| 1. |
- Evens, Siegfried
(författare)
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Streams, Steams, and Steels : A Transnational History of Risk Regulation in Nuclear Power Plants (1850–1985)
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Water is essential to produce nuclear energy and prevent nuclear disasters. As light water reactors are increasingly seen as a solution to achieving a sustainable energy transition and battling the climate crisis, it is more important than ever to investigate the risks of using water for nuclear power production. However, the reactor technologies that manage all that water and steam – pressure vessels, steam generators, pipes, valves, and pumps – have not received much attention from historians, STS scholars, and risk sociologists. Therefore, this dissertation aims to study the risk regulation of these crucial reactor components and materials by national and international actors from a historical perspective.Relying on archival sources from the US, France, Sweden, and multiple international organisations, as well as on interviews, this dissertation aims to write a new, longue durée history of nuclear safety, going back to the origins of water and steam risk management in the nineteenth century. Such a historical perspective on nuclear risk regulation reveals two important insights. Firstly, in the 1950s and 1960s, the usage of water and steam technologies in nuclear reactors revealed new types of risks. These ‘ambi-nuclear risks’ are a hybrid of older steam risks, such as leaks, breaks, and explosions, and new risks of radiation and contamination. Secondly, between the 1950s and 1980s, new regimes were created in the US, France, and Sweden to regulate these risks. Initially, during the 1950s, non-nuclear steam regulations were applied directly to the first nuclear power plants. Yet, as power plants increased in size, accidents occurred, and nuclear technologies became increasingly controversial, ‘ambi-nuclear risk regimes’ were created to adapt or ‘nuclearise’ the older regulations. They included new safety measures and methodologies that were directed toward preventing radiation releases, but at the same time they mobilised older technologies, institutions, knowledges, and ideas related to thermal hydraulics and metallurgy. Ambi-nuclear risk regimes were shaped by a wide variety of historical actors through negotiating boundaries between ‘nuclear’ and ‘non-nuclear’ knowledges, components, risks, and regulations. Private or semi-private engineering associations played a particularly vital role in this.This thesis thus shows how nuclear safety as we know it today became nuclear as the result of a transnational long-term process that was greatly determined by much older non-nuclear water and steam risks. The results of this dissertation contribute to ongoing scholarly debates on risk, nuclear technologies, and water in fields like History of Technology, Environmental3History, STS, and Risk Sociology. Most importantly, the thesis expands the time frame in which nuclear risk has traditionally been studied. It challenges dominant conceptions of nuclear power as innovative or exceptional, instead connecting questions of nuclear risk to longer historical developments in water management and industrialisation. This demonstrates the importance of historical contingency for understanding risk and preventing (nuclear) disasters.
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| 2. |
- Gutting, Alicia, 1986-, et al.
(författare)
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Atomic Rivers : The (Un)sustainability of Nuclear Power in an Age of Climate Change
- 2024
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Ingår i: Energy Policy. - 0301-4215 .- 1873-6777.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The sustainability of nuclear energy amidst climate change and environmental regulations poses critical challenges, particularly in European contexts where major rivers like the Rhine, the Danube, and the Rhône are experiencing declining water levels and rising temperatures. We scrutinise the operational difficulties nuclear power plants encounter, arising from insufficient cooling water and environmental mandates that prevent the discharge of overly warm cooling water into rivers. These conditions have led to partial or full shutdowns of nuclear facilities across France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, Romania, and other countries, emphasising the tension between nuclear energy as a low-carbon solution and its environmental impacts. We explore the concept of sustainability in the context of riverine nuclear energy from three angles: technical challenges posed by water scarcity, regulatory constraints on cooling water temperatures, and the ecological impacts of thermal discharges on riverine ecosystems. In our analysis we reveal an emerging contradiction between ensuring electricity supply and adhering to environmental protections, highlighting the need for a reevaluation of nuclear energy's role in a future sustainable energy landscape.
