Paper short abstract:

Sellafield has long sparked the imagination as a place of human engagement with fissile materials. As these must now be stifled in decommissioning, alignments and fissures pattern the company's ambitious project of engineering that seeks to integrate technological, natural, and social futures.

Paper long abstract:

Vilified as a dirty place of secret goings-on, praised as a site of pioneering scientific work, cherished as a big local employer offering high salaries and life-long career opportunities, the Sellafield site in West Cumbria has for three quarters of a century sparked the imagination as a place of human engagement with explosive and fissile materials. During the site's operating life, nuclear waste has piled up in ponds and silos as a hazardous legacy left for later generations to deal with. This time has now come. In 2020, reprocessing of nuclear spent fuel for foreign and domestic customers at Sellafield ends, which means that all energy on site will go into its decommissioning, resulting ultimately in what might be imagined as a brownfield, a process expected to take over a hundred years.

Sellafield Limited's latest branding, then, in an attempt at a clean break with its past reputation, is that of an environmental remediation company. Recognizing West Cumbrian economic, and affective, dependency on the nuclear industry, the company seeks to marry the drive for environmental remediation with a dedicated project of social engineering aimed at empowering local communities facing an SL-less future against a backdrop of splendid 'natural' scenery. Drawing on on-going fieldwork at and around the Sellafield site, I will explore alignments and fissures between the technological, the natural, and the social that pattern this integrated project of seeking to contain and stifle fissile matter whilst keeping 'the community' vibrant.