Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses how 'the commons', elaborated in critical relation to ideas and practices of property and ownership, is extended to address issues of environmental responsibility. Highly radioactive nuclear wastes have become a problem held in common, connecting current and future generations.

Paper long abstract:

This paper notes the strong parallels between climate change policies and nuclear waste disposal policies, both of which seem to hinge on the notion of a problem held 'in common’, and a determination or need to produce a sense of shared responsibility to address ‘the problem’. Drawing on a mix of ethnography and research that looks systematically at the historical relationships between commons and property, I explore how the nuclear industry composes ‘the problem’ of nuclear waste as a problem ‘in common’, as it seeks a site for its disposal. Currently in the UK the policy is to identify a deep geological site, although previous alternatives included both outer space and the deep oceans. A deep geological disposal site requires access and agreements with respect to materials and territories that are clearly owned (even if public ownership) but that extend (potentially) into spaces where ownership becomes more hazy 1km below the surface. Furthermore these spaces are designed to become passive sites that once closed will require no further human intervention, and might plausibly be forgotten about altogether. At the same time there is already a clear sense that future generations might have the technological capacity to unearth and exploit the buried materials. The contemporary push to identify a disposal site is also producing new epistemic controversies where efforts of collaborative knowledge making intersect with various modes of proprietary expertise.