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P218


The times of nuclear energy cultures 
Convenors:
Sergiu Novac (Linköping University)
Hannah Klaubert (Linköping University, Sweden)
Sarah Glück (Federal Ministry for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management)
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Chair:
Sarah Glück (Federal Ministry for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management)
Format:
Traditional Open Panel
Location:
NU-6A25
Sessions:
Tuesday 16 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Amsterdam

Short Abstract:

During the whole lifecycle of nuclear power, cultures and natures are transformed by and with it. Involved are heterogenous temporalities that permeate both natural and social orders and their convergences. We invite papers interrogating interwoven past, current, and future nuclear energy cultures.

Long Abstract:

In this panel, we aim to investigate the diverse and often divergent temporalities of nuclear energy cultures. By nuclear energy cultures, we mean the socially shared meanings associated with nuclear energy, located in space and time. The term draws attention to how these collectively shared meanings emerge, are challenged, and change, and how they structure the knowledge and practice of actors, which in turn are formed around norms and values as well as materialities, technologies, and identities.

By bringing together the notions of time and culture, we want to draw attention to the processes of meaning making surrounding nuclear energy and the various actors, human and non-human, involved in them. In addition to the rough division of time into past, present, and future, which are often interwoven, other temporal elements play a role in nuclear energy cultures – such as rhythms, processes, synchronization, duration, circularity, sequences, symphonies of timings, to name only a few.

We invite both theoretical and empirical work on uranium mining, nuclear power plant construction and decommissioning processes as well as projects surrounding nuclear waste disposal and its long-term safety aspects. Following the conference theme, we are particularly interested in self-reflexive engagements addressing contributing scholars’ positionality in and to time and within a contemporary nuclear energy culture.

Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

● Temporalities or timescapes during all stages of nuclear power production.

● The role of different materials (concrete, steel, rock, water, soil…) in producing nuclear temporalities.

● Non-linear, circular, disrupted temporalities in nuclear energy cultures.

● Temporalities of the “Nuclear Anthropocene”.

● Deep time in nuclear waste storage.

● Nuclear future imaginaries.

● The interrelations of time and nuclear safety narratives.

● Constructions of safety regarding its technological, social and natural perspectives.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Tuesday 16 July, 2024, -