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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2021

The Experience of Nuclear Waste

Romain J. Garcier

Résumé

Radioactive waste stands apart in waste studies: it seems to belong to a class of its own, very remote from everyday experiences of waste. Its material properties appear outlandish and threatening. When radioactive waste seeps into daily life and experiences, it is often through the lens of bodily and environmental contamination. The 1987 Goianna incident in Brazil is often cited: 97 grams of waste caesium chloride encased in a steel capsule killed four people, contaminated more than 200 others and created lasting environmental pollution (M. Anjos et al. 2002). Most people, however, rarely see and never touch radioactive waste (Gregson 2012). It originates in industrial and scientific environments that aren't easily accessible to enquiry. It is then not such a surprise that, with the possible exception of uranium mining waste, contemporary waste studies often invoke radioactive waste rather than engage with it. In the literature (e.g. (O’Brien 2008), radwaste is used as a contrasting element that stretches the remits of waste itself. Radioactive waste is the great Other : waste with a capital W, waste that can't be experienced. In this chapter, I provide an overview of existing social science literature on radioactive waste and argue that dominant approaches frame radioactive waste as a material beyond experience – be it as a chthonian material; as a policy object; or as a technopolitical construct. I will show that challenging the otherness of radioactive waste opens up to a fourth approach, that of radioactive waste as lived experience. The experience of waste, I argue, is useful to subject radioactive waste to the same type of critical scrutiny as other forms of waste and recover its political dimension. To this effect, I will draw on the account of a four-day training course for radwaste managers that I attended. During the course, managers from various companies exposed the problems they encountered in their daily practice of managing radioactive waste, and expected the course conveners to provide solutions. These testimonies illustrate how waste managers seek to align their practices with the complex demands of the management system and turn waste into an object of experience mediated by technical procedures, information systems and personal know how.
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Dates et versions

hal-03467583 , version 1 (06-12-2021)

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Romain J. Garcier. The Experience of Nuclear Waste. Zsuzsa Gille; Josh Lepawsky. The Routledge Handbook of Waste Studies, Routledge, 2021, 9780367894207. ⟨10.4324/9781003019077-14⟩. ⟨hal-03467583⟩
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