Upcoming Final seminar: Streams, Steams, and Steels: A History of Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Risk Governance (1850-1990)

Achim Klüppelberg , 2023-06-07

A warm welcome to another upcoming final seminar at the division!

Doctoral Student: Siegfried Evens, Doctoral Student, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment
Supervisor: Per Högselius, Kati Lindström, Anna Storm
Opponent: Markku Lehtonen, Social Scientist, University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona

Time: Tuesday 2023-06-13 13.15 – 15.00

Location: Big seminar room, Teknikringen 74D (floor 5), Division of History of Science

Language: English

Siegfried Evens in front of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant in the USA.

Teaser

That is why this dissertation will focus on exactly that: the water that runs through our nuclear power plants. Water is so important and obvious to the safety of so many power plants – not only nuclear ones – that it barely goes unnoticed. Indeed, the history of nuclear power contains a striking paradox. Water is the key to a normal functioning nuclear power plant and to preventing nuclear accidents. Yet, up until now, the history of water is largely absent from the history of nuclear power, and especially nuclear risk. In contrast, there is a long–standing scholarly tradition of studying nuclear fission and radioactivity.

But this dissertation is about more than just water. By focussing on water streams for the analysis of nuclear safety, other relevant elements open up as well. While water streams are essential, there is no nuclear power plant in the world that generates electricity because of it. Electricity is generated because of the steam caused by the boiling of that water. The generation of steam is coupled to the science and engineering practice of thermal–hydraulics – a field with a long and important history, dating back to the early days of industrialisation and mechanical engineering.

As I will show, much engineering and political effort – in the nuclear sector and outside of it – has been devoted to the management of pressure and temperature in steam equipment, such as boilers and pipes. All of this was essential to prevent the pressure from mounting too high, causing catastrophic explosions. In turn, the management of all this water and steam is also very reliant on the material that this equipment is made of. And that material is steel. A very robust material, steel is well–equipped to
withstand the tremendous pressures and temperatures necessary to generate power. However, as with almost any material, it can decay, crack, brittle, and break. A major theme in this dissertation will therefore be the continued effort to improve and regulate steel – and the work of metallurgists and material engineers in doing so. Streams, steams, and steels; that is in many ways the essence of
this dissertation.

Excerpt from Siegfried’s final seminar text, pp. 12-13.

A pressure vessel at Shippingport Nuclear Power Station in the USA.

Glad påsk with a new travelogue!

Achim Klüppelberg , 2023-04-06

Right before the Easter holidays, Siegfried Evens, PhD-candidate in the NUCLEARWATERS-project, has written an exciting travelogue about his stay at Virginia Tech in the USA.

Enjoy!

Looking back on four months in Washington, D.C.

By Siegfried Evens

It has been a few months since I came back from my stay in the U.S. And I have to say, I miss it sometimes. But being back in Sweden, I can reflect on the things I have learned and experienced.

I arrived in Washington, D.C. in August 2022, Typical for the summer there, the temperatures were tropical, the humidity excruciating, and the mosquitos everywhere. That is how I learned D.C. is actually a part of “The South.”

I stayed at Virginia Tech, a technical university with a campus in the suburbs of the D.C. area. Although small and often compared to a prison or asylum, the campus had a certain charm. There were also many events for graduate students, with free food and ping-pong! It was a great way to meet other graduate students, of which most worked in engineering and computer science.

For four months, I was part of the STS Department of Virginia Tech as a guest Ph.D. student, hosted by professor Sonja Schmid. My aim was to get to know STS more and to learn from Sonja Schmid, who has worked extensively on nuclear safety and contributes actively to nuclear policy in the U.S.

One of the aims of my stay was to take part in a project-based STS graduate course. This year, the theme was ‘Nuclear Facilities in Armed Conflict.’ Together with six other American STS students, with varying backgrounds ranging from nuclear engineering to law, we wrote a policy report with recommendations on how to prevent situations like the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine. We also presented our work in a public session for policy-makers, government officials, and industry experts. We are working on a policy publication right now.

Washington, D.C. has many archives that are relevant for nuclear historians like me. Although they are not always easy to get into, I came back with thousands of scans from the Library of Congress, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Archives, and – most importantly – the NRC Public Documentation Room. At the NRC, I was helped a lot by the NRC historian, professor Thomas Wellock.

