Radiation is a workplace hazard that eludes the sensing body, or seems to. After Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, Kai Erickson described radiation as an invisible threat, the very embodiment of stealth and treachery. The first generation of Canadian nuclear power workers, from their four decades of experience around reactors has a different sense of the matter. They describe a physical awareness of the morphology and topography of radiation, a cultivated bodily knowledge that informed their actions as they produced power. They describe a feel and a touch for the plant, framed in theoretical studies, made through attentiveness and alert expectation, honed by being out and about in the station, being its intimate, listening to its very cries. By their telling, doesn't feel right ceased to be a metaphor about their workplace circumstance, and through study and practice, became a bodily effect, a report from the somatic. Key to work safety for Canadian nuclear workers were close study of the theory of ionizing radiation, adeptness with both the instruments which made radiation apparent and the calculations that made the readings on dials into qualitatively and spatially distinctive workplace presences, and skill in choosing, donning, building, and removing physical barriers between their bodies and radiation fields. Through this knowledge and practice, Canadian nuclear workers came to embody the hazards of the job. This working knowledge of the insensible enabled them to be responsible for their own radiation protection and for the safety of those with whom they worked.
...More
Article
Mahdi Khelfaoui;
(2014)
Le nucléaire dans la stratégie énergétique du Québec, 1963-2012
(/isis/citation/CBB199250730/)
Article
Slater, Ian J.;
(2012)
To Market, To Market: Innovation, Canada's Nuclear Industry, and the Case of the Nuclear Battery
(/isis/citation/CBB001451663/)
Article
Juraku, Kohta;
Suzuki, Tatsujiro;
Sakura, Osamu;
(2007)
Social Decision-Making Processes in Local Contexts: An STS Case Study on Nuclear Power Plant Siting in Japan
(/isis/citation/CBB000760585/)
Book
Diatlov, Aleksandr;
(2003)
Chernobyl'. Kak eto bylo
(/isis/citation/CBB000321014/)
Book
Rodney P. Carlisle;
Joan M. Zenzen;
(1996)
Supplying the Nuclear Arsenal: American Production-reactors, 1942-1992
(/isis/citation/CBB967814772/)
Book
Ana Romero de Pablos;
(2019)
Las primeras centrales nucleares españolas: Actores, políticas y tecnologías.
(/isis/citation/CBB801831424/)
Book
Schmid, Sonja D.;
(2015)
Producing Power: The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry
(/isis/citation/CBB001510002/)
Book
Sidorenko, Viktor;
(2001-2003)
Istoriia atomnoi energetiki Sovetskogo Soiuza i Rossii
(/isis/citation/CBB000321016/)
Thesis
Mark Edwin Walker;
(2018)
Reinventing International Nuclear Safeguards in the Centrifuge Enrichment Era
(/isis/citation/CBB631710795/)
Book
Sidorenko, Viktor;
(2003)
Ob atomnoi energetike, atomnykh stantsiiakh, uchiteliakh, kollegakh i o sebe
(/isis/citation/CBB000321017/)
Thesis
Christopher Thomas Dunlap;
(2017)
Parallel Power Play: Nuclear Technology and Diplomacy in Argentina and Brazil, 1945-1995
(/isis/citation/CBB042810236/)
Book
Eckart Conze;
Martin Klimke;
Jeremy Varon;
(2016)
Nuclear Threats, Nuclear Fear and the Cold War of the 1980s
(/isis/citation/CBB924250158/)
Book
Walker, J. Samuel;
Mazuzan, George T.;
(1992)
Containing the atom: Nuclear regulation in a changing environment, 1963--1971
(/isis/citation/CBB001180174/)
Article
Sahm, Astrid;
(2013)
Atomenergie in Ost- und Westeuropa: Reaktionen auf Tschernobyl und Fukushima
(/isis/citation/CBB001200600/)
Article
Eugene Cittadino;
(2018)
Barry Commoner and Paul Sears on Project Chariot: Epiphany, Ecology, and the Atomic Energy Commission
(/isis/citation/CBB667360733/)
Article
Pantalony, David;
(2011)
Biography of an Artifact: The Theratron Junior and Canada's Atomic Age
(/isis/citation/CBB001211534/)
Article
Sylvia Nickerson;
(2013)
Taking a Stand: Exploring the Role of the Scientists prior to the First Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, 1957
(/isis/citation/CBB073054408/)
Book
Kazuto Tatsuta;
(2017)
Ichi-F: A Worker's Graphic Memoir of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant
(/isis/citation/CBB154632800/)
Article
Wright, Miriam;
(2010)
Aboriginal Gillnet Fishers, Science, and the State: Salmon Fisheries Management on the Nass and Skeena Rivers, British Columbia, 1951--1961
(/isis/citation/CBB001032531/)
Thesis
Padolsky, Miriam Elana;
(2006)
Bringing Climate Change Down to Earth: Science and Participation in Canadian and Australian Climate Change Campaigns
(/isis/citation/CBB001561716/)
Be the first to comment!