Suchergebnisse

This article focuses on a part of the "nuclear condition" that is often overlooked in philosophical discussions: that of materiality. Connecting the spheres of nuclear weapons (and associated security threats), and of nuclear power generation (and associated safety concerns), are the materials that bombs and electricity can be made of, and the machines that produce either enriched uranium or plutonium. We now have evidence of just how fragile the machines and devices were (and are) that sustained the nuclear age, but also how tenuous and artificial the boundary is that we assume between "peaceful" and "military" purposes. And yet, each new "nuclear deal" affirms this boundary, and the possibility of its existence. While the community of scholars and policymakers who prioritize nuclear security strive to label as many steps of the process as "special," and therefore subject to inspection, accounting, and international control, multinational power companies and national nuclear industries promote "technical fixes" for lingering safety concerns, and advance the opposite strategy: to "normalize" many processes to the point of including severe accident response into the industry's business-as-usual. The article argues that different kinds of "nuclearities" have increasingly become accepted as "normal": on one hand, international diplomacy that foregrounds legal and regulatory strategies to nip potential nuclear weapons programs in the bud, and on the other, national nuclear power programs growing their fleets and attempting to expand their market reach. By accepting the divide between the "security community" and the "safety community" as the new "nuclear normalcy," the shared nuclear materiality threatens to slip out of view, or at the very least, out of focus.

In this article, the author examines an exemplary part of the Soviet media discussion following the Chernobyl disaster. She traces transformations in this discourse affecting the concepts of risk and uncertainty and indicates their relevance for the reconfiguration of the relationships between the state, scientific experts, and the public. Chernobyl occurred during a period of unprecedented potential for change: in the wake of Gorbachev's perestroika, newly emerging environmental groups gradually managed to gain access to a previously closed forum, the national print media. During the ensuing public debates between environmentalists and energy officials, nuclear risks or uncertainties were used as powerful, yet flexible, rhetorical tools for articulating political positions, for assigning or denying authority and legitimacy, and for reconceptualizing "the public." The shorthand "Chernobyl" came to be deployed strategically to solicit change, to challenge old practices, and to legitimize the continuation and extension of these practices.

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Foreword. Fukushima's Special Message -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction -- PART I. LEARNING FROM DISASTER -- Chapter 1. What Was Learned from 3.11 -- Chapter 2. Unfulfilled Promises: Why Structural Disasters Make It Difficult to "Learn from Disasters" -- Chapter 3. Fukushima Radiation Inside Out -- Chapter 4. Has Japan Learned a Lesson from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident -- Chapter 5. The Developmental State and Nuclear Power in Japan -- PART II. PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE AND PUBLIC TRUST -- Chapter 6. The Road to Fukushima: A US- Japan History -- Chapter 7. Media Capture: The Japanese Press and Fukushima -- Chapter 8. The Politics of Radiation Assessment in the Fukushima Nuclear Crisis Chapter 8. The Politics of Radiation Assessment in the Fukushima Nuclear Crisis -- Chapter 9. Nuclear Labor, Its Invisibility, and the Dispute over Low- Dose Radiation -- Chapter 10. Food and Water Contamination After the Fukushima Nuclear Accident -- Chapter 11. Suffering the Effects of Scientific Evidence -- PART III. POSSIBLE FUTURES -- Chapter 12. Building a Community- Based Platform for Radiation Monitoring After 3.11 -- Chapter 13. The Closely Watched Case of Iitate Village: The Need for Global Communication of Local Problems -- Chapter 14. Describing and Memorializing 3.11: Namie and Ishinomaki -- Chapter 15. Renegotiating Nuclear Safety After Fukushima: Regulatory Dilemmas and Dialogues in the United States -- Chapter 16. International Reactions to Fukushima -- Notes -- Bibliography -- List of Contributors -- Index -- Acknowledgments