Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper explores paradoxical relationships of care and harm that plays out in various nuclear ecologies, and introduces temporalities of ongoingness (limbo, forever, cycles) that challenge conventional narratives of progress and decay.

Paper long abstract

Human-produced radioactivity is planetary, through airborne radioactive particles originating from nuclear weapons testing, war bombings, and nuclear power plant accidents that gradually fall back to earth as dust or in rain, haphazard dumping of nuclear residue, and the construction of waste storage sites. It is a reality on the ground and underground, in the air and in seas, lakes, rivers, and ground waters, in vegetation and in animal and human bodies. It is so pervasive that the “golden spike” of distinctive radionuclides after atmospheric atomic testing in the 1950s has been suggested as the global sediment marker for the Anthropocene, the stratigraphic “age of humans”. However, looking beyond radioactive contamination reveals also overlooked sites – buffer zones, spillwater habitats, rescue programs – where nuclear futures are currently quietly negotiated, among other things bringing into view how the current resurgence of pro-nuclear sentiment has been made possible. This paper explores paradoxical relationships of care and harm that plays out in various nuclear ecologies, and introduces temporalities of ongoingness (limbo, forever, cycles) that challenge conventional narratives of progress and decay.