Staying in D.C. was a great opportunity to travel around. I attended the Society of History of Technology (SHOT) conference in the stunning city of New Orleans. I presented my work in the college town of Blacksburg, where the main campus is located, and received great feedback from the STS scholars there. And in an act of ‘dark tourism’, I drove up to the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, which is only a two-hour drive away from D.C.

But after each trip, I was also happy to be back in D.C. It is a marvelous place to live. Paradoxically, the capital of the U.S. has a very European feel: wide sidewalks, beautiful architecture, good public transport, lush parks, and so many great pubs and restaurants. I lived in Columbia Heights, a beautiful historic area with small row houses built after the Civil War to house new civil servants.

Yet, at the same time, the abundance of museums, monuments, and sports stadiums – but at the same time also the stark racial and social inequalities in the city – remind you of American history and culture every day. American politics is never far away either: when you talk to people, see politicians or “staffers” in the streets, or when walk on the National Mall and cannot get the intro tune of House of Cards out of your head.

Last but not least, a big thanks to Per Högselius and the Nuclearwaters-project for funding this research stay and for making it possible.

All pictures by Siegfried Evens.

Mark your Calendars for Scientific Prediction in the 20th Century and From Water to Nuclear to Catastrophe

Sofia Jonsson , 2023-03-13

Within one week we have two exciting seminars to invite you to! First out is Eglė Rindzevičiūtė who will give a talk on Scientific Prediction in the 20th Century on Friday March 13. On Monday March 20, Eglė will visit us in the role as discussion leader and opponent, when Achim Klüppelberg has his final seminar in doctoral training.

Scientific Prediction in the 20th Century: Mapping Ideas, Institutions and Practices Across the Cold War Divide

atominisIMG_7588 Eglė Rindzevičiūtė is an Associate Professor of Criminology and Sociology, Kingston University London, with an interest in governance, knowledge production and culture. Her Friday talk with us is based on the forthcoming book, The Will to Predict: Orchestrating the Future through Science (Cornell 2023).

The book questions the established view that in the Cold War era scientific prediction was an expression of a positivist mindset and that scientific predictions were mainly used to enhance top-down control by collecting data, monitoring and influencing people’s behaviour. In contrast, this book shows that the role of scientific prediction is far more diverse than that of a mechanistic, top-down control. The book argues that scientific predictions are human attempts to find an adaptive way to cope with uncertainty, to address the limitation of knowledge and to act collectively through the continuous orchestration of human and non-human actors.

Welcome to join:

Friday March 17 @ 14.15 to 16.00
in the Big Seminar Room at the Division, Teknikringen 74D level 5, Stockholm.

From Water to Nuclear to Catastrophe: How Soviet Hydro-nuclear Entanglements Shaped Dangerous Technocratci Safety Culture.

Achim Klüppelberg started as a doctoral student at the Division in the fall of 2018. He is active in the Nuclearwaters-Project (ERC Consolidator Grant, PI Per Högselius) where he focus on the nuclear history of Eastern Europe, especially on the territory of the former Soviet Union and its successor states. Achim investigates expert cultures in nuclear discourses, with a special interest in water-related issues in nuclear power plant decision-making.

Other than focusing on his doctoral studies, Achim has been active in several of the courses at the Division – as assistant and teacher. He also contributes to educate us in metal (music, that is) and has been one of the editors of the Division blog the past years.

Main supervisor: Per Högselius
Supervisors: Kati Lindström, KTH and Anna Storm, Linköping University

Welcome to join:

Monday March 20 @ 13.15 to 15.00 CET
in the Big Seminar Room at the Division, Teknikringen 74D level 5, Stockholm.

New publication: What is good drinking water?: 41 Years of risk perception on water quality in the vicinity of the Nuclear Research Centre Karlsruhe, 1956–1997

Sofia Jonsson , 2023-02-06

Alicia Gutting is a PhD candidate in the ERC-project Nuclearwaters at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment. In her thesis „The Nuclear Rhine“ Alicia is researching transnational nuclear risk perception in Austria, Switzerland, France and Germany from the 1960s to 2018. In January Alicia was published in Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy with the article What is good drinking water?: 41 Years of risk perception on water quality in the vicinity of the Nuclear Research Centre Karlsruhe, 1956–1997. Follow the link below for open access!

