Paper short abstract:

I am involved in a project about developing new nuclear power plants. I will approach nuclear technology through an affect theory lense and I am in particular interested in exploring how to write in an affective way about nuclear technology.

Paper long abstract:

Fukushima, Chernobyl, the Manhattan Project, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When nuclear power is mentioned, memories are triggered, feelings stirred. Societies are trying to manage these embodied responses through strict legislation and rigorous standards. There is a renaissance for nuclear power in Sweden and Europe, as nuclear is seen as giving hope to the battle against climate change. Technology can thus simultaneously invoke feelings of hope and despair when the need for new technology is framed by a sense of emergency. Emerging plans for new nuclear power plants offer an interesting site to study technology and affect.

This study follows the efforts to build new nuclear power plants in Sweden and Finland. The project asks: What does the affect of nuclear technology do to the organizing of new nuclear power? The study will be multilocational and follow sites where the future of nuclear power is discussed, developed, and worked upon.

Joining the re-emerging interest in studying technology and organization, I draw on research in affect in management studies as affect offers us ways to explore the everyday experiences of encounters between the human and non-human.

Affect allows us to see how technology can simultaneously disrupt and maintain processes and mediate change and how we try to manage, control and limit some emotional responses while embracing others. This changes how nuclear power plant projects are talked about, managed and organized.

For the conference, I want to explore affective writing about nuclear technology.