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Contemporary transformations in the nuclear world

The Fukushima catastrophe has profoundly altered the nuclear debate. Whereas, in the years before, the focus had been on the controversies surrounding radioactive waste management or the climate politics of the "nuclear renaissance", the catastrophe re-opened a line that was created by the accidents at Three Miles Island and Chernobyl. Praise or criticisms have been given new currency, fuelling what has been termed "the impossible debate" on the legitimacy of nuclear power generation. In the 30 years between Three Miles Island and Fukushima, nuclear technology itself has not fundamentally evolved, but the way societies approach it has changed, under new dominant discourses predicated on "transparency", "governance" and "sustainability". Today, faced with risk and waste management uncertainties, governments and public authorities can neither ignore the meaning and significance of nuclear for populations, nor the political and ethical dimensions of energy choices. Far from being solely a technical subject, nuclear elicits practices, behaviours, representations, regulations and issues of knowledge/power. In most nuclear countries, the "politicization of nuclear waste" from the late 1980s on has thoroughly changed the timing, scope and frame of public management, altering not only regulation of the nuclear industry, but the very way it interacts with civil society. France, the UK (after the demise of Nirex and the partial privatization of nuclear plants), the US (with the protracted debates around Yucca Mountain and nuclear new build) and many other countries have experienced similar legal developments that have reframed nuclear operations along the lines of "transparency" and "public engagement".

Building on existing research in the humanities and the social sciences

Such recent evolutions call for a reassessment of research efforts about nuclear in the humanities and the social sciences (HSS). At the same time that social science research is needed, even requested by legislators and government, research efforts are spread out and face considerable hurdles. Indeed, for the social sciences, nuclear is a difficult subject to research, one that is both attractive and repulsive. Part of the attraction comes from the continuing presence of nuclear as an object of debate in the public sphere; but nuclear is also a highly technical subject to engage with and requires a lot of knowledge and personal investment from researchers. These efforts are compounded by the necessity to avoid partisanship (or accusations of partisanship) - and this requires repeatedly specifying and justifying theoretical choices and methodological approaches. A further difficulty is the scarcity of funding for social science nuclear research. Exemplary in this respect is the recent call for projects by the French National Agency of Research following Fukushima. The call welcomed "analyses of the event under all aspects including the lessons to be drawn in terms of prevention - but excluding all subjects relative to nuclear industry and safety". Finally, the results of social science research are always at risk of being exploited by partisan struggles or social engineering projects.

However, the social sciences have engaged with many aspects of nuclear, documenting its workings and social impacts, analyzing its discursive productions and their performativity, deconstructing the diverse practices that nuclear has created. There are many analytical resources available, as shown in the sheer volume and diversity of published work on the "nuclear phenomenon". Historians have written accounts of the development of nuclear technologies and the specificities of nuclear industrial policies and decision-making. They have analyzed the ambiguous contribution of nuclear to national narratives, to state influence, to colonial policies. Monographs of individual projects and sites have emphasized the constant interplay between the civilian and the military sides of the nuclear coin. Sociologists have engaged with social postures towards nuclear and shown how nuclear had the capacity to reconfigure and structure collective action. Researchers have questioned policy making and public participation in debates over nuclear choices and projects. Nuclear risk has been a specific focus point, studied from the standpoint of accidents and their consequences on popular perceptions of risk. Of special interest have been the representations developed by people living near or working on nuclear sites (whether permanently or temporarily) and the roles of associations, unions and collectives in framing national and local debates on nuclear policy and sites. Along similar lines, anthropologists have written accounts of nuclear sites, investigating workers and local populations. They have shown how debates on nuclear, structured by collective actions or policy initiatives, rest on highly performative discourses that work to include and exclude participants and issues. Such research contributes to the idea that nuclear is a powerful social, cultural and symbolical operator, the categories of which need to be deconstructed in order to adequately describe its effects on people and places, its specific temporalities. Geographers have focused on the spatial aspects of the nuclear industry, describing how nuclear connects sites, people, discourses and flows of matter and energy. Economists have shown that such connections are strongly predicated on money: the capital intensity and reference timeline of nuclear set it apart from other industries, giving high relevance to actuarial practices and discount rates. Political scientists have investigated the specificities of an industry that is so politically charged as to frame or change decision-making styles, questioning the very ideas of the political and of democracy. Finally, legal research has recently engaged with transparency issues: the management of nuclear facilities relies on a decision making process that has to strike a balance between secrecy (or discretion) and right to be informed. Such singularities, the long-term management of radioactive waste and the necessities of radioprotection have elicited highly specific nuclear law and jurisprudence that make use of technical norms whose legal status is unclear and expand the temporal horizon of legal interventions far beyond the ordinary (notably through the insistence of reversible storage).

Objectives of the conference

The interdisciplinary conference "How can the social sciences can help us understand the nuclear world?" seeks to reassess the relations between nuclear and social science research. It has two objectives. First, it seeks to take stock of and build on existing research by making explicit the theoretical approaches, the research methods, the difficulties met by researchers and by possibly identifying aspects of the nuclear phenomenon that may have been neglected or left out by existing research. Second, we would like to question the relevance of social science to contemporary nuclear debates and policy making.

The conference welcomes papers from researchers of all disciplinary backgrounds in the humanities and the social sciences (sociology, anthropology, psychology, law, economics, geography, management, political science, philosophy, etc.), especially from those with an experience of conducting primary research on the nuclear industry. A significant amount of time will also be devoted to roundtables and discussions.