Geological disposal has been proposed as the solution for managing the most radioactive nuclear wastes. These wastes stay hazardous for periods better measured in geological rather than human time. This challenges the capacity of science to accurately predict the future evolution and safety of geological disposal facilities. Thus nuclear waste management organisations, such as the Finnish Posiva, utilise a broad range of historical and cultural evidence and discursive tactics to support their scientific argumentation for the long-term safety of geological disposal. Posiva, for instance, makes its safety case by anchoring its disposal project in broader international scientific settings and engineering practices; by giving the abstract disposal concept form and tangible through mundane objects and spaces and in so doing presenting geological disposal as an extension of the everyday; and finally by juxtaposing the underground and the aboveground to depict the underground as more predictable and knowable, essentially as ‘safer than.’ By invoking and imagining geological disposal through the familiar, Posiva negotiates the limits of scientific knowledge, and undermines the nuclearity of geological disposal to make its case for the implementability, manageability and safety of geological disposal and, crucially, to present geological disposal as the only available option for long-term nuclear waste management.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Vincent Ialenti;
(2020)
Deep time reckoning: How future thinking can help Earth now
(/isis/citation/CBB345154320/)
Article
Kadak, Andrew C.;
(Summer 2012)
Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel
(/isis/citation/CBB059751677/)
Article
Parker, Beth L.;
Alley, William M.;
Cherry, John A.;
(Spring 2014)
Geologic Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel: An Earth Science Perspective
(/isis/citation/CBB430079404/)
Article
Carnesale, Albert;
(Summer 2012)
Recommendations by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future: A Plan for Managing Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Nuclear Waste
(/isis/citation/CBB649666138/)
Article
Fertel, Marvin S.;
(Summer 2012)
Industry's Safety Record and the Blue Ribbon Recommendations: The Way Ahead for the Management of Used Nuclear Fuel
(/isis/citation/CBB638837860/)
Article
Clarissa Ai Ling Lee;
(2023)
Managing ‘Wicked’ Technoscientific Problems: The Postnormal Science of Risk Narratives
(/isis/citation/CBB747521102/)
Article
Klaus Hoeyer;
(July 2015)
Regulatory Anatomy: How “Safety Logics” Structure European Transplant Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB387324455/)
Article
Yli-Kauhaluoma, Sari;
Hänninen, Hannu;
(2014)
Tale Taming Radioactive Fears: Linking Nuclear Waste Disposal to the “Continuum of the Good”
(/isis/citation/CBB001420065/)
Article
Garrick, R. John;
(Fall 2003)
The Current Status, Safety, and Transportation of Spent Nuclear Fuel
(/isis/citation/CBB256747585/)
Article
Rentetzi, Maria;
(2022)
The Politics of Radiation Protection
(/isis/citation/CBB583442702/)
Article
Wellock, Thomas R.;
(2013)
The Children of Chernobyl: Engineers and the Campaign for Safety in Soviet-designed Reactors in Central and Eastern Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB001211944/)
Article
Andrea Candela;
(2024)
‘The Nuclear Siting Controversy’ in 1970s Italy: Historical Perspectives on Geology, Nuclear Power and Radioactive Waste
(/isis/citation/CBB964498450/)
Article
Jenkins-Smith, Hank C.;
Silva, Carol L.;
Herron, Kerry G.;
Trousset, Sarah R.;
Rechard, Rob P.;
(Summer 2012)
Enhancing the Acceptability and Credibility of a Repository for Spent Nuclear Fuel
(/isis/citation/CBB654033152/)
Article
John B. Stranges;
(2006)
Hooker Hyde Park Landfill and "Bloody Run. A Case Study in Crisis Management
(/isis/citation/CBB909447675/)
Book
Thomas Le Roux;
(2016)
Risques industriels: savoirs, régulations, politiques d'assistance, fin XVIIe-début XXe siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB784107233/)
Article
MacFarlane, Allison;
(2003)
Underlying Yucca Mountain: The Interplay of Geology and Policy in Nuclear Waste Disposal
(/isis/citation/CBB000651057/)
Article
Hannes Lagerlöf;
(2023)
Swedish nuclear waste management as an inert controversy: Using critical constructivism to understand cold technological conflict
(/isis/citation/CBB283183739/)
Article
Andrea Candela;
(2017)
Sorting Out Nuclear Concerns: The Australian Uranium Debate From Jervis Bay to Ringwood's Synroc
(/isis/citation/CBB414955330/)
Book
McCutcheon, Charles;
(2002)
Nuclear Reactions: The Politics of Opening a Radioactive Waste Disposal Site
(/isis/citation/CBB000301968/)
Article
M. X. Mitchell;
(2021)
The Cosmology of Evidence: Suffering, Science, and Biological Witness After Three Mile Island
(/isis/citation/CBB799186607/)
Earth Sciences History: Journal of the History of the Earth Sciences Society
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
History and Technology
Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology
Journal of the History of Biology
Be the first to comment!