What is good drinking water?: 41 Years of risk perception on water quality in the vicinity of the Nuclear Research Centre Karlsruhe, 1956–1997

In: Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy, ISSN 1944-4079, E-ISSN 1944-4079, p. 1-23Article in journal (Refereed) Published

Abstract [en]

This article traces the historical evolution of risk perception around the Nuclear Research Centre Karlsruhe, Germany, from 1956 to 1997. It does so by targeting the evolution of water-related risks. Federal hopes in the postwar era that the Nuclear Research Centre would bring progress and prosperity clashed with local values and local perception of nuclear engineering as dangerous to health and the environment. Various conflicts arose and opponents made use of their past lived-knowledge to foster their arguments against future decision-making, mobilizing stories from the past to shape the future. The conflict culminated in the 1990s, when the municipality decided to lease the Centre’s waterworks for future drinking water supply. The main argument of the article is that even though the public discourse shifted over the years from water pollution toward greater risks such as nuclear meltdowns, the local risk perception stayed with the water-related risks. The article shows how the locals perceived and narrated their risk perception against the decision-making of authorities as well as against the reasoning of scientists and experts.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages

Hoboken: Wiley , 2023. p. 1-23

Keywords [en]

drinking water, Rhine river, risk narratives, risk perception, water quality

Breathing Swiss air – A research stay at the University of Bern

Sofia Jonsson , 2023-01-09

Text: Alicia Gutting, doctoral student at the Division

The fun thing about writing a PhD thesis on the nuclear Rhine in Sweden is that it is actually necessary for me to visit the nuclear sites on the Rhine as well as local archives. My three supervisors and I therefore decided that it would be an enriching experience to spend some time at the Section of Economic, Social and Environmental History of the History Department at the University of Bern. In this rather fast-paced academic world, I wanted to get the most out of my stay as well as get to know fellow historians in Bern. Therefore, a three months visit from the beginning of October until the end of December sounded suitable. Having all the archives and the nuclear sites at my doorstep was also a major motivation to stay a little bit longer.

My plan was to use the time to focus on finishing two articles. Both these articles deal partially with the Swiss nuclear development as well as cooling water negotiations between Switzerland and Germany and the accompanying risks. I dreamt of being in Switzerland, taking the good air of Bern in and the articles would magically write themselves. This clearly did not happen. However, through a presentation of my work at the history department I received valuable input from Swiss colleagues. Some critical, which I very much appreciated, but mostly very positive and insightful. The discussion showed me that I am on the right track and that my work is still a research desideratum, even in Switzerland.

The second-last week of my stay in Switzerland was the absolute highlight of the whole three months. My main supervisor Per Högselius took the time to visit me for five days. We started with a day at the state archive in Aarau, where we looked at maps of the Beznau nuclear power plant. Beznau, built in 1969, is an especially interesting case as it is the first Swiss nuclear power plant. It is also the oldest operative nuclear power plant up until today. Apart from that it uses a freshwater cooling system and therefore does not cool the water down with the help of cooling towers. Per and I could take a close look at the significantly warmer water that was led back into the considerably small river Aare.

The NPP Beznau and one of its cooling water outlets

Before we visited Beznau, we went to see the newest nuclear power plant Leibstadt, built in 1984. When we just got out of the car, Per received a call from a journalist from the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. His expertise was requested on the Swedish nuclear power plant Ringhals and the current electricity prices in Sweden. This turned our field trip into a much more current issue than we had originally anticipated.

Per on the phone while looking at Leibstadt’s cooling tower

On our last day we went to see the Mühleberg nuclear power plant, which was decommissioned in 2019. Mühleberg was built from 1967-1971 also without a cooling tower. For builders of nuclear power plants this was the last chance to build without a cooling tower as Switzerland made them compulsory in 1971. What is also interesting is that Mühleberg is located above Lake Biel and the planners roughly calculated with the lake being able to diffuse the warm cooling water. The hope was that Mühleberg’s cooling water would not interfere with the cooling capacity of the Aare further downstream.

