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Paper short abstract:

How can we share a common habitat with nuclear residues without allowing for the continuation of their mass-production? I will investigate into some proposals for a critical politics of maintenance of our radioactive inheritage that take into account the agency of residues.

Paper long abstract:

Nuclear waste has often been seen as a paradigmatic example of those products of modernity with which it is simply impossible to share a common habitat. Within the industry, nuclear production’s radioactive residues are generally depicted as something that has to disappear, either through recycling projects or through long term underground disposal. These two paradigms associate in a promise of technological control through which waste is seen as a bulky, risky, but yet ultimately passive result of past technological activity that will ultimately disappear from our home.

The first step of my proposal is to, instead, take into account the agency of residues with which we do share a common world. It implies a more complete temporal, geographical, ecological description of residues’ potentialities. But this first step is not politically nor morally satisfying, as it could very well accomodate with a neoliberal risk management policy that would leave their production unquestionned. Not only do we live with radioactive residues, but we have to dwell, i.e. share a common habitat with them under common rules. This implies a critical politics of maintenance for our residual inheritage. My hypothesis is that one can find the lineaments of such a politics into two different sources.

First, I will investigate into the documents produced by the French Syndicat National de l’Energie Atomique in the 1970s about the handling of radioactive residues. Second, I will mobilize some of the international discussions around the concept of « rolling stewardship » of nuclear waste.