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Paper short abstract

This paper explores how building and repairing intersect in nuclear power plants. It highlights the ambivalence between design choices and repair practices, emphasizing workers’ knowledge and techniques in shaping the reliability and safety of nuclear power plants.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines nuclear power plants as a site where building and repairing become deeply entangled. While contemporary debates on nuclear’s role in the energy transition tend to focus on new reactor construction, the continued operation and safety of existing plants depend on extensive, often invisible repair practices. Indeed, today’s reactors are increasingly facing mundane failures. Drawing from examples from the US, France, Sweden, and the UK, I argue that the relationship between construction and repairing in the nuclear industry is ambivalent. On the one hand, maintenance is inseparable from reactor design and construction. Certain design choices have historically made inspections and repairs difficult and hazardous, contributing to the risk of a nuclear accident. Moreover, components sometimes had to be repaired before construction was even finished. On the other hand, repairs impact the reliability and safety of nuclear power plants also in ways that are unrelated to the construction process itself. Here, the paper pays particular attention to the agency of the repair workers. The practical knowledge or “techniques” of plant workers impacts the reliability and safety of nuclear installations. As plant lifetimes are extended far beyond their original specifications, workers’ procedural knowledge, improvised techniques, and risk assessments actively shape nuclear energy production. By analyzing this ambivalence, the paper contributes to rethinking the relationship between building and repairing. It argues that resilient futures in high-risk infrastructures depend on how reactor designers determine repair practices, but also on how workers continuously reconstruct the material and social conditions of technological systems.