Mühleberg NPP with the hydro power plant Mühleberg upstream, which secured the cooling water supply

Apart from looking at nuclear power plants and maps of the area, Per and I had also the chance to present our work during a workshop on the nuclear renaissance by the Research Network Sustainable Future at the University of Basel. During the workshop different researchers from all kind of fields presented their findings on nuclear power and its potential future. We got to hear about the ethical side of nuclear power, in what way nuclear power plants are megaprojects and about the entanglement of the industry with the military concerning nuclear in the UK. With our presentation on the risk of warming rivers in a warming climate, we rounded up the theoretical discussions from the morning with case studies from the Rhine, the Elbe and the Danube.

Nuclear Power in Times of Climate Change and the Water Risks Around It – Environmental History Now

Sofia Jonsson , 2022-11-14

Alicia Gutting is one of three doctoral students, active in the ERC-project Nuclearwaters at the Division and supervised by prof. Per Högselius. In the thesis „The Nuclear Rhine“ she is researching transnational nuclear risk perception in Austria, Switzerland, France and Germany from the 1960s to 2018. In November the Environmental History Now blog published a text by Alicia on nuclear power, climate change and water risks focusing geographically on the Rhine river. Read an extract below, and get the link to the full text.

Low water levels at sunset, Upper Rhine in Karlsruhe Maxau (2018, next to the Rhine bridge between Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate). Photo by Alicia Gutting.

When I decided to write my PhD thesis on the history of the nuclear Rhine in the summer of 2018, the front pages of the newspapers were dominated by news of the record summer and that several nuclear power plants on the Rhine had to be shut down. Headlines focused on the topics of the low water level of the Rhine and to what extent the use of cooling water can affect flora and fauna, but also the danger posed by a lack of cooling water for the operation of nuclear power plants. By then, I had already planned to take a closer look at the effects of heat waves on the operation of nuclear power plants. In the course of my research, I found out that while heat waves are a problem, the thermal load on water bodies caused by the recirculation of cooling water is an equally pressing issue.

The Rhine River basin is, in relation to its flow per watershed, the most thermally polluted river basin globally mainly due to nuclear power plants. Thermoelectric power plants such as coal and nuclear power plants are major drivers of thermal pollution. Even though the European Union has set a limit of three degrees Celsius, the limit is exceeded by five degrees Celsius every year. The majority of thermal excess heat comes from nuclear and coal power plants that were built in the 1970s and 1980s.[1]

At the end of the 1960s, a planning boom began in the countries along the Rhine. Switzerland was one of the countries that wanted to roll out nuclear power in a big way and even slowly turned away from its role as the pioneer of hydropower. In addition, Germany and France also wanted to use the water resources of the Rhine for cooling purposes, which quickly led to conflicts on the fair distribution of cooling water. Switzerland, France, Germany, and the Netherlands planned to build roughly around twenty-five nuclear power plants in the Rhine River basin (including the Aare and the Moselle), which would have made the Rhine one of the most nuclearized river basins in the world.[2] Especially problematic was that energy companies were tempted to build nuclear power plants without external cooling systems as experts deemed the water resources of the Rhine to be sufficient.

In Germany, nuclear accidents hardly played a role in the early risk perception of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. This is because the broad public knowledge about the extreme effects of a nuclear accident was almost non-existent. Instead, the focus was on the immediate effects of nuclear power plants that were unavoidable during operation, such as thermal pollution of water bodies. It was also in these early years that water management authorities were the most vocal administrative opponents of nuclear energy. Political supporters of nuclear energy tried to counteract the opposition by handing over water competences to the Federal Ministry of Atomic Energy. However, this decision did not lead to the desired decrease in criticism. In the 1970s, criticism regarding water became even louder when it came to the thermal pollution of the Rhine and the Weser.[3]

Source: Nuclear Power in Times of Climate Change and the Water Risks Around It – Environmental History Now.

The rise and fall of the Nord Stream pipeline: a brief history (part 2: the fall)

Sofia Jonsson , 2022-10-24

The rise and fall of the Nord Stream pipeline: a brief history (part 2: the fall)

In summer 2011 laying of the first Nord Stream 1 pipe was completed. Italian pipe-laying vessels did the job. The second of the two Nord Stream 1 pipes followed a year later.

