, and ended in the first years of the democratic regime. Once again the
crisis was associated with the supervision of the nuclear power plants program,
in the end of 1973, meaning the loss of its relevance and leading to its
extinction, in 1979. Meanwhile, LFEN was split into various departments, which
were incorporated into the new Laboratório Nacional
de Engenharia e Tecnologia Industrial (National Laboratory of Engineering and Industrial Technology)
(LNETI) in 1979, giving way to the second mutation. Jaime Oliveira associates
the third mutation, of 1985, with the reassembling of two departments
previously split, under the designation of Instituto de Ciências e Engenharia Nucleares (Institute of Nuclear Sciences and Engineering).
The
Laboratory’s unstable tutelage under LNETI lead Jaime Oliveira to identify a
third period of crisis, 1992–1994, and a fourth mutation in 1995, emerging as Instituto Tecnológico e Nuclear
(Technological and Nuclear Institute) (ITN), reintegrated most of the original
departments of the Laboratory. ITN was put to the test in the fourth crisis
from 2000 to 2005, coming out of it on a new track with the fifth and last
mutation of 2007, when it was encompassed by a
new law regulating the status of State Laboratories as public institutes, with
indirect supervision by the State, and a specific juridical regime.
Unfortunately, this arrangement did not survive the fifth period of crisis,
2009–2011, matching the financial, economic and social crisis which submerged
Portugal.
Finally,
on 1 March 2012, the autonomic status of ITN came to an end when the
government, led by Pedro Passos Coelho, incorporated
the once State Laboratory into Instituto Superior Técnico (Higher Technical Institute) of Technical
University of Lisbon.
As a
narrative on the life of LFEN based on the author’s personal experience and
recollections, this is not a book that one would expect to see reviewed in a
specialized journal devoted to the history of science and technology. Addressed
to the general public and younger generations, as well as to scientists and
historians, its main virtue for the latter is undoubtedly its chronological
data, the extensive compilation of primary sources and substantial
transcription of documents and statements by politicians. Oliveira’s book makes
in this way easily accessible a considerable array of sources, which are an
invaluable starting point for future fine-grained accounts based on more
sophisticated interpretations of LFEN’s institutional
history.