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| 3. |
- Gutting, Alicia, 1986-
(författare)
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The Nuclear Rhine : Conflict and Cooperation in a Transnational River Basin
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The water and nuclear energy sectors are intricately and interdependently entwined. In this thesis, the relationship between water and nuclear energy is being examined specifically in the Rhine River basin from the 1950s to the contemporary period. Through a series of four research articles, this work scrutinises the complex interaction between nuclear development and water management, emphasising the critical yet often undervalued role of water in the nuclear energy sector. This investigation gains particular relevance in the context of climate change, which heightens the environmental impact of nuclear power as well as the vulnerability of nuclear power plants to extreme weather events, such as heatwaves.A central thesis argument is the contemporary societal undervaluation of water for nuclear energy, contrasted with its more recognised value in the mid-20th century. This shift in perception is especially pertinent as extreme weather conditions underscore the need to reassess water's worth. Employing a transnational and interconnected approach, this research challenges conventional national narratives and underscores the significance of cooperative and shared resource management along the Rhine. This paradigm serves as a blueprint for future transnational collaborations, particularly within the European sphere.The analysis explores various facets of water-nuclear-interactions, including the selection of riverine sites for nuclear power plants, the challenges and conflicts arising from these decisions, and specific case studies on risk perception, water diplomacy, and the sustainability of nuclear power in the age of climate change. These discussions are not only rooted in historical analysis but also engage with contemporary debates about the environmental sustainability of nuclear energy and its role in a future marked by increasing climatic uncertainties.In summary, this thesis offers a novel perspective on the dynamic relationship between water and nuclear energy, advocating for a renewed appreciation of water as a crucial but limited resource. It highlights the necessity for sustainable, forward-thinking approaches to nuclear energy development. As we confront the challenges of climate change, the insights from this research present valuable lessons on the importance of transnational cooperation, comprehensive risk assessment, and the meticulous consideration of environmental impacts in shaping future energy policy. Thus, this work illuminates the past while providing guidance for navigating the complex interdependencies between water and nuclear energy in the future.
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| 4. |
- Heymann, Matthias, et al.
(författare)
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Challenging Europe: Technology, Environment, and the Quest for Resource Security
- 2020
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Ingår i: Technology and Culture. - : Project Muse. - 0040-165X .- 1097-3729. ; 61:1, s. 282-294
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Since the nineteenth century, access to and the development of natural resources became an important element of national and international politics. Resource security emerged as an issue vital to national security; and resource competition and crises gave rise to international tensions as well as to technological innovation and new modes of transnational cooperation.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Yao, Dazhi, et al.
(författare)
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Transforming the Narrative of the History of Chinese Technology : East and West in Bertrand Gille’s Histoire des Techniques
- 2015
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Ingår i: Acta Baltica Historiae et Philosophiae Scientarum. - : Baltic Association of the History and Philosophy of Science. - 2228-2009 .- 2228-2017. ; 3:1, s. 9-26
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In his magisterial The History of Techniques, the French historian of technology Bertrand Gille (1920–1980) constructs a Western-centric world history of technology based on a technical systems approach. in doing so, he is forced to deal with the tension between Western-centric approaches and the conventional narrative of the history of chinese technology. in order to avoid internal contradictions within his world history framework, Gille reconfigures the historical narrative about ancient China’s great inventions, arguing against unidirectional technology transfer and introducing the alternative notions of technological concomitant evolution and technological exchange. While Gille integrates ancient china into the general technological development of the world, he treats china as a blocked technical system and as “the other” in the West’s technological self-perception.
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| 7. |
- Arzyutov, Dmitry V.
(författare)
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Reassembling the Environmental Archives of the Cold War : Perspectives from the Russian North
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- To what extent the environmental history of the Arctic can move beyond thedivide between Indigenous peoples and newcomers or vernacular and academicways of knowing? The present dissertation answers this question by developing thenotion of an environmental archive. Such an archive does not have particular referenceto a given place but rather it refers to the complex network that marks the relationsbetween paper documents and human and non-human agencies as they are able towork together and stabilise the conceptualisation of a variety of environmentalobjects. The author thus argues that the environment does not only containinformation about the past but just like any paper (or audio and video) archive isable to produce it through the relational nature of human-environment interactions.Through the analysis of five case studies from the Russian North, the reader isinvited to go through various forms of environmental archives which in turnembrace histories of a number of disciplines such as palaeontology, biology,anthropology, and medicine. Every case or a “layer” is presented here as a contactzone where Indigenous and academic forms of knowledge are not opposed to eachother but, on the contrary, are able to interact and consequently affect the globaldiscussions about the Russian Arctic. This transnational context is pivotal for all thecases discussed in the dissertation. Moreover, by putting the Cold War with itstensions between two superpowers at the chronological center of the present work,the author aims to reveal the multidimensionality of in situ interactions with, forinstance, the paleontological remains or the traces of all-terrain vehicles and theirinvolvement into broader science transnational cooperations and competitions. As aresult, the heterogeneous archives allow us to reconsider the environmental historyof the Russian North and the wider Arctic and open a new avenue for future researchtranscending the geopolitical and epistemic borders of knowledge production.
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| 8. |
- Gutting, Alicia, 1986-, et al.
(författare)
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Geographies of Nuclear Energy : An Introduction
- 2024
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Ingår i: Historical Social Research. - 0172-6404. ; 49:1, s. 7-31
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- »Geographien der Kernenergie. Eine Einführung«. Nuclear energy has long attracted the attention of scholars in the humanities and social sciences. With this HSR Special Issue, we would like to push the scholarly frontier by highlighting the geographies of nuclear energy in the past and present. Nuclear energy is inherently interwoven with geography. We argue that to fully appreciate and grasp nuclear energy’s geographical and spatial dimensions, approaches from a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields are needed. This special issue thus includes contributions from history, geography, political science, technology assessment, science and technology studies (STS), and other fields. This article introduces this topic by outlining the state of the art of the geographies of nuclear energy and discusses different conceptual frameworks of how to understand nuclear-space interactions. In addition, the individual articles in this issue are briefly presented here and discussed within the research context. The articles themselves cover the geography of nuclear energy from beginning to end: from the mining of uranium, the planning and construction of nuclear power plants, the formation of public resistance, and the cooling of nuclear energy sites as well as the evolution of research centres and, last but not least, the political control and storage of nuclear waste. The collection of articles published here were part of the double session “Geographies of Nuclear Energy,” presented at the RGSIBG Annual International Conference 2021, and of the session “Atomic Rivers,” presented at the ESEH Conference 2023.
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| 9. |
- Avango, Dag, 1965-, et al.
(författare)
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Colonizing the poles
- 2015
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Ingår i: Seminar : the monthly symposium. - New Delhi : Seminar Publications. - 0037-1947.
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 10. |
- Balmaceda, Margarita, et al.
(författare)
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Rethinking energy materialities in the shadow of Russia's war on Ukraine
- 2024
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Ingår i: Energy Research & Social Science. - : Elsevier BV. - 2214-6296 .- 2214-6326. ; 117
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article revisits the topic of energy materiality against the backdrop of Russia's war on Ukraine. It examines how views on energy materiality have had to change considering the war; how historical, political science/IR, anthropological, and geographical approaches to war and energy systems may provide insights into the continuities and discontinuities in energy materialities facing Europe and the rest of the world; and what research agendas in this space could look like moving forward. A war that was unexpected by many has led to many unexpected outcomes, foremost a remarkable degree of adaptability in those places dependent on the energy supply and value chains impacted by the conflict. Nevertheless, from issues ranging from climate change to fertilizers—therefore, truly global in scope—this war has wide-ranging implications for energy materiality, and how social scientists may seek to understand it.
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