After Nord Stream 1’s inauguration the debate about it lost momentum for some time. The pipeline apparently operated smoothly.

The debate resurfaced in June 2015, when Gazprom and five European energy companies announced their agreement to build Nord Stream 2. The deal was very controversial due to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and support to separatist military forces in Donetsk and Luhansk.

A bad omen for the future came in early November 2015, when an unmanned underwater vehicle was found on the Baltic Sea floor, off the Swedish island of Öland, just next to one of the two Nord Stream I pipes. It was loaded with explosives.

The Swedish Armed Forces later confirmed that it was a Swedish military vehicle. It had gone astray during a military exercise held elsewhere in the Baltic Sea several months earlier. This was in the midst of the European refugee crisis and the event didn’t make many headlines.

There was a fierce debate about whether Nord Stream 2 was actually needed. Critics noted EU gas demand, after half a century of rapid growth, had reached a plateau level and even seemed to be set for decline. No future growth in demand was expected. So why build a new pipeline?

Proponents of Nord Stream countered by pointing out that natural gas had a key role to play in the European energy transition: Russian or not, natural gas was a flexible source of electricity that could compensate for irregularities in wind and solar electricity production.

Proponents of Nord Stream 2 also pointed to another critical trend: internal West European gas production was declining helplessly, especially in the Netherlands. Internal EU production collapsed during the 2010s, falling by nearly two-thirds (!). Who would cover the deficit?

The EU Commission’s answer was: “Let the market decide!” Since Russia offered the cheapest gas, its exports increased massively in the increasingly liberalized EU gas market. Russia’s share of EU imports climbed from 31% in 2010 to 40% in 2016 and then stayed on that level.

Over time, this growing Russian dominance made EU agencies and national governments increasingly suspicious (while gas companies remained happy). The EU commission changed its mind about Nord Stream 2.

There were also critics on the other side of the Atlantic. Already the Obama administration lobbied against Nord Stream 2. This served two purposes: preventing Russian geopolitical influence in NATO member states and boosting US shale gas exports to Europe.

In the meantime preparations for laying Nord Stream 2 started. Several Swedish coastal municipalities wished to become involved in the project logistics. The Swedish Foreign Ministry sought to prevent them, but in vain.

Starting in October 2017, 52,000 Nord Stream 2 pipes were brought to the port of Karlshamn in southern Sweden, for temporary storage. This meant a welcome additional source of income for the Swedes. In 2018 the pipes started to be lowered into the Baltic Sea.

Then, Donald Trump stepped up the drama by imposing sanctions on companies that were involved in planning and constructing Nord Stream 2.

in December 2019 Allseas, a pipelaying company contracted by Nord Stream 2, gave in to US pressure. It abandoned the project, pulled out its vessel and moved it to Kristiansand in southern Norway.

This could not stop the project. It merely delayed it. Nord Stream 2 contracted a Russian pipelaying vessel and completed construction in September 2021. An intense struggle followed: should the pipeline be allowed to become operational or not?

Completion of Nord Stream 2 coincided with federal elections in Germany, which brought to power not only the Social Democrats, but also the Liberals and the Greens, which were much more critical to Russian gas than Angela Merkel’s resigning government.

The decisive blow to the project came with Germany’s decision to suspend certification of the pipeline on 22 February 2022, as a punishment on Russia for recognizing Donetsk and Luhansk as independent republics.

Two days later, Russia launched a full-scale military assault on the rest of Ukraine, including Kiev. Nord Stream 2 filed for bankruptcy already on 1 March 2022.

In June the gas flows along Nord Stream 1 were reduced by 60% “due to renovation work” and in July it was totally shut down for maintenance. EU governments started to prepare for a winter without Russian gas.

A turbine from one of the compressor stations was sent to Canada for technical overhaul, enabled by an exception from the sanctions. After 10 days this turbine was back in operation and the gas flow resumed, though only at the previous 40% level.

A week later the flow was reduced again to a mere 20% due to “technical problems” with one of the turbines. Shortly afterwards, on 31 August, the pipeline was fully closed due to “repair works” and more “technical problems” (Gazprom cited an oil leak in one of the turbines).

Then, on 26 September, several leaks in all four subsea pipelines were found in the Danish and Swedish economic zones. It quickly became clear that it was a result of violent sabotage. It remains to be seen whether Nord Stream 1 and 2 will ever go into operation again.

• • •

What will happen to the Ågesta Nuclear Power Plant?

Achim Klüppelberg , 2022-08-15

Our colleague Anna Storm (now professor of technology and social change at Linköping University) has been involved in an intellectual exchange with the state-owned power company Vattenfall about the future of Ågesta Nuclear Power Plant in the context of its decommissioning in the magazine NyTeknik.

In Anna’s first article from 28 July 2022, she displays her consternation by the fact that Sweden’s first nuclear power plant (1963-1974) was already being dismantled, disregarding demands for making this cultural heritage of modern Sweden accessible to a wider audience via the cooperation with musea and heritage scholars. Especially in the case of the iconic control room, Anna objected to the practice of the company.

Five days later, on 02 August, Melker Drottz, the acting head of decommissioning of Ågestaverket from Vattenfall, published a response to Anna in the same magazine. In his eyes, Vattenfall did simply, what they were legally obliged to do. Since the control room, among other facilities, would be an irradiated environment, he objected to Anna’s wishes for creating a cultural venue from this heritage site. Furthermore, he pointed to the various other ways, Vattenfall would contribute to the memory of the Ågesta plant.

One day later, on 03 August, Anna responded by stating that future generations also need the actual sites as witnesses of their cultural history. In her understanding, photographs and oral stories will not be enough.

Here are full citations for this exchange:

Storm, Anna: “Ågestaverket – en unik kärnkraftsanläggning slängd i containrar”, in: NyTeknik, 2022-07-28, https://www.nyteknik.se/opinion/agestaverket-en-unik-karnkraftsanlaggning-slangd-i-containrar-7035908 [2022-08-09].

Drottz, Melker (operativ chef för nedmontering och rivning av Ågestaverket, Vattenfall): Replik “Vi är skyldiga att montera ned Ågestaverket”, in: NyTeknik, 2022-08-02, https://www.nyteknik.se/opinion/vi-ar-skyldiga-att-montera-ned-agestaverket-7035985 [2022-08-09].

Storm, Anna: Slutreplik “Det hade varit möjligt att behålla kontrollrummet från Ågestaverket”, in: NyTeknik, https://www.nyteknik.se/opinion/det-hade-varit-mojligt-att-behalla-kontrollrummet-fran-agestaverket-7036016 [2022-08-09].

NUCLEARWATERS Seminar: Ecological entanglements, nuclear ruptures, and the affective intimacies of Bishnoi resistance

Sofia Jonsson , 2022-04-04

The Nuclearwaters project is hosting the third seminar in its Nuclearwaters Seminar Series this term. This time we have the pleasure of welcoming Sonali Huria, who is going to be speaking about the relationship of the Bishnoi community with water in nuclear India.

Time: Fri 2022-04-08 13.15 – 15.00

Video link: https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/67164895000

Language: English

Lecturer: Sonali Huria, associated scholar, Science, Technology and Gender Studies, FAU, Erlangen-Nürnberg

Ecological entanglements, nuclear ruptures, and the affective intimacies of Bishnoi resistance

For the Bishnoi, among the earliest eco-conservationist communities in the Indian subcontinent, encounters with the atom have been encounters of colossal ruptures. Their histories, geographies, religious intimacies, and more-than-human worlds have collided with India’s nuclear trajectories at two distinct sites – first, in the arid deserts of Pokharan, Rajasthan where India conducted its atomic tests, forcing the Bishnoi into the ranks of the Global Hibakusha (Jacobs 2022), and, more recently, in Fatehabad, Haryana where the Indian government is setting up a massive 2,800MWe nuclear plant comprising four ‘indigenous’ CANDU-type Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors of 700 MWe each.

While to the Bishnoi, water represents a vital element in the multispecies assemblage in which the human, nonhuman, and the divine all come together in an entangled relational ecology of reverence, kinship, nurturing, ethics, and reciprocity, the proposed nuclear plant, to be set up over the Fatehabad branch of the Bhakra Canal, the lifeline of this predominantly agricultural region, threatens to usurp and drain away its dense material embeddedness within the Bishnoi ecology.

This presentation will seek to tease out such multiple layers of material embeddedness of water within Bishnoi lifeworlds, in the contestation between the Indian state, besotted with the nuclear age, and the intimacies of ecological subjects committed to protecting their sacred material worlds, and, to bring these entangled flows from the nuclearized Bishnoi heartland to the Nuclear Waters seminar. (Visit the Nuclear Waters project page)

Reference

Jacobs, Robert A. (2022). Nuclear Bodies: The Global Hibakusha. Yale University Press

Dr Sonali Huria is the 2020-21 Fellow, Takagi Fund for Citizen Science, Japan and an associated scholar, Science, Technology and Gender Studies, FAU, Erlangen-Nürnberg. She has worked for over a decade in the field of human rights research, teaching, advocacy, and investigation at India’s National Human Rights Commission, and completed her PhD in 2020 from Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi. Her doctoral research involved an exploration of the encounters of grassroots movements in India with the technopolitical trajectories of and imaginaries surrounding India’s nuclear modernity, and the brutalities unleashed by the postcolonial nuclear obsessions of the world’s largest democracy. She has written extensively on the political, social, environmental, and human rights concerns surrounding India’s nuclear sector for news portals, magazines, and newspapers in South Asia and beyond. She also co-edits DiaNuke.org, a popular resource space on nuclear disarmament and nuclear energy issues.

Melina Antonia Buns joins the Division!

Achim Klüppelberg , 2022-01-24

Nuclear-historical research at KTH is expanding! We are happy to announce that Melina Antonia Buns has joined us as a visiting post-doc researcher, based on a collaboration between NUCLEARWATERS, KTH’s Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment and The Greenhouse at the University of Stavanger. Melina was recently awarded a major research grant from the Norwegian Research Council, which will enable her to spend two years at KTH. The grant is linked to her project “Nuclear Nordics: Radioactive Waste Spatialities, Materialities and Societies in the Nordic Region, 1960s-1980s”. Read more about this exciting research endeavor at the website of the Norwegian Research Council.

Melina Antonia Buns at her new KTH office

Melina holds a BA in history, art history and Scandinavian studies from the University of Vienna, an MA in International and Global History and a PhD in history from the University of Oslo. In June 2021 she successfully defended her thesis “Green Internationalists: Nordic Environmental Cooperation, 1967-1988”. At KTH she will make use of her expertise in Nordic environmental history while moving into the nuclear-historical field.

Melina will present her research project “Nuclear Nordics” in the NUCLEARWATERS seminar series very soon. The seminar was originally scheduled for 26 January, but has been postponed. We will soon be back with a new date and time.

This text was originally published by Per Högselius on nuclearwaters.eu on 21 January 2022.

Studies

Research

Collaboration

About KTH

Library

Upcoming Final seminar: Streams, Steams, and Steels: A History of Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Risk Governance (1850-1990)

Like this:

Glad påsk with a new travelogue!

Like this:

Mark your Calendars for Scientific Prediction in the 20th Century and From Water to Nuclear to Catastrophe

Scientific Prediction in the 20th Century: Mapping Ideas, Institutions and Practices Across the Cold War Divide

From Water to Nuclear to Catastrophe: How Soviet Hydro-nuclear Entanglements Shaped Dangerous Technocratci Safety Culture.

Like this:

New publication: What is good drinking water?: 41 Years of risk perception on water quality in the vicinity of the Nuclear Research Centre Karlsruhe, 1956–1997

Abstract [en]

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages

Keywords [en]

Like this:

Breathing Swiss air – A research stay at the University of Bern

Like this:

Nuclear Power in Times of Climate Change and the Water Risks Around It – Environmental History Now

Like this:

The rise and fall of the Nord Stream pipeline: a brief history (part 2: the fall)

Like this:

What will happen to the Ågesta Nuclear Power Plant?

Like this:

NUCLEARWATERS Seminar: Ecological entanglements, nuclear ruptures, and the affective intimacies of Bishnoi resistance

Like this:

Melina Antonia Buns joins the Division!

Like this: