Nuclear Portraits: Communities, the Environment, and Public Policy 9781442617339

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NUCLEAR PORTRAITS Communities, the Environment, and Public Policy

In the twenty-first century, nuclear energy has become a hotly contested issue. In the face of climate change, it has been promoted by nuclear energy producers as an alternative form of energy. However, past environmental and health damage continues to affect communities around the world. In Nuclear Portraits, scholars from Europe, North America, and Asia demonstrate the complexity, controversy, contradictions, and dangers that surround many aspects of the nuclear industry. The resulting local, regional, national, and international concerns that arise, such as the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima, call into question the optimism espoused by the nuclear industry. We live in a world with more nuclear nations than ever before, and energy policy is central to the mounting global concern about climate change. The innovative essays found in Nuclear Portraits will open your eyes to the realities of nuclear energy, thereby allowing you to decide for yourself which side you are on. laurel sefton macdowell is professor emerita in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. Her prior work on environmental history has been recognized by the Ontario Historical Society and the Canadian Historical Association.

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Nuclear Portraits Communities, the Environment, and Public Policy

EDITED BY LAUREL SEFTON MACDOWELL

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press 2017 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-1-4426-4861-6 (cloth)  ISBN 978-1-4426-2629-4 (paper)

♾Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Nuclear portraits : communities, the environment, and public policy / edited by Laurel Sefton MacDowell. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4426-4861-6 (cloth). – ISBN 978-1-4426-2629-4 (paper) 1. Nuclear industry – Social aspects.  2.  Nuclear industry – Environmental aspects.  3. Nuclear industry – Government policy.  I.  MacDowell, Laurel Sefton, 1947–, editor HD9698.A2N82 2017  338.4’762148  C2016-907574-5

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

Funded by the Financé par le Government gouvernement du Canada of Canada

Contents

List of Figures  vii Acknowledgments  ix Abbreviations  xi Introduction 3 laurel sefton macdowell

1 Keep It Secret: The Environmental Effects of Nuclear Armament in the Soviet Union and the United States  24 tuomas räsänen

2 The Face of the Earth, the Shadow of the Bomb: Nuclear War and the First International Environmental Conference, “Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth,” Princeton, New Jersey, 1955  63 fred waage

3 Experts at Risk: Military Secrets and Italian Radioecology around the US Naval Nuclear Installation on La Maddalena  94 davide orsini

4 The Calvert Cliffs Campaign, 1967–1971: Protecting the Public’s Right to Knowledge  121 andrew ramey

5 From Pripyat to Paris, from Grassroots Memories to Globalized Knowledge Production: The Politics of Chernobyl Fallout  149 susanne bauer , karena kalmbach , and tatiana   kasperski

vi Contents

6 Permanence, Justice, and Nuclear Waste at Prairie Island  190 james w . feldman

7 Nuclear Waste Management and Nuclear Power: A Tale of Two Essential US Department of Energy Sites in Idaho and New Mexico  217 michael greenberg , henry mayer , charles w . powers , and david kosson

8 Port Hope Burning: The Trail of Eldorado, the Uranium Medical Research Centre, and Community Tension over Scientific Uncertainty  238 david elijah bell and marissa zappora bell

9 “Nuclear Gypsies” in Fukushima before and after 3/11  274 paul jobin

Contributors  312

Figures

1.1 Nuclear waste disposal at the Idaho National Laboratory  30 1.2 Karl Marx Street in Muslyumova village near Techa River  48 2.1 An informal moment at the Symposium with Marston Bates, John Dodds, and Lewis Mumford  82 3.1 ENEA Centre for the Study of Marine Environments personnel and Italian Navy divers collecting samples  102 3.2 CNEN and ISS radiometric surveillance system in La Maddalena  108 6.1 Protesters against the proposed storage of radioactive waste at the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant  192 7.1 Location of key US Department of Energy (DOE) sites  218 7.2 Idaho National Laboratory (INL) site  219 7.3 Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), New Mexico  221

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Acknowledgments

The editor and authors would like to thank Len Husband and all the staff of the University of Toronto Press for their cooperation and their work on this book.

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Abbreviations

ABCC ACRO AEC AECL AFL-CIO AIM BEIR BGE BPF CAMEN CARE CBF CENG CEPA CEPCO CEPN CIS CNEN CNIC CND CNR CNSC CRDP

Atomic Bomb Casualties Commission (United States) Association pour le contrôle de la radioactivité dans l’ouest (France) Atomic Energy Commission (United States) Atomic Energy of Canada Limited American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations American Indian Movement biological effects of ionizing radiation Baltimore Gas & Electric Belarusian Popular Front Centre for the Military Applications of Nuclear Energy (Italy) Citizens Alliance for Reliable Energy (Minnesota, US) Chesapeake Bay Foundation Constellation Energy Nuclear Group Chesapeake Environmental Protection Association Chugoku Electric Power Company Centre d'étude sur l'Évaluation de la Protection dans le domaine Nucléaire (France) Commonwealth of Independent States National Committee of Nuclear Energy (Italy) Citizens’ Nuclear Information Centre (Japan) Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (United Kingdom) National Research Committee (Italy) Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission Chernobyl Recover and Development Program

xii Abbreviations

CRIIRAD

Commission de recherche et d’information indépendantes sur la radioactivité (France) DOE Department of Energy (United States) DWR Department of Water Resources (Maryland, US) EAR excess attributable risk Électricité de France EDF EIS environmental impact statement ENEA Nuclear and Alternative Energy (1982–7); now National Agency for New Technologies, Energy, and Sustainable Economic Development (Italy) Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (Italian oil and gas company) ENI EPA Environmental Protection Agency (United States) Environmental Quality Board (United States) EQB ERDA Energy Research and Development Administration excess relative risk ERR FARE Families against Radiation Exposure FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation GE General Electric IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency ICP-MS inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry ICRP International Committee for Radiation Protection IGO intergovernmental organization IHI Ishikawajima INL Idaho National Laboratory ISFSI independent spent fuel storage installation ISRN Institut de radioprotection et de sûreté nucléaire (France) National Institute of Health (Italy) ISS JAEC Japan Atomic Energy Commission Kepco Kansai Electric Company LSS Life Span Study MEA Minnesota Energy Agency MECCA Minnesota Environmental Control Citizens’ Association Manhattan Engineering District MED MPCA Minnesota Pollution Control Agency NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (United States) North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO NEPA National Environmental Policy Act (United States) NGO non-governmental organization NIRG Nuclear International Research Group

Abbreviations xiii

NISA NPL NPP NRC

Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (Japan) National Priorities List nuclear power plant Nuclear Regulatory Commission (United States; the NRC had replaced the AEC in 1975) National Radiation Protection Board (United Kingdom) NRPB NSF National Science Foundation (United States) NSP Northern States Power (Company) NWF National Wildlife Federation (United States) NWPA Nuclear Waste Policy Act (United States) OSCE Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe PCI Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano) PHCHCC Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee PIC Prairie Island Coalition PSC Public Service Commission (Maryland, US) PUC Public Utilities Commission (United States) PWR pressurized water reactors Quad-C Calvert Cliffs Coordinating Committee RBMK Reaktor Bolshoĭ Moshchnosti Kanalnyĭ (Soviet Union) Royal Canadian Mounted Police RCMP RCT randomized clinical trial RECA Radiation Exposure Compensation Act RERF US-Japanese Radiation Effects Research Foundation SSHRC Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) Tepco Tokyo Electric Company UMRC Uranium Medical Research Centre UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNICEF United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund UNFPA United Nations Population Fund UNOCHA United Nations Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs UNSCEAR United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation WHO World Health Organization WIPP Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, New Mexico

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NUCLEAR PORTRAITS Communities, the Environment, and Public Policy

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Introduction laurel sefton macdowell

Nuclear Portraits: Communities, the Environment, and Public Policy is a collection of articles written from the perspective of the early twenty-first century, which thus far has revealed perilous international relations in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Africa in particular; the fear of future pandemics; the movement of refugees for political and environmental reasons; and the threat of rapid climate change resulting in increasingly severe weather events around the world. The future of the nuclear industry, particularly after the Fukushima disaster (discussed in the final chapter of this collection), will be affected by the state of the global economy and international relations. These original studies focus on the impact of the nuclear industry on people and their communities, on public health, and on the environment. They are informed by the history of the nuclear industry, which began with the American production of an atomic bomb. In 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, actions which ended World War II. Public opinion supported the decision but it remained controversial. The New Yorker decided to publish in its 31 August 1946 issue John Hersey’s long, moving essay “Hiroshima” about the effects of the atomic bomb on people in Japan. The magazine’s editors told its readers it did so “in the conviction that few of us have yet comprehended the all but incredible destructive power of this weapon, and that everyone might well take time to consider the terrible implications of its use.”1 The essay was later published as a book, which became a bestseller. For a short time the United States held a monopoly on nuclear weapons, which ended in 1951 when the Soviet Union tested its own bomb. Public responses to nuclear weapons changed several times over the

4  Laurel Sefton MacDowell

years. American expansion of its production of nuclear weapons initially took place in the context of the Cold War, which started at the end of World War II. It was an ideological conflict between capitalism and communism, and the Soviet Union perceived the American monopoly on atomic weapons as a threat. Its response was to acquire nuclear capability as quickly as possible, which it did partly through the use of espionage. As the arms race escalated, international relations were conducted on the basis of a balance of terror. The number of nuclear weapons grew rapidly, and military concerns were the priority in this arms race. From the beginning the military felt empowered by the new weapon and did tests to increase its power, but some scientists expressed concern about the atomic bomb and later the hydrogen bomb. Their fears and ongoing nuclear tests contributed to an anti-nuclear movement with its Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (1958), its Ban the Bomb logo, and many protests; since then opposition to nuclearism2 has continued to exist in various forms and in many countries. Thus fairly early in the Cold War, nuclear weapons and nuclear tests were contested. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis created widespread global fear of nuclear war. Also in 1962, Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring became a best seller and started many people thinking about the “modern age” in a more critical way. A growing public around the world pressured powers to end nuclear tests in the atmosphere through the Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963) and to slow the spread of nuclear weapons through a Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1968). There developed a close connection between the nuclear disarmament and environmental movements, as the name Greenpeace indicated; it was the name of a ship that in 1971 set sail from British Columbia to Amchitka Island in the Aleutians with a group of young Canadians and Americans who opposed American underground nuclear tests on the island. In an act of non-violent civil disobedience, they tried to stop the test, to the chagrin and rage of the American and later French nuclear interests. The world watched this modern-day David and Goliath battle nervously. Greenpeace did not stop the tests, but public opposition to further tests was so massive that in 1972 the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) announced it was abandoning the Amchitka Island test site. Greenpeace became a global environmental non-governmental organization (NGO).3 Meanwhile many communities in the United States started to engage in public battles with their own government to insist on new safer

Introduction 5

standards for waste storage and disposal in the nuclear weapons industry.4 Different techniques were used, but these local conflicts created friction between elite technical groups and community stakeholders’ groups. Sometimes, as at the Fernald production facility in Ohio, years of dialogue resulted in agreement on issues such as nuclear weapons cleanup. In other cases, conflict emerged as in the Hanford “downwinder” community in Washington, which was concerned about living with nuclear contamination; it verbally challenged the secretive, technocratic language and practices at Hanford.5 The global effects from the nuclear weapons industry caused increasing concern. With production of nuclear weapons in the United States of paramount concern, the AEC, its contractors, and the government at first thought little of their environmental impact, so issues of the health and safety of employees and communities, and the safe disposal of nuclear waste were low priorities. But in the 1970s, scientists and the public became more aware that nuclear waste disposal remained an unsolved problem globally and was related not only to the production of nuclear weapons but also to nuclear energy production. Producers of nuclear weapons (both corporate and military) were careless of employees’ and public health. In the name of national security, health and environmental safety was sacrificed, radiation pollution spiked as the result of atmospheric and underground tests, and “secrecy, deception and outright lies” characterized the nuclear weapons industry. As challenging as the situation was in the United States, it was worse in other nuclear states.6 As public health and environmental awareness grew in North America in the 1970s, the United States and Canada passed important health and safety legislation to raise standards in the workplace. The plight of uranium miners helped bring about such legislation.7 At the same time the expanding environmental movement led to important environmental legislation. One outcome in the United States was the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 to ensure the implementation of regulatory standards. Nuclear plants at first did not come under its influence, but when the public became increasingly aware of the dangers of radiation to human health and the totally inadequate management of nuclear waste in the American nuclear weapons industry, the AEC started to work with the EPA to begin to clean up nuclear waste or bury it. The EPA was backed by a determined growing environmental movement in the 1970s, but nationally the AEC “never was required to

6  Laurel Sefton MacDowell

monitor the environmental effects of the production of nuclear materials.”8 Only after the Department of Energy (DOE) succeeded the AEC in 1977, and there were hazardous waste scandals throughout the 1980s, did the EPA win authority to regulate the DOE’s hazardous waste disposal practices. Thus the American nuclear industry had to take account of the new environmental standards, not only because they were the law, but also because by then nuclear weapons production facilities in the United States had “illegally contaminated the environmental for over 50 years,” with the result that serious occupational health and safety issues had emerged in many communities.9 Also the public learned about near accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and about the disaster at Chernobyl in 1986. Indeed Chernobyl became “a pivotal moment in the erosion of secrecy.”10 By the 1980s the use of nuclear energy to create electricity was a growing part of the nuclear industry, which the anti-nuclear and environmental movements monitored warily. Since then, peace activists and environmentalists have continued to contest both nuclear weapons and nuclear energy because they see nuclearism as a threat to both human health and the protection of the environment. In opposing the nuclear industry in all its complexities, they also have been critical of the industry’s secrecy, which they see as a feature of totalitarian regimes and a threat to the democratic processes in many countries. Thus in the 1980s there was a convergence of Cold War anxieties, rising anti-nuclear social movements, and increased criticism of the ways in which the military, scientific, and governmental elites used rhetoric to obscure policies, promote hierarchies, and neutralize dissent. They particularly suppressed and distorted information about the risks of nuclear production, nuclear tests, and nuclear waste to the public. Citizens’ engagement with nuclear institutions was partially successful in that the technocrats began to recognize the necessity of some public participation in policy decisions.11 Several sites were contested. The Hanford site in the state of Washington produced plutonium and later was a waste storage facility until the late 1980s. In 1988 the facility was put on the National Priorities List (NPL) for the Superfund cleanup program out of concern about the contamination to the Colorado River, the water source for millions of people, and the threat of groundwater contamination. This conflict, like many others, revealed that the American government had ignored the treaty rights of indigenous peoples, whose land had become badly polluted.12 Rocky Flats manufactured plutonium triggers in Colorado, expanded its production in the 1960s,

Introduction 7

and was criticized increasingly from the 1970s for accidents, fires, and poor waste disposal, even by the DOE and EPA in the 1980s. In 1989, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided the site, which led to a grand jury, a plea bargain, and an 18.5 million dollar fine for its hazardous management of the site.13 Indeed the adverse social and environmental impacts of nuclearism between the 1940s and the 1990s in the American West led one author to describe those states as “geographies of sacrifice.” These highly militarized zones reflected economic imperialism by the military-industrial complex, involved racism towards indigenous peoples living there, and created a nuclear waste crisis that destroyed the environment and the health and safety of military personnel who observed nuclear tests and workers employed at nuclear sites.14 Public awareness about the dangers from the nuclear industry increased. These included the longstanding negative health and safety impacts on people in their communities, the dangers to human health by radiation and its long persistence in the environment, and the lack of a solution anywhere for the safe disposal of nuclear waste, which until that time had been stored in leaking barrels, strewn around nuclear centres, or dumped in waterways with little concern about future environmental degradation. In 1990, after a decade-long struggle to compensate Navajo uranium miners, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was passed, which gave “compassionate” payments to miners and downwinders whose health had been ruined by their work in or location near the nuclear industry.15 Pressure mounted around the world for a cleanup and reduction of nuclear weapons. After revelations of failures and scandals, the US DOE in the 1990s created an Office of Environmental Management to oversee the cleanup of nuclear facilities and to develop two repositories for permanent disposal of nuclear wastes.16 The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant opened in New Mexico in 1999, and the US Congress approved the much contested venue in Yucca Mountain, Nevada, in 2002, which received funding in 2011. The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future in 2012 expressed the urgent need to find a consolidated, geological repository, and it advised that any future facility should be developed by an independent organization with access to the Nuclear Waste Fund, but not subject to DOE political and financial control. Utilities without any designated long-term storage site for high-level radioactive waste continue to store their waste on-site at various nuclear facilities around the United States and in Canada.

8  Laurel Sefton MacDowell

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to the end of the decadeslong hostility between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact, and ended the Cold War. There was no need for huge caches of nuclear weapons, so both American and Russian arms arsenals were reduced under a 1992 US–Russia Test Ban Treaty, and the United States halted nearly all further production of nuclear weapons. Both countries extended the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and secured stockpiles from threats. Some states (Ukraine) voluntarily abandoned their nuclear weapon stores or their weapons development programs (South Africa).17 But the 1990s was also a time when the West learned more information about the Soviet Union’s waste management practices; its administration of the nuclear weapons industry and its waste disposal was even more careless and destructive of human life and the environment than the Americans’ practices. After the attack on the New York World Trade Center (9/11) in 2000, a new concern about “terrorists” emerged: the fear that terrorists might get hold of nuclear weapons or nuclear components in waste areas, especially as the number of nuclear nations increased. Also, the United States took an aggressive posture in international affairs. Recently, despite the end of the Cold War, Russia has also renewed a Cold War–like stance, particularly in the Ukraine, and the Middle East has become a region of war, with religious and ethnic conflict and a range of aggressive, violent, Islamic terrorist groups. Despite this perilous period of the early twenty-first century, historically the grassroots actions by people in different communities raised the issue of the nuclear industry’s impact on the health of individuals and on community environments. Local protest has increased information, dialogue, and public awareness of the nuclear industry, and has resulted in pressure for some protection and regulation. While the strategies and results of such grassroots actions differed from place to place, they nevertheless became important factors in changing situations, contributed to more informed publics, and inserted a democratic process into an industry that has been secretive, manipulative, and autocratic wherever it operates, and which, more often than not, has failed to protect the public.18 Since 1945, public knowledge about nuclear weapons and nuclear energy with “an industry history of cost overruns” has increased and has penetrated to a degree the wall of secrecy surrounding nuclear production in America, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere. Despite its enormous complexity and expense, the nuclear industry has expanded,

Introduction 9

sometimes illegally (India, Israel), so the number of nuclear nations is growing. Nuclear power development continues to be determined by countries’ governmental and corporate elites (United States, France, and Egypt). Nations are concerned about economic growth, political status, and technological progress, and tend not to employ risk assessment techniques or consider environmental sustainability factors consistently in their decision making. Historically governments have repeatedly ignored people drastically affected by the nuclear industry, such as aboriginal peoples in North America, uranium miners and nuclear workers, people living in downwind communities, and even victims of nuclear disasters. Practices such as radiation tests on the uninformed and threats to use nuclear weapons as part of foreign policy reflect the undemocratic and sometimes illegal policies of nuclear colonization by governments and corporations.19 Such actions are of concern to all of us. The history and growing public knowledge and wariness of nuclear weapons especially, but also of nuclear energy, by the early twentyfirst century has influenced this volume. The authors of the chapters in Nuclear Portraits are all independent scholars from different parts of the world who reflect global perspectives and the reach of scholars studying various aspects of the nuclear weapons and nuclear energy industries. These authors have been informed by the copious scholarship on all aspects of the nuclear industry. At the same time, some of them were drawn to the Nuclear International Research Group (NIRG), formed in 2009, as a forum for discussion and research, and they were all influenced by the latest nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. The chapters in this volume focus on particular incidents of various types (accidents and their effects, the decommissioning of nuclear plants, risk assessments, storage of nuclear waste), and they involve varied groups (workers, aboriginal peoples, scientists, anti-nuclear activists, and the public). Most focus on relations between companies producing elements for a nuclear military or energy industry and the local communities around such installations. The first two articles in the collection set the context for the other studies about different subjects from the 1960s to the present. Tuomas Räsänen’s chapter one, “Keep it Secret: The Environmental Effects of Nuclear Armament in the Soviet Union and the United States,” provides a comparative overview of nuclear armament and the arms race as it developed in the United States and the Soviet Union and escalated during the Cold War. It gives the reader a historical framework and

10  Laurel Sefton MacDowell

context for the other case studies. Räsänen is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Turku, Finland, who specializes in the history of marine sciences, environmental contamination, and environmentalism in the late twentieth century. Chapter one examines the environmental and health-related consequences of nuclear armament after World War II in the United States and the Soviet Union from the release of radioactive materials into the environment resulting from building nuclear bombs and warheads, and from accidents at nuclear sites. Nuclear wastes were buried in the ground or stored in ponds; the leaks from the waste storage tanks contaminated soil and groundwater. Atmospheric nuclear tests meant areas near test sites received recurrent pulses of radiation, and as global radiation levels multiplied, they adversely affected human health. Nuclear production was kept secret, and this culture of secrecy led to excessive damages to the environment and human health in both the Soviet Union and the United States. Despite fundamental differences in the political systems of the two superpowers, there were surprising similarities in their minimal practices of managing environmental safety. Their environmental contamination was concealed from ordinary people, who could not protect themselves from radiation exposure. While historians have written about the impacts of American nuclear weapons production, less has been written about the environmental history of nuclear armament in the Soviet Union. This article compares the safety policies of the two Cold War superpowers based on secondary sources and scientific reports. While this balance of terror developed from a conventional military framework that marveled at the power of the new weapons and ignored or underestimated other impacts, Räsänen stresses the impact that this nuclear race had on people and the environment, and explains how little was understood about nuclear weapons at the time, in part because their production was draped in secrecy in both countries. It is inconceivable in the twenty-first century to discuss the beginnings of the nuclear weapons industry as only American. Räsänen has instead outlined its emergence on both sides of the world and included an overview of the mismanagement of nuclear waste disposal and its disastrous effects on people and the environments near nuclear plants. The second chapter discusses “community,” in the sense of an intellectual community rather than a geographical community. Fred Waage, a professor of literature and language at East Tennessee State University, reveals how leading American scientists and intellectuals viewed

Introduction 11

the atomic era: they raised issues about nuclear weapons and early on expressed concerns about the potential for human and environmental damage. His chapter two, “The Face of the Earth, the Shadow of the Bomb: Nuclear War and the First International Environmental Conference, ‘Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth,’ Princeton, New Jersey, 1955,” discusses the reaction of an intellectual community to the early development of American nuclear capability. In covering an important conference of prominent intellectuals, including Lewis Mumford, Carl Sauer, and Marston Bates, Waage places the discussions from many disciplinary perspectives about human-engineered environmental change in the context of a detailed historical debate on nuclear development during ongoing nuclear tests in the early 1950s as America developed the hydrogen bomb. He notes that “nuclear fear” was widespread and was one motivation for the conference. An early “earthist” consciousness was apparent in this period between World War II and the emergence of the modern environmental movement in the 1970s. These two papers provide historical background for the others and contribute new research on the 1950s, the early Cold War period when the nuclear industry expanded, and on the environmental impact of the nuclear industry in the Soviet Union. Davide Orsini has a PhD in anthropology and history from the University of Michigan and is a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech University. His chapter three, “Experts at Risk: Military Secrets and Italian Radioecology around the US Naval Nuclear Installation on La Maddalena,” is a case study examining the local consequences in Italy of the American military employment of nuclear power during the Cold War. It illuminates important dimensions of the resulting complex relationships involving military secrecy, risk assessment, and public perceptions of nuclear hazards. It offers a historical analysis of the radioecological campaigns conducted by Italian state-sponsored agencies during the early 1970s in the La Maddalena Archipelago, off the shore of Sardinia, Italy. There, in 1972, the US Navy installed a base for fast-attack nuclear submarines to monitor Soviet activities in the Mediterranean Sea. La Maddalena became an official nuclear site, included in the national network of radiometric stations managed by the Italian National Committee of Nuclear Energy (CNEN) and the Superior Institute of Health (ISS), and it posed unique challenges for the Italian nuclear experts. The complex study of the atmospheric and environmental conditions of the

12  Laurel Sefton MacDowell

site entailed the collaboration of various specialists, but their work was limited by the regime of military secrecy regarding the technical characteristics and the operations of US submarines. This situation clearly affected not only the preparatory radioecological campaigns but also the monitoring activities in subsequent years, creating uncertainty about the environmental impact of the US naval presence both among experts and in the local community. Community pressure increased, particularly after the arrival of the US contingent and after the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and other anti-nuclear movements started a nation-wide campaign denouncing the risks of environmental pollution due to the operations of the nuclear submarines and from possible accidents. The analysis is based on archival material and oral interviews with Italian nuclear experts, local politicians, long-term inhabitants of La Maddalena, and retired US Navy servicemen. Andrew Ramey’s PhD in history is from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His chapter four, “The Calvert Cliffs Campaign, 1967–1971: Protecting the Public’s Right to Knowledge,” discusses a landmark court case, Calvert Cliffs Coordinating Committee v United States Atomic Energy Commission (1971), which Robert J. Duffy has called “the single most important decision in the history of the atomic energy program.”20 This case reshaped and strengthened US environmental and anti-nuclear politics by providing a legal precedent for citizen enforcement of the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Ramey investigates the citizens’ movement that brought the Calvert Cliffs case to court and highlights the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s (CBF) leading role in organizing local opposition to the AEC’s plans to dismiss NEPA as inapplicable to the nuclear power industry. The controversy revolved around a local power utility’s proposal to build a nuclear plant at Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, and that facility’s possible effects on the Chesapeake Bay’s ecosystem. The CBF first raised concerns about the Calvert Cliffs plant’s potential to harm the Chesapeake Bay in 1968, and unsuccessfully tried to work behind the scenes to persuade the nuclear industry and the federal and state governments to conduct a scientific study on the plant’s environmental effects on the bay. The CFB media campaign in 1969 publicized the uncertainties about the nuclear plant and the need for research specifically geared towards identifying possible threats to the bay. Demands to assess the power plant’s environmental costs and benefits dovetailed with NEPA’s requirements for environmental impact statements, which enabled the CBF to connect a local debate with national developments

Introduction 13

that culminated in the Calvert Cliffs case. Thus, this study reveals the galvanizing effects the nuclear industry had on the local and national environmental communities by examining the connections between the fears of nuclear power, the wishes of the energy industry, national environmental politics, and on-the-ground citizen activism. Americans in this local community insisted on citizens’ right to know how this highly complex and controversial new technology might affect their lives and their Chesapeake Bay. Their persistence in trying to get information and regulations for the nuclear industry to protect their health and their environment has been demonstrated in many other communities throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s to the present. Susanne Bauer, Karena Kalmbach, and Tatiana Kasperski work in Europe, but Bauer and Kalmbach met as participants at a NIRG workshop held in 2009 in Toronto. Susanne Bauer has a doctorate in public health from the University of Bielefeld and is an associate professor of science and technology studies at the TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture at the University of Oslo, Norway. Karena Kalmbach has a PhD from the Department of History and Civilization at the European University Institute in Florence and is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Environmental Policy Research Centre at the Freie Universität in Berlin. In 2015, she became the new coordinator of NIRG. Tatiana Kasperski holds a PhD in political science from the Institut d’études politiques de Paris (Sciences-Po) and is a postdoctoral researcher with the Centre Alexandre-Koyré for the History of Science and Technology in Paris, France. Their collaborative chapter five, “From Pripyat to Paris, from Grassroots Memories to Globalized Knowledge Production: The Politics of Chernobyl Fallout,” is a sophisticated, multilayered local and transnational portrait of Chernobyl. It combines the memorialization of the Chernobyl accident with transnational knowledge in risk research in local communities. The fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear plant and the evacuations affected those living in communities in the vicinity. But the radioactive particles transcended borders and caused hot spots thousands of kilometres away. Thereafter, the ongoing global discourse about the risks of nuclear power was deeply shaped by this accident. For this reason, the authors approach the topic of Chernobyl from different angles in different countries, using different disciplines to examine the political and regulatory dimensions of the crisis over time. This collaborative article portrays Chernobyl’s complex and entangled history, and provides readers with a sense of the Chernobyl accident historically and in the

14  Laurel Sefton MacDowell

politics of memory and knowledge. The article first approaches Chernobyl from a local perspective, depicting the impact the accident had on the daily life of the inhabitants in the radioactively contaminated areas in Belarus and Ukraine. It also examines how the dominant interpretations of the disaster changed after the collapse of the Soviet Union and contributed to important political, social, and economic changes in its former republics. What does the commemoration of the Chernobyl disaster mean in the Belorussian and Ukrainian context today? Aspects of daily life, such as dose limits, living conditions, and the very possibility and acceptability of living in the radioactively contaminated environment were negotiated in this local context, but the crisis also affected national politics in the former Soviet republics in a period of transition. Chernobyl shaped global discourses on nuclear energy and resulted in diverse national nuclear debates in Western Europe, which affected the perception of the accident and the ongoing debate about the impact of Chernobyl on health and nuclear politics. Actual international assessments of the local impact of the Chernobyl fallout on health and the scientific practices of radiation risk assessment involving local governments, NGOs, and international agencies affected the memorialization of Chernobyl. The bipolar order of the Cold War shaped knowledge of nuclear issues in both western and socialist worlds. But local and transnational shifts in nuclear policies and the “nuclear ontologies” in different countries also affected the memorialization.21 Chernobyl was the worst nuclear accident until Fukushima. The chapter discusses how different European countries construed it many years later, and explains why their responses diverged. This interdisciplinary chapter combines perspectives from political history, science studies, and studies of memorialization to contribute to our understanding of the ongoing and far-reaching multiple effects of the Chernobyl accident. James W. Feldman has a PhD in American history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is an associate professor of history and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh. His chapter six, “Permanence, Justice, and Nuclear Waste at Prairie Island,” is about the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant, which since the 1970s has been the subject of nationally significant protests and regulatory battles over the storage of nuclear waste. The plans of Northern States Power Company to store spent fuel at the reactor – which is on an island in the Mississippi River about 56 kilometres (35 miles)22 from Minneapolis – drew widespread opposition from local residents,

Introduction 15

environmentalists, and the Mdewakanton Sioux, a small native group with lands neighbouring the power plant. The controversy hinged on competing understandings of justice, public good, and permanence. Protesters saw the waste as permanent, and believed the plan violated emerging principles of environmental justice by placing a disproportionate amount of the risk for environmental harm upon already marginalized groups. This pattern has been a familiar one in many instances of discord over the nuclear industry in North America. Supporters of the storage plan defined public health and permanence differently, suggesting that the eventual removal of the waste would mitigate local harm and that the broader public good would be best served by generating nuclear power and storing waste at Prairie Island. In the 1980s, protesters secured an important victory by forcing the issue out of the regulatory arena and into the legislative one, ensuring that the Minnesota Legislature would take a contentious vote to allow waste storage at Prairie Island in 1994. Prairie Island became a national test case for the dry cask storage of spent fuel at reactors – now the nuclear industry’s standard procedure in the face of the US government’s continuing inability to craft a long-term radioactive waste storage plan. The controversy involved wider issues encompassing environmental justice and sustainability. It is an important case study for the debate about nuclear energy and the disposal of radioactive waste, and for the reformulation of environmental issues in a way that puts social analysis squarely at the centre of environmental protest. Chapter seven, “Nuclear Waste Management and Nuclear Power: A Tale of Two Essential US Department of Energy Sites in Idaho and New Mexico,” compares and contrasts the preferences and perceptions of people regarding nuclear power and nuclear waste management who live within 80 kilometres (50 miles) of two critical nuclear waste management sites in the United States: the Idaho National Laboratory and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (New Mexico). It has the following four authors: Michael Greenberg, professor and associate dean of the faculty at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University, New Jersey; Henry Mayer, PhD, executive director of the Environmental Analysis and Communications Group, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University; Charles W. Powers, PhD, Yale, co-principal investigator at the Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP) and professor of engineering at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee; and David Kosson, PhD, Rutgers, principal investigator, CRESP,

16  Laurel Sefton MacDowell

and professor of engineering at Vanderbilt University. The data in their chapter consists of random samples of people’s opinions collected by the authors since 2005 with a focus on 2010 (pre-Fukushima) and 2011 (post-Fukushima). These DOE-funded surveys examined policy issues such as risk management of waste management sites and the siting of new nuclear- and other energy-related activities at the DOE sites. The authors used statistical analysis to examine the relationships between policy options and respondent perceptions, values, trust of authority, and a variety of other factors. The chapter describes the two sites, both in very unusual locations, concentrating on their history and function. It compares the demographic attitudes to nuclear energy and waste management of nearby residents with those at other DOE sites and those of US residents as a whole, and uses statistical methods to account for the variation in preferences and perceptions among residents at each site. The chapter discusses the implications of these findings for public policy on nuclear power and waste management, particularly as the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been increasingly unwilling to license new nuclear plants without a resolution of the nuclear waste issue. Marissa Zappora Bell is a doctoral student in geography at SUNY in Buffalo, New York, and David Elijah Bell has a PhD in anthropology and is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York. Their chapter eight, “Port Hope Burning: The Trail of Eldorado, the Uranium Medical Research Centre, and Community Tension over Scientific Uncertainty,” is about the town of Port Hope, Ontario, “the world’s oldest and historically most prominent uranium refinement and conversion facility.” The authors discuss the ongoing social strain – the anxiety, polarization, and controversy over health issues resulting from radioactive contamination by the nuclear industry in that community – and question what the long-term social costs are. Divisions in community opinion and concern may align with larger political and scientific debates and result in drastic consequences, including widespread threats, distrust, and interpersonal violence among citizens. For much of Port Hope’s nuclear history, refinement activities there were exempt from regulation based on demands for military secrecy and the need for governmental production. An environmental disaster developed but was not known until 1966; concern grew about radium, lead, and uranium found in vegetables in the 1980s and about water contamination in the 1990s. Ongoing studies resulted in community

Introduction 17

conflict, polarization, and worry about the community’s health, its local economy, and its reputation. The authors adapt the Kübler-Ross model on dying to the scenario and history of environmental health confrontation in Port Hope. The final article in this collection, chapter nine by Paul Jobin, is called “‘Nuclear Gypsies’ in Fukushima Before and After 3/11.” Paul Jobin holds two BAs in Chinese and Japanese from the University of Paris Diderot (1991), an MBA from Keiô University (1995), and a PhD in sociology from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (2001). He is currently an associate researcher at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica in Taiwan. Jobin examines the role of thousands of temporary workers currently employed in the rescue operations and the cleanup at the devastated site of Fukushima, Japan, after the accident at the nuclear plant. He compares the working and living conditions of such workers before and after the accident, but in doing so he demonstrates that the large multinational companies in Japan’s nuclear industry have embraced the central tenets of global neo-liberalism by replacing skilled permanent employees with layers of temporary and not necessarily well-trained personnel. He even alludes to recent links between the industry and the criminal world. Jobin’s research is based partly on his interviews with many of these employees. Since the Fukushima nuclear disaster (3/11), Japanese citizens and labour organizations have negotiated with Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare to defend the rights of the workers involved in the cleanup of Fukushima Daiichi and of those hired for decontamination work in the Fukushima prefecture. In a large spectrum of risks, some hazards like falls and burns are frequent occupational injuries and fatalities. Others are aggravated by the specific conditions of working in an environment exposed to radiation. To reinforce their criticism regarding the management of radiation protection, activists point out the trivialization of practices, such as modifying dosimeters to minimize radiation readings and limiting follow-up health examinations for workers exposed to a cumulative dose of over 50 millisieverts. Contradicting them are Japanese government experts, who argue that below a cumulative dose of 100 millisieverts per year, the effects of radiation are negligible, not only for workers but for the entire population. The activists challenge the current standards of radiation protection for both workers and the entire population. Through a comparison of the working conditions and health situation of Japanese nuclear plant workers before and after 3/11, this chapter highlights the systemic commonalities

18  Laurel Sefton MacDowell

between ordinary risks during the maintenance of nuclear plants in usual times and the progressive trivialization of exceptional risks during post-disaster crisis management. This research uses earlier interviews with safety managers, government officials, and labour activists, and includes further observation and interviews conducted after 3/11 among cleanup workers, government experts, activists, and epidemiologists. The companies’ massive use of contract employees in these dangerous and important jobs is today commonplace and results in chronic insecurity and poor living conditions for the employees. The chapter ends with an examination of the effects of the disaster in Japan on the workers endeavouring to control the situation and clean up the mess, on their families, and on the thousands of families who have been evacuated from the region. This collection of articles is intended to provide students and the public with information about the varied effects of the global nuclear industry in a way that is personal and often local. The analysis of real incidents experienced by communities in different parts of the world at different times highlights various aspects of a complex industry and is intended to make the nuclear energy and nuclear weapons systems easier for readers to comprehend. While public attention to health and environmental effects increased from the 1970s, the existing conditions, procedures, and actions since the Fukushima disaster are a reminder of the secrecy, mismanagement, and inability of companies and governments to respond effectively when something goes terribly wrong. The persistent support of nuclear employers by governments is reflected in contemporary Japan, even when the public since the Fukushima disaster remains wary of nuclear energy. Nuclear Portraits is one result of several years of activity by the Nuclear International Research Group (NIRG), consisting today of over forty researchers who are scholars and graduate students doing research on multidisciplinary issues related to the nuclear industry. NIRG members are independent academic researchers in different fields including history, geography, anthropology, sociology, public policy, international relations, health, environmental studies and history, and waste management. My association with NIRG was to act as its founder and first coordinator. As academics who do research on the nuclear industry are sometimes isolated from one another, the idea was to form an interdisciplinary group to connect such scholars. NIRG’s aim is to encourage scholarship on the nuclear industry that informs the public and offers information to policymakers. In a contested industry in which

Introduction 19

producers, regulators, and activists face off against each other, NIRG is an independent group of academic researchers interested in issues pertaining to the nuclear industry concerning public policy, nuclear waste, the impact of the nuclear industry on communities, and the health, safety, and environmental effects of the nuclear industry. NIRG had its inaugural meeting in 2009 in Ottawa, Ontario, where it set out several proposals. It sponsored a one-day, interdisciplinary symposium at the University of Toronto in November 2009, and invited three speakers (one Canadian and two American) to present their papers. One of the Americans was geologist Allison MacFarlane, whom President Barack Obama named to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. The event drew scholars, students, First Nations activists, and Ontario Power Generation employees. As a result of the symposium, new members joined the NIRG. In April 2012, with the assistance of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) workshop grant, NIRG held a two-day workshop called “The Nuclear Industry in the 21st Century Environment.” It brought scholars together to discuss how nuclear technology has transformed the politics, cultures, economies, ways of living, and landscapes in nations around the world. Featuring the research of scholars and graduate students from various university departments and institutes, the papers examined aspects of nuclear history in Canada, the United States, the Soviet Union, the European Union, the Marshall Islands, Italy, and India during the twentieth century. The workshop provided participants with an opportunity to present their papers and to discuss them with each other and with a larger audience of people studying nuclear history in a global context. It was a timely event, as it took place just a year after the nuclear accident in Japan. The Fukushima disaster sparked media interest and increased our sense of urgency about looking to our nuclear past to increase public understanding of the crisis in Japan and thought about nuclearism in the future. These activities implemented the goals of the inaugural meeting of NIRG, where we also discussed and envisaged this book, Nuclear Portraits. This collection demonstrates the impact of nuclear production on a variety of people living and working in diverse communities. It is hoped that the book’s publication will increase public awareness, particularly as the number of nuclear nations has grown. These innovative essays convey the complexities of nuclear production, the many relationships between the nuclear industry and varied communities, and the range of issues that emerge locally, regionally, nationally, and

20  Laurel Sefton MacDowell

internationally. These case studies personalize the effects of the nuclear industry by focusing on people in their communities. The authors of these studies have benefitted from the increased scholarship published, especially since the 1970s, as well as from contemporary ongoing work on the effects of the nuclear industry on people and the environment. The book’s interdisciplinary approach enables a fresh discussion by a broad cross section of academics. As a result of recent events involving accidents and controversies, this book is being published at a time when there is much discussion about the future of nuclear energy and its sustainability as an energy source. The collection includes essays on the well-known disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima, but also recounts unknown or lesserknown events in other communities. The essays concern the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan, and the writers are from Europe and North America, but the project is global in its perspective and its reach. This recent research by diverse independent scholars demonstrates the complexity, controversy, contradictions, and dangers that surround many aspects of the nuclear industries in many countries. In the twenty-first century, nuclear energy has become a hotly contested issue. In the face of climate change, nuclear energy producers saw an opportunity to promote it. They argued optimistically, ignoring many realities, that nuclear energy did not produce carbon, which is true. What they did not mention was that at every stage of production, starting with uranium mining, much carbon is produced along with radiation, so that health and safety and lasting environmental damage remain issues. The nuclear energy industry also neglected to mention the as yet unsolvable problem of nuclear waste disposal. As one scholar noted, “The depiction of nuclear power as ‘environmentally friendly’ is truly remarkable given the fact that the technology produces some of the most toxic, long-lived and life-threatening wastes known to mankind.”23 Climate change and the nuclear industry have been linked in another way. Several environmental leaders, including James Lovelock (the Gaia hypothesis) and Patrick Moore (a past-president of Greenpeace), whether out of despair over the lack of action on climate change or because they were corrupted by climate denial groups, publicly switched their anti-nuclear position to support nuclear energy as an energy source for the future. This option has now been seriously challenged as a result of the continuing Fukushima disaster, which has devastated many peoples’ lives. Once again the 3/11 disaster reminded

Introduction 21

the global public of the danger of nuclear accidents to the public’s health and safety, and the inestimable, long-term damage to the environment. It has also demonstrated again the problem of disposing of large amounts of nuclear waste. The waste from the Fukushima accident continues to leak into the ocean, so that, as with Chernobyl, its effects are spreading around the world. As Canadian writer Margaret Atwood has noted, “The two most important things that the human race should be thinking about are alternate cheap sources of energy, and not killing the oceans. Should we kill the oceans, that is the end of the oxygen we breathe, which is made now as it was in the beginning, by marine organisms.”24 This new Fukushima disaster has again revealed the secrecy of the large companies and the Japanese government, which publicly underestimated the dangers to keep the public calm. Such secrecy and mismanagement have been characteristics of the nuclear industry from the beginning. More recently the Japanese government has allowed two nuclear plants to restart, and has ignored public unease about nuclear energy. With climate change increasing the incidence of unpredictable weather, nuclear energy seems an unpredictable future source of safe, reliable energy. In this early twenty-first century, the number of nuclear nations in the world has grown, as have serious conflicts concerning issues of human and economic inequality, unrelenting security and terrorism incidents, and increased global warming. In this context, public interest in the issue of nuclear energy has increased. This book seeks to project some of the complexities of nuclearism. With the mounting global concern about climate change, the debate about future energy regimes makes energy policy central to that discussion. Supporters of nuclearism believe nuclear energy is an option, but many academics and activists who understand the power, danger, past environmental and health damage, and the unsolved issue of disposing of nuclear waste look to renewable energy for the future. NOTES 1 Angell, “From the Archives.” 2 Nuclearism definition: a political philosophy maintaining that nuclear weapons are the best means of assuring peace and of attaining political goals. 3 Lear, Rachel Carson, ch. 17; Weyler, Greenpeace, 95.

22  Laurel Sefton MacDowell 4 Peterson, Linked Arms; Wellock, Critical Masses. 5 Taylor et al., Nuclear Legacies, 20–1. 6 Makhijani et al., Nuclear Wastelands. 7 MacDowell, “Elliot Lake.” 8 Kauzlarich and Kramer, Crimes of the American Nuclear State, 100, 107–9. 9 Ibid., 112. 10 Taylor et al., Nuclear Legacies, 93. 11 Ibid., 29. 12 Kuletz, Tainted Desert. 13 Acland, Making a Real Killing. 14 Kuletz, Tainted Desert, 6. 15 Hecht, “Nuclear Ontologies,” 328; Mogren, Warm Sands. 16 Taylor et al., Nuclear Legacies, 16. 17 Ibid., 12–13. 18 Bergeron, Tritium on Ice. 19 Kauzlarich and Kramer, Crimes of the American Nuclear State, x, 2, 28. In 1996 the International Court of Justice ruled that the use of nuclear weapons violates international law. 20 Duffy, Nuclear Politics in America. 21 Hecht, “Nuclear Ontologies.” 22 Distances in the introduction are given in both the metric and imperial system. However, throughout the book, the system of measurement in each chapter remains as originally written, and no conversions have been made. 23 Byrne and Hoffman, Governing the Atom, 17. 24 Varty, “Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam.”

REFERENCES Acland, Len. Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999. Angell, Roger. “From the Archives, ‘Hersey and History.’” The New Yorker, 31 July 1995, 66. Bergeron, Kenneth. Tritium on Ice: The Dangerous New Alliance of Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Power. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. Byrne, John, and Steven M. Hoffman, eds. Governing the Atom: The Politics of Risk. New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction Publishers, 1996. Duffy, Robert J. Nuclear Politics in America: A History and Theory of Government Regulation. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997.

Introduction 23 Hecht, Gabrielle. “Nuclear Ontologies.” Constellations 13, no. 3 (2006): 320–31. Kauzlarich, David, and Ronald C. Kramer. Crimes of the American Nuclear State: At Home and Abroad. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1998. Kuletz, Valerie L. The Tainted Desert: Environmental and Social Ruin in the American West. New York: Routledge, 1998. Lear, Linda. Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1997. MacDowell, Laurel Sefton. “The Elliot Lake Uranium Miners’ Battle to Gain Occupational Health and Safety Improvements, 1950–1980.” Labour/Le Travail 69 (Spring 2012): 91–118. Makhijani, Arjini, Howard Hu, and Katherine Yih, eds. Nuclear Wastelands: A Global Guide to Nuclear Weapons Production and Its Health and Environmental Effects. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995. Mogren, Eric W. Warm Sands: Uranium Mill Tailings Policy in the Atomic West. Albuquerque: New Mexico University Press, 2002. Peterson, Thomas V. Linked Arms: A Rural Community Resists Nuclear Waste. New York: State University of New York Press, 2002. Taylor, Bryan C., William J. Kinsella, Stephen P. Depoe, and Maribeth S. Metzler. Nuclear Legacies: Communication, Controversy and the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex. New York: Lexington Books, 2007. Varty, Alexander. “Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Lives in the Twilight of Our Species.” The Georgia Straight, 16 October 2013. http://www.straight. com/life/503151/margaret-atwoods-maddaddam-lives-twilight-ourspecies. Wellock, Thomas Raymond. Critical Masses: Opposition to Nuclear Power in California, 1959–78. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998. Weyler, Rex. Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists and Visionaries Changed the World. Vancouver, BC: Raincoast Books, 2004.

1 Keep It Secret: The Environmental Effects of Nuclear Armament in the Soviet Union and the United States tuomas räsänen

Introduction War has always involved profound damage to nature and to our living environment, but with the development of nuclear weapons, the potential for environmental destruction has risen to an unprecedented scale. At their most extensive in the 1980s, the world’s nuclear weapon states possessed a total of approximately 60,000 nuclear weapons. The largest individual test explosions destroyed all life for a radius of tens of kilometres. A full-blown nuclear war would have annihilated entire countries and, in the worst-case scenario, made large parts of the earth uninhabitable for millennia. Luckily for humanity and for nature, no full-strength nuclear weapon has been launched in an offensive against an enemy since 9 August 1945. However, even concealed in their silos, nuclear weapons have silently and invisibly sown destruction for decades. Millions of people have either directly or indirectly suffered from radioactive substances present in the environment from nuclear weapons production processes. In many places the living environment has suffered near irreversible damage. In this chapter, I will examine the direct and indirect environmental and health effects of nuclear armament, concentrating on the environmental effects of the arms race between the two most prominent Cold An earlier version of this chapter was published in Finnish in Sodan Ekologia. Sodankäynnin ympäristöhistoriaa, eds. Simo Laakkonen and Timo Vuorisalo (Helsinki: SKS, 2007). I would like to thank Simo Laakkonen for his support and advice during the research. I am also grateful to radiochemist Jukka Lehto for his valuable comments and Stephen I. Schwartz for providing me with pictures of nuclear waste disposal at the US production sites.

Environmental Effects of Nuclear Armament  25

War nations, the United States and the Soviet Union. Although other nuclear weapon states have been left out of this inquiry, their armaments have also led to serious pollution.1 During the first three decades of the atomic age in particular, significant amounts of toxins spread into the environments surrounding nuclear weapons production sites. In addition, many radioactive substances such as plutonium are heavy metals and dangerous, not only because of their radioactivity but also because of their toxicity.2 Yet in this chapter, I deal solely with the radioactive pollution resulting from nuclear weapons production and development. This pollution has also had ecological effects, at least at the local level, to which I refer intermittently. Understandably, during the most intense years of nuclear armament, researchers paid almost no attention to ecological changes at nuclear production sites. Furthermore, concerns about the increase in radioactive pollution to this day continue to concentrate primarily on the effects on human health. Little information exists on the impact of arms-race radioactive pollution on nature. Hence, this chapter focuses on both the pollution in the natural living environment and the resulting health effects on human beings. As source material, I rely on studies conducted since World War II on nuclear arms production and its effects on the environment and human health. In such studies, extremely limited amounts of documentary source material have been cited, partly because the studies are not historical, but also because there continues to be very little documentary source material available. Though the United States has allowed researchers some access to archival sources that shed light on the effects of nuclear arms production, many documents remain secret. For former Soviet areas, it is unlikely that any authentic source material exists. Based on radioactive decay, researchers have been able to model an overall picture of environmental pollution, but studies on human health and cases of death are often based on data gathered indirectly. The quality and amount of radioactive pollution have been compared to the much-studied Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to the health effects of the Chernobyl power plant accident. Furthermore, in individual cases, it is nearly impossible to prove that radioactive pollution caused a specific illness. World War II and the Nuclear Arms Race Nuclear armament began during World War II. The Manhattan Project, initiated by the United States and Great Britain in 1942, was an inherent part of a nuclear arms race between the opposing parties: the Axis, led by Nazi Germany, and the Allies. The trigger for the Allies’

26  Tuomas Räsänen

nuclear program has often been considered the famous 1939 letter to President Roosevelt signed by Albert Einstein and drafted by his colleagues Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner. These renowned physicists warned that due to rapid strides in nuclear physics, it might soon be possible to release the enormous energy concealed in the nucleus of the atom for military use, and that Germany was in all likelihood working on developing such a superbomb. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States began to take the threat of a German nuclear weapon seriously – Japan’s nuclear arms project was rather modest – and determined to develop a nuclear weapon as rapidly as possible in order to defeat the Third Reich in the nuclear arms race.3 As a result of the Manhattan Project, three years later in 1945 American scientists and their European colleagues who had fled the Nazi regime manufactured the world’s first three nuclear bombs, one of which was test detonated at Los Alamos, New Mexico, on 16 July 1945; the other two were detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945. About 110,000 people died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki within twenty-four hours of detonation, which forced Japan to an unconditional surrender a few days later on 14 August 1945.4 Thus, the dramatic nuclear strikes targeted against Japan ended World War II. In the early stages of the Manhattan Project, the project’s military leader, General Leslie Groves, predicted that the enemy against which the United States would eventually arm itself would be the communist Soviet Union, not Nazi Germany. While the world war still raged, numerous researchers and US government officials warned the political leadership that nuclear armament, executed unilaterally and in secret from the Soviets, would lead to a nuclear arms race once hostilities ended. The warnings fell on deaf ears. US leaders envisaged the nuclear weapon as a tool for diplomatic pressure that could be used to force the Soviet Union to yield in the international political conflicts anticipated after the war.5 When the United States dropped the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Stalin understood that the era of traditional warfare was over. Stalin’s comment in the presence of his closest associates and the scientific director of the Soviet Union’s nuclear arms project, Igor Kurchatov, reveals his unease: “A single demand of you, comrades. Provide us with atomic weapons in the shortest possible time. You know that Hiroshima has shaken the whole world. The balance has been destroyed. Provide the bomb – it will remove a great danger from us.” In response to this plea, they promised Stalin that the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapon would be ready within a maximum of

Environmental Effects of Nuclear Armament  27

five years.6 When the world war ended in Allied victory, Europe was in ruins, and the European great powers’ role as worldwide colonial forces was over; the United States and the Soviet Union rose to predominance as the powers defining a new, conflicted, bipolar world order. The Soviet Union carried out its first successful nuclear test on 29 August 1949, only four years after Stalin’s appeal to the physicists. The Soviet Union succeeded in building a nuclear weapon more rapidly than the United States, which was at least partially explained by information provided by Manhattan Project researchers such as Germanborn physicist Klaus Fuchs, who spied for the Soviet Union. The nuclear arms race between the superpowers thus began during World War II. The Soviet Union’s own nuclear test signified the restoration of the balance of power between the superpowers, but it intensified the arms race on both sides of the Cold War. Both sides developed the nuclear bomb but then shifted to greatly expanded nuclear arms production. They also began to develop more technologically advanced weapons, most significantly the hydrogen bomb, or H-bomb, which meant a vast increase in the destructive power of the nuclear weapons. When the United States carried out the Bravo nuclear test on 1 March 1954 as part of the Castle series of nuclear tests, the energy released in this first “superbomb” explosion was equivalent to 15 megatons of TNT. The blast, about a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, destroyed all life within a radius of over 20 kilometres.7 Yet it remained clear that the “window of vulnerability” closed by the spring 1954 series of nuclear tests could reopen, which it did on 22 November 1955, when the Soviet Union detonated its first superbomb at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in Kazakhstan. Although this time the explosive charge was 1.6 megatons, the parties in the arms race were once again on approximately the same level.8 From the 1950s onwards, the acceleration of the arms race became a self-feeding mechanism. Politicians could only try to keep their own nation at the forefront of the advances. In order to reduce costs, they cut back traditional armies, but with nuclear arms there was only one direction: an increased number of more advanced weapons. In the 1950s, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which was responsible for nuclear arms production in the United States, grew to become one of the nation’s largest single agencies, employing about 150,000 people in 1953.9 At its largest, in the mid-1960s, the arsenal of the United States contained about 32,000 nuclear weapons. At the same time, the Soviet Union had fewer than 10,000 nuclear weapons in its stores, but their number subsequently climbed at a rate of several thousand per year.

28  Tuomas Räsänen

The Soviet Union had its largest number of nuclear weapons, slightly over 40,000, in 1986.10 The destructive power of the weapons increased. In 1961, at the height of the Berlin crisis, the Soviet Union conducted the largest-ever explosion at the Novaya Zemlya nuclear test site in the Arctic Ocean. The enormous explosion was 50 megatons, with the glare from the blast visible at a distance of 1,000 kilometres, and yet it was only about half of what had been originally intended.11 The development of intercontinental missiles made it possible to directly threaten all of the enemy’s major cities and targets of strategic importance with nuclear warheads of several megatons. But missile defence systems also continuously improved, which forced the superpowers to develop systems to circumvent them in order for the threat of nuclear weapons to remain effective. In short, nuclear armament became the supreme security doctrine of both countries that nothing could be allowed to threaten, either from within or without society. Nuclear Waste and the Environment in the United States During the Cold War, over 257 tons of plutonium and about 2,300 tons of high-level uranium were produced for military use alone. The United States and the Soviet Union accounted for over 90 per cent of this amount. As the production of one kilogram of plutonium results in about 1,300 litres of high-level nuclear waste, over 200,000 litres of lowlevel waste, and almost 10 million litres of contaminated cooling water, a rough picture emerges of the amount of nuclear waste generated in the production of US nuclear weapons.12 Under any circumstances, such enormous amounts of nuclear waste were a serious environmental problem, and neglect of environmental safety exacerbated the situation. Hanford, in the state of Washington, is a good example of the waste treatment practices that prevailed at US production facilities.13 There, at the nation’s most important plutonium production facility, a total of 1.4 million litres of high-level waste was generated by 1980. Its critical components were cesium-137 and strontium-90, both of which are exceptionally radioactive and extremely dangerous substances for health. With regard to the environment, the most destructive time was the era prior to 1970: between 1944 and 1966, 450 million litres of liquid high-level waste were released intentionally into the soil.14 The remainder of such toxic nuclear waste generated at Hanford was buried in the ground in metal or carbon steel tanks. However, leaks were detected,

Environmental Effects of Nuclear Armament  29

particularly in tanks buried before 1970, because double-shell tanks were not in use at that time. As a result of the leaks, about 2.8 million litres of high-level waste were released into the soil. The radioactive substances leaked into the environment from the tanks alone contained enough raw material for the equivalent of over fifty Nagasaki bombs.15 In terms of low-level waste, the figures are even more staggering. At Hanford, 800 billion litres of liquid low-level waste ended up in the soil during the Cold War without the slightest protection.16 The notion of low-level waste is, however, misleading. The classification of low-level waste downplays the fact that such waste is made up of radioactive substances that are dangerous to human health. Also, the American standards used to classify waste during the first decades of the atomic age made it possible to handle certain types of waste as low-level waste, even though its radioactivity was high and its classification should have been high-level. The radioactivity of the low-level waste generated at Hanford alone was tens of millions of curies.17 By comparison, 50 to 80 million curies of radioactivity were released in the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Thus the radioactivity of the low-level waste dumped in Hanford’s soil was almost on the same scale as what was released at Chernobyl. In the United States, transuranic waste (including plutonium, americium, and neptunium) was stored primarily at Hanford and the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), as well as in lesser amounts at numerous other production locales.18 Prior to the 1970s, transuranic waste was treated as low-level waste. At the Savannah River production facility in South Carolina, millions of litres of nuclear waste containing transuranic substances were burnt in the open in the 1950s and 1960s. Until the 1970s, nuclear waste containing about a ton of plutonium was buried in the soil at the INL in cardboard, wooden, and plastic boxes and steel barrels. This amount of plutonium was enough to build two hundred nuclear bombs. The waste was buried on the vast Snake River plateau, from whose groundwater deposits over 200,000 people got their daily drinking water. When waste dumping began at the INL, the authorities assumed that the radioactive substances would not travel down to the groundwater for tens of thousands of years. Researchers currently estimate that it takes only a few decades.19 As environmental awareness expanded in the 1960s, some criticized such pollution. The AEC received much attention from the growing anti-pollution movement, which accused it of indifference to the health of citizens.20 This criticism targeted the AEC’s public operations, but

30  Tuomas Räsänen Figure 1.1. Nuclear waste disposal at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL).

Source: US Department of Energy.

the AEC feared the publicity would spread to secret nuclear production facilities. To avoid this problem, the authorities in the 1970s began to implement improvements in environmental protection at production facilities. At this time, the majority of transuranic waste was stored and monitored, and high-level waste began to be treated in double-shell tanks, which were more likely to prevent the release of radioactive material into the soil and the groundwater.21 Despite the environmental awakening in society, there was astoundingly little information about the treatment of nuclear waste. Some transuranic waste continued to be buried in the soil as before, albeit in double-shell tanks. There were no changes in the treatment of low-level waste until the 1980s, and radioactive substances from containers and wastewater ponds have continued to leak into the environment.22

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Nuclear Waste and the Environment in the Soviet Union When the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, information trickled to the West about environmental catastrophes that had taken place at various locations around the country. One of the worst forms of pollution was radioactive pollution, mostly from nuclear weapons production facilities. Radioactive substances escaped or were intentionally released from Soviet nuclear production facilities into the environment in amounts that make the US pollution figures appear modest by comparison. The most important waste reprocessing and plutonium production facility in the Soviet Union was Mayak (officially Tšeljabinsk-65), located in the southern Ural Mountains. Between 1948 and 1956, a total of 78 million cubic metres (almost 3 million curies) of high-level nuclear waste from Mayak were intentionally released into the nearby Techa River. When a secret study conducted in 1951 revealed that 124,000 people who lived along the river had been seriously exposed to radiation, high-level waste began to be directed to Lake Karachay, a landlocked lake south of Mayak, and to a lesser degree into reservoirs dug for it. Low-level waste continued to be released into the Techa River, but the upper reaches of the river were dammed to confine the pollution to a restricted area.23 In the period from 1951 to1967, radionuclides corresponding to an astonishing total of 1.2 billion curies were dumped into Lake Karachay, making it one of the most polluted places on the planet.24 Most nuclear waste after 1967 was buried near nuclear fuel production facilities known by the code names Krasnoyarsk-26 and Tomsk-7. It was estimated that over 4.5 billion litres (0.7–1 billion curies) of radioactive material were dumped directly into the soil at Krasnoyarsk; in addition, nuclear waste corresponding to 120 million curies’ worth of activity was released into reservoirs dug to contain it.25 For almost thirty years until 1989, cooling waters from the production facilities’ nuclear reactors were conducted directly into the Yenisei River. As a result, the river’s banks were polluted for a distance of hundreds of kilometres, and elevated levels of radiation have been detected in fish at a distance of 350 kilometres.26 Tomsk-7 buried nuclear waste in the soil or released it into the Tom River, which led to the Ob River, amounting to activity above a billion curies. The pollution has spread from the soil into the groundwater in the Tomsk area, and the traces of pollution stretch hundreds of kilometres along the river to its lower reaches.27 The US and Soviet “permanent repositories” for nuclear waste provide a small but glaring example of the ways nuclear nations attempted

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to rid themselves of the embarrassing nuclear waste problem. In addition to the locations mentioned, both superpowers buried smaller amounts of nuclear waste in numerous other places, including at sea. The United States sank about 90,000 containers of low-level nuclear waste into the sea before 1970; according to environmental authorities, at least 25 per cent were already leaking in the 1990s.28 Between 1959 and 1991, the Soviet Union dumped hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of nuclear waste in many locations off its shores. As late as the 1990s, Russia announced that it was forced to continue dumping nuclear waste at sea, because its storage and reprocessing facilities did not have the capacity to deal with the waste problem.29 Accidents at Nuclear Weapons Production Facilities The exploitation of nuclear energy always includes the risk of accidents, and accidents occurred. In the United States, where safety standards were stricter than in the Soviet Union, numerous accidents took place in conjunction with nuclear arms production, and many employees developed radiation sicknesses.30 At the Rocky Flats production facility about 25 kilometres from Denver, which manufactured components for nuclear weapons, two serious fires broke out in 1957 and 1969. After the 1969 fire, measurements revealed the highest plutonium content ever recorded near an urban area, including at Nagasaki in August 1945. At Nagasaki, however, the plutonium was in a significantly more dangerous form as a result of the nuclear explosion. Luckily the fire at Rocky Flats was extinguished before it could burn a hole in the roof of the facility.31 In the Soviet Union, the two most serious and best-known accidents took place at the Mayak production facility. The first is considered the second-worst peacetime nuclear catastrophe after the Chernobyl accident.32 An enormous nuclear waste repository was established at the Tšeljabinsk-65 production facility in 1953 to end the practice of releasing nuclear waste into rivers. In September 1957, the repository’s cooling mechanisms failed, and a 300,000 litre tank full of nuclear waste exploded. Radioactive material with an activity level of about 20 million curies was released into the air. About one tenth spread across a rather densely populated area of 15,000 square kilometres, polluting the air, water, and soil. Over the next year and a half, all coniferous trees died within a radius of 20 square kilometres. As a result of the pollution, a total of 272,000 people in 217 villages were exposed to dangerously large doses of radiation. The most badly contaminated area was closed off as a nature preserve, which by 2000 the Soviet/Russian authorities had not even tried to clean.33

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Another serious accident took place in 1967. Because Karachay is a lake without outlets, the authorities incorrectly believed that the radioactive material released there would not threaten the local populace. But in 1967, a low-rain winter and an early spring dried up the shallow lake, and powerful winds in April and May blew radioactive dust from the dry lakebed, spreading it tens of kilometres from the site.34 In the affected area, 41,500 residents were seriously exposed to radiation, including some who had been victims of an accident a decade earlier.35 After 1967, authorities preferred to dump nuclear waste in the soil at production facilities to prevent similar accidents. The result was contamination of soil, rivers, and groundwater. In many cases, although the authorities were well intentioned, steps to improve the condition of the environment proved inadequate. Radioactive Contamination Resulting from Nuclear Testing Nuclear tests form their own chapter in the history of nuclear arms production. Tests had significant environmental effects, especially prior to 1963 when the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty. The treaty banned conducting nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater, and in outer space. Since then, the major powers – with the exception of China and France – have intentionally detonated underground nuclear charges only.36 The Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed because opposition from the scientific community and the press began intensifying in the 1950s; it also improved relations among the major powers. The treaty did nothing to slow nuclear armament, but it did reduce global radioactive fallout to as little as a tenth of the level prior to 1963.37 Before signing the limited nuclear test ban, the United States and the Soviet Union conducted about 430 atmospheric nuclear tests, which released radioactive substances into the atmosphere in amounts much larger than the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.38 Global fallout was at its greatest between 1955 and 1966, when most of the atmospheric nuclear tests were conducted, as well as in the years immediately following their cessation.39 The pollution was not distributed evenly across the globe; radiation values twice as high as anywhere else were encountered in the temperate zones of the northern hemisphere. Amounts of radiation dozens of times greater than elsewhere were measured in both game and domestic animals in the southern parts of the Soviet Union.40 However, the most severe effects from nuclear tests in the atmosphere were concentrated in areas in close proximity to the nuclear test

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sites, or downwind of the test sites in areas above which the radioactive clouds regularly moved.41 The United States carried out a total of 226 nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, 120 on its own soil, initially in New Mexico and from 1951 onwards primarily in Nevada. The rest were carried out in the South Pacific: 43 on the Enewetak Atoll, 40 on Christmas Island and the Johnston Atoll, and 23 on the Bikini Atoll. The largest explosions were in the Pacific Proving Grounds, where the total charge of the explosions was 152 megatons.42 These massive explosions vapourized entire islands, and the effects of their pressure and heat temporarily destroyed all life for a radius of up to 10 square kilometres and seriously damaged the environment over a much greater area. Even though plants began returning within a year of the devastation, large numbers of diseases and abnormalities were detected in many plant species years later. The soil and the water have remained contaminated to this day, and the radioactive substances produced are still moving up the food chain and into humans.43 After the atmospheric nuclear tests, those regions downwind from the test areas – in the Pacific Ocean, countless nearby islands, and the western United States – were polluted repeatedly by radioactive clouds that moved over areas thousands of kilometres away from the site of detonation. Radioactive fallout spiked after tests in numerous inhabited areas to amounts hundreds of times greater than normal radiation levels.44 Before the 1963 limited test ban, the Soviet Union conducted 117 atmospheric explosions at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in Kazakhstan and 88 at Novaya Zemlya in the northern Arctic Ocean. The total charge at Semipalatinsk was 6.6 megatons and at Novaya Zemlya about 250 megatons.45 No research data has been published on the immediate effects of the Soviet Union’s nuclear tests on the plant and animal life in the test areas, but doubtless the destruction was similar to that at the US test sites. Radiation levels repeatedly rose dangerously high in the vicinity of the test sites. After the first nuclear test conducted at Semipalatinsk, people living nearby – as well as, of course, vegetation and animal life – were exposed to radioactive radiation over a million times greater than that of the normal level in the atmosphere.46 A Culture of Denial Cold War nuclear armament resulted in uninhabitable environments surrounding many production sites and a significant increase in global radioactivity. Attention paid to pollution prevention was limited. Lack

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of information on radioactive pollution is often offered as an excuse. In 1991, for example, the head engineer at the Mayak production facility responded to queries about the high level of pollution in the early years of nuclear production: “The Academicians of those times knew as much about the atom as ninth-graders do today.”47 Yet schoolchildren do not build nuclear bombs! Perhaps ignorance can be used to defend the large amount of soil and water contamination over the decades during the Cold War years; it was not understood that the radioactive substances travelled in the soil, water, and the atmosphere extremely far from their source of origin. But, by the 1940s, science was well aware of the direct health effects from exposure to radioactive substances. Otherwise there would have been no reason for researchers at Hanford to initiate extensive programs to monitor the exposure of employees and the level of environmental pollution starting from the World War II years.48 Carroll Wilson, the first general manager of the US Atomic Energy Commission noted the AEC’s ignorance of pollution in the early years: “Chemists and chemical engineers were not interested in dealing with waste. It was not glamorous; there were no careers; it was messy; nobody got brownie points for caring about nuclear waste. The Atomic Energy Commission neglected the problem.”49 Historian Ian Stacy has demonstrated that the AEC did not totally ignore the problem of pollution and gave directives on the matter to the operators of production facilities. But after 1949 when nuclear armament intensified after the Soviet Union acquired its own nuclear weapons, the growing need for nuclear weapons grade material took precedence over dealing with pollution. In the United States, physicists at the production facilities noted that pollution of the environment was inevitable.50 The authorities, responsible for the production of nuclear weapons and paradoxically also for environmental protection, faced a difficult choice to increase nuclear arms production and thereby sacrifice the environment and endanger people’s health. The Cold War atmosphere made nuclear arms production an absolute priority. In the totalitarian system of the Soviet Union, this choice did not even arise; pollution was viewed with complete indifference, as indicated by the dumping of high-level waste into waterways. Certainly the scarcity of economic resources in the Soviet Union contributed to its giving priority to resources for weapons production and its neglect of pollution.51 Even in the wealthy United States, economic calculations overrode environmental safety. Between 1940 and 1996, the United States spent about 5.5 billion dollars (calculated at 1996 levels) in

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the production of nuclear weapons, making it the nation’s third-­largest target of revenue in this period.52 From an economic perspective, environmental protection was a waste of resources. In the Soviet Union, the need for the “expedient allocation” of resources was even greater. The nation had suffered greatly during World War II, and it needed large-scale reconstruction at the same time as it strove to keep up with military and economic competition from the West. It substituted the extensive use of forced labour for its lack of resources. Without tens of thousands of prisoners, building the first nuclear weapon in 1949 probably would have been impossible.53 Soviet ideology also contributed to its inattention to environmental issues. Until the 1970s, socialist theorists believed that only a capitalist social order could be responsible for serious pollution and that Soviet pollution would be a passing phenomenon inherent in the period of societal transition.54 Also, the ideology demanded the subjugation of the good of the individual or the group to the success of the party and justified indifferent treatment of both people and the environment. In the end, as nuclear arms production could not wait for thorough studies or careful planning, both nations contributed to potential environmental catastrophe with enormous, far-reaching miscalculations regarding the treatment of waste. The thinking and operating model that emerged among the authorities responsible for nuclear arms production in both superpowers was surprisingly similar. Its central trait was the conscious and systematic denial and concealment of the environmental and health effects of nuclear weapons production. Since the early stages of the Manhattan Project, US nuclear arms production has been characterized by strict secrecy. The secrecy was intended to prevent information leaking out about the manufacture of nuclear weapons to maintain an American strategic advantage and a nuclear monopoly. Access to critical information on nuclear arms production was limited to a privileged few.55 In 1989, US Deputy Secretary of Energy W. Henson Moore described this process: “[The production of nuclear weapons was] a secret operation not subject to laws … [N]o one was to know what was going on. [It was] our business, it [was] national security, everybody else butt out.” Under the mantle of national security, the AEC became a state within a state, with its own procedures at nuclear production sites for interpreting the law and legal processes, almost independent of federal government standards.56 Fear of the spread of nuclear weapons contributed to the strict controls around nuclear production facilities. Perceived threats of such

Environmental Effects of Nuclear Armament  37

production also bubbled up among some American citizens. The bombs that exploded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were shocking and controversial. During the Cold War, the US nuclear authorities understood that residents were concerned, particularly about the radioactive fallout from nuclear tests.57 After the Bravo H-bomb test was conducted in 1954 on the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, a wave of protests broke out in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. Residents who lived outside the precautionary area, later judged to be too small, were not evacuated for days after the test, and many suffered serious injury from radiation. The Lucky Dragon, a Japanese trawler, sailed less than 200 kilometres from the point of detonation and into the path of the explosion’s radioactive cloud. All crew members became ill, and one died of radiation exposure. The media communicated this information around the world, alerting millions to the dangers of nuclear armaments; a wave of protests in Western countries expressed the opposition of the anti-nuclear peace movement.58 To maintain the AEC’s legitimacy and continue the production of nuclear weapons, the agency hid environmental and health problems. Authorities minimized the pollution resulting from nuclear arms production, even though the AEC’s own studies found that production facilities released significant amounts of radioactive substances into the environment. Such results were not public, and no limits were placed on the use of polluted soil.59 Citizens were told there was no cause for concern about nuclear tests if they stayed inside during the tests. With growing opposition to atmospheric nuclear tests, the authorities withdrew behind the shield of scientific uncertainty, as science in the 1950s had not conclusively demonstrated that radioactive fallout from nuclear tests was a health threat to people. Radioactive fallout, despite its potentially grave side effects, was considered a small price to pay for national security; admitting the health risks could have threatened the nuclear tests in the Nevada desert. Only later when people got sick was there a flood of court cases against the AEC.60 Americans in the western states often found it hard to believe the authorities’ assurances about the harmlessness of nuclear tests when thousands of grazing domestic animals during the testing died in mysterious ways. However, the court cases that livestock breeders brought against the federal government encountered setbacks: the authorities concealed evidence and falsified research results, and the court cases dragged on for years, eventually sinking into oblivion.61 Even the ban on atmospheric nuclear tests did not end the evasion of publicity.

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A study started in 1982 on the health effects of the radioactive iodine released in nuclear tests revealed that it spread from contaminated grain into cow’s milk and from there into humans; it caused an estimated 10,000 to 75,000 cases of thyroid cancer. Yet the study results were not made public until 1997.62 In the Soviet Union, the culture of denial was taken even further than in the United States. While US production facilities were isolated sites, in the Soviet Union their very existence was known only to a select few; facilities were not even marked on maps.63 The secrecy made it almost impossible for people living near the production facilities to demand their rights. Those doctors who treated the victims of pollution from nuclear production did not, for fear of severe punishment, dare to reveal the emerging environmental catastrophe, let alone protest against it.64 Radioactive pollution caused by army-controlled facilities was of no concern to citizens because they received no information about nuclear waste, for example that released from Mayak into the Techa River between 1948 and 1956, or about the polluting fallout from nuclear tests in inhabited areas.65 In 1951, the authorities imposed strict limits on the use of water from the Techa River, but did not publicize the reasons for the restrictions. As a result, residents did not observe the prohibitions and continued to use the water for drinking, household use, and swimming. In 1957 the populace was not informed about an accident at Mayak. Only a few people living in the polluted area were relocated. Some limitations were placed on agriculture and the raising of livestock, but people’s everyday lives went on as before because they were unaware of their unsafe environment.66 The Victims of Nuclear Armament There is no such thing as radioactive radiation that is harmless to people! Large doses of radiation can rapidly cause the death of a person exposed to it, while illnesses, such as various kinds of cancerous tumours, can result from exposure to smaller amounts of radiation. The number of people who fall ill in comparison to the number of people who are exposed does decrease as the radiation dose decreases.67 Yet it remains extremely difficult to estimate the number of people who were victims of nuclear armament. As efforts were made to systematically conceal the pollution and its effects, it was not possible to conduct independent studies.68 In addition, notably more people get cancer

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regardless of radiation rather than because of it, so it is impossible to say when a case of cancer has resulted from exposure to radioactive radiation. Indeed, estimates regarding the number of victims of radioactive pollution vary greatly. People who did the greatest amount of practical work in the production of nuclear weapons have suffered the most from the dangers of radiation when calculated in relative terms. During the Cold War, over half a million people worked in US nuclear production facilities; over half were exposed to amounts of radiation that exceeded the upper limits of the radiation safety regulations of the time. In the first two decades of nuclear weapons production, as many as 90 per cent of the employees at the most dangerous production facilities occasionally received an amount of radiation exceeding the safety regulations. In the final years of the Cold War, the limits were stricter than in the first years of the nuclear era. Yet at Hanford, for instance, it is estimated that during a six-month period thousands of employees received radiation doses currently defined as the maximum lifetime limit.69 The majority of studies that have clarified the health effects of the radiation such employees received indicate they have experienced increases in various types of cancer. Such employees had no comprehensive health coverage; when some tried to apply for workers’ compensation, the Department of Energy contested their claims. US authorities did not admit the true amount of radiation received by employees until 1994, many years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.70 The health effects of radioactive radiation in the Soviet Union were similar to those in the United States. In Mayak, the annual radiation dose received by employees exceeded by a further 30 to 80 per cent the average dose received by the employees working at the most dangerous production facilities in the United States.71 At least about 5,000 people working at Mayak were continuously exposed to a radiation dose of over 1 sievert a year. Hundreds of employees received an annual dose of as much as a 4 sieverts. Exposure to radiation was at its greatest in the 1948 to 1958 period, when radioactive pollution caused at least 1,828 cases of radiation-based sickness.72 One study estimated that radioactive radiation caused 300 to 600 lethal cancer cases among Mayak employees. The estimates in studies are probably too low.73 The figures provided from the first decades of nuclear production are generally highly suspect and probably low. Doctors did not, for fear of punishment, diagnose cases of illness and death as radiation sickness. So the number of known cancer cases among Mayak employees is not

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nearly as high as one would expect from comparative studies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.74 Army personnel were severely exposed to radiation as participants in nuclear test explosions. In the Soviet Union, no figures about the military personnel who became victims of nuclear pollution have emerged. In the United States, cancer cases were found among those soldiers who participated in nuclear tests, but it has not been possible to demonstrate a clear correlation between their illnesses and nuclear tests. Research was hampered by the destruction of archived material in a fire in 1978. Before the fire, many civilians and military personnel raised the possibility of a correlation between their cancer-related illnesses and exposure to radiation. The government indirectly admitted that military personnel were exposed when it enacted a law in 1988 to permit veterans with cancer to apply for compensation. All 62,000 veterans who worked at the Nevada nuclear test site between 1951 and 1962 were covered by the law.75 In the United States, two to three thousand military personnel unknowingly were human guinea pigs in nuclear tests.76 AEC reports have revealed that in the 1950s it was a common practice to order soldiers to march or pilots to fly through the radioactive clouds resulting from a nuclear test.77 Scientific tests on civilians were conducted as well, sometimes with their consent and sometimes without their knowledge. Radioactive substances were also experimentally released among humans on numerous occasions; for example, in 1965 a nuclear reactor at the Nevada nuclear test site was intentionally detonated, and its effects on nearby residents were studied. The radioactive cloud generated by the “accident” travelled all the way to Los Angeles.78 Many who were victims of testing on people often were on the margins of society or were considered appropriate test subjects; they were representatives of aboriginal populations, prisoners, disabled children, hospital patients, and pregnant women who were exposed to radioactive substances. One purpose of the 1,400 tests involving over 23,000 people conducted with radioactive substances was to discover the possible physiological and psychological effects of nuclear strikes. These tests on humans did not become public until 1993, and produced immediate public outrage. In President Bill Clinton’s cabinet, Secretary of Energy Hazel O’Leary released the information and commented on the tests: “The only thing I could think of was Nazi Germany.”79 Many average citizens have suffered from the dangers of radiation, both those who lived near production facilities and people around the

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world exposed to the increased amount of radioactive pollution in the atmosphere. In the vicinity of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site – where the amount of radioactivity in certain critical spots was greater than in the Chernobyl area in 1986 – over 1.5 million people were exposed repeatedly to dangerously high amounts of radiation prior to 1963, either directly through radioactive fallout or indirectly through food.80 Studies conducted after the Cold War ended indicate a clear cancer risk and an increase in cancer cases among those people who lived in the most badly polluted areas.81 In the fifteen years following the first nuclear test detonation by the Soviet Union, the risk of getting cancer doubled among residents of nearby areas, and the risk of leukemia in particular was multiplied.82 As late as 1988, the number of cancer cases in such areas was 70 per cent above the national average.83 The pollution has most seriously affected children, who are more susceptible to radiation sicknesses than adults.84 Genetic mutations also appear from 1.5 to 1.8 times more frequently in people exposed to radiation than in reference groups.85 The environmental catastrophe that has afflicted the area of Chelyabinsk for decades has had a fatal effect on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. People who live in the numerous villages along the Techa River as well as downwind of the 1957 explosion were exposed to radiation of over 1 sievert a year. It is no surprise that the area has also been called the cancer capital of the Soviet Union/Russia. Researchers have proposed that at least 800 to 1,600 deadly cases of cancer in the Chelyabinsk area are the direct result of radioactive pollution. In reality, the figure is probably much higher.86 In addition, thousands of people were evacuated from their homes or forcibly relocated. Those who could, moved out of the area, but the majority did not have the opportunity.87 In the United States, the residents of the areas near the production facilities were exposed to serious radiation over the decades. Before the 1960s, 250,000 people were exposed to radioactive iodine, totaling about 700,000 curies of radioactivity, that was released from Hanford into the atmosphere.88 The number of cancer cases among residents was exceptionally high, and miscarriages significantly exceeded the national average.89 Similar types of polluting took place in the environment of several other production facilities, with an increase in radiation illnesses a likely consequence. Clear evidence of the correlation between the increased cases of illness in the vicinities of production facilities and radioactive emissions has, however, been difficult to

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demonstrate, because during the Cold War statistics on the amount of emissions were often falsified.90 The nuclear tests conducted in Nevada are estimated to have caused tens of thousands of cases of thyroid cancer, as radioactive clouds travelled over inhabited areas without residents being aware enough to protect themselves against the threat. Cases of leukemia, in particular among children, increased in downwind areas.91 The populace of the islands used as test sites in the Pacific Ocean was forcibly relocated prior to the commencement of massive hydrogen bomb tests. A few years later, however, people were allowed to return to their homes because the AEC scientists saw an opportunity to study the health effects of environmental pollution. The result has been the spread of thyroid cancer, leukemia, and brain tumours among the people living on the islands used in nuclear testing and on nearby islands. Hundreds of people have died. Child mortality, miscarriages, and the numbers of malformed or stillborn children have increased. The Polynesians who suffered from nuclear testing have since the 1980s received compensation for their ruined health and their home islands’ degraded environment. In addition, over 10,000 people suffering from radiation sicknesses have received medical care paid for by the United States.92 According to Edward Martell, a nuclear researcher who participated in the AEC from 1954 to 1962, many cases of sickness could have been prevented if the authorities had protected people seriously: “The fact that they have so completely neglected to carry out a more comprehensive and objective assessment of the role of ionizing radiation in the induction of the most common human cancers is clearly a matter of criminal negligence.”93 This statement equally applies to the Soviet authorities. People who worked at the Soviet Union’s nuclear test sites have indicated that when nuclear tests were conducted, almost no attention was paid to the well-being of people or the environment. In the area of Semipalatinsk alone, nuclear tests caused thousands of cases of cancer and numerous other health-related problems, such as birth defects, immune system disturbances, chromosomal changes, and mental illnesses.94 Environmental justice offers an interesting perspective on the nuclear issue. With unusual frequency, polluting has been concentrated on what the centres of power consider the periphery. Until the 1950s, uranium mining operations that fed US nuclear arms production were concentrated primarily in the Congo, southern Africa, and Australia. In these raw material–producing countries, almost no attention was paid to the working conditions in the mines. Of the uranium used in the United

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States, two thirds came from underground quarries, where radium and radioactive substances, especially radon gas, threatened health, so that many employees have died of lung cancer and other lung diseases.95 When self-reliance in US uranium production increased in the 1950s, the mining was concentrated in the barren mountain regions of the west. These areas were often where aboriginal populations lived. In 1990 a radiation exposure compensation act was passed for uranium miners who had worked between 1947 and 1971. The American desert in the southwest became a nuclear zone, which included scientists and nuclear production plants. Considered a wasteland but inhabited by aboriginal people, after many nuclear tests and much waste storage of nuclear materials in a highly militarized landscape, the unreclaimed nuclear sites in this desert area were referred to in some scientific reports as “sacrifice areas” that were unfit for human habitation. Seeing aboriginal people as expendable or invisible, nuclearism in this area amounted to nuclear colonialism and environmental racism.96 Another such periphery involved the production of nuclear components in Canada and its mining of uranium ore deposits for export to the American nuclear arms industry. As in the United States, uranium miners were exposed to harmful substances and got sick, while aboriginal people living near uranium mines were exposed to the industry’s toxic pollution, which affected their health and livelihoods.97 Gilbert Oskaboose, a Canadian from the Ojibwe community, discussed the actions of European peoples that created injustices for his people: White people came here a long time ago, took all the furs, trapped all the beaver out, and the otter and the mink … They went away and they left us with the bush and the rocks. It wasn’t too much later they came back again. They call that logging. Cut down all the trees – white pine, red pine, cut it all down. And they left us on the bare rock. Then they discovered uranium here. And the old man said, “Now the sons-a-bitches are back for the rocks.”98

The Soviet Union imported most of the uranium it used from East Germany and Czechoslovakia. In East Germany alone, 450,000 miners toiled to keep the mines producing twenty-four hours a day, and big brother’s uranium refineries sated. About 6,000 miners have died of primarily radon-caused lung cancer.99 Mines have always been dangerous work environments, but the atrocious workplace safety of the uranium mines cannot be explained by lack of information. The role of

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radon in the development of lung disease was confirmed in the 1920s, and by the 1950s the prevailing notion was that it was not possible to set a safe lower limit for exposure.100 For reasons of safety and secrecy, nuclear production facilities were located far from the major cities, and nuclear charges were not detonated in densely populated areas, such as the east coast of the United States or the western areas of the Soviet Union. At the same time, the negative effects of the nuclear weapons industry were concentrated in the surrounding environments with wilderness, rural areas, and people, often aboriginal peoples – Polynesians, American Indians, Kazakhs, or the Nenets of Novaya Zemlya – who were forced to move out of the way or live with and suffer the effects of the nuclear policies. Occasionally such policies had overtly racist characteristics, as demonstrated by a statement made by one of the AEC members in 1956 concerning the Marshall Islands and their inhabitants: “[It] is by far the most contaminated place in the world … [W]hile it is true that these people do not live, I would say, the way Westerners do, civilized people, it is nevertheless true that they are more like us than the mice.” With this statement, the AEC member attempted to defend the exploitation of the island’s inhabitants in research investigating the health effects of radioactivity.101 The global increase in radioactivity resulting from atmospheric nuclear tests did not choose its victims, but evenly targeted all ethnic and social groups. For the world population, even a minuscule increase in the amount of radiation resulted in large numbers of radiation sicknesses. According to one study, the dose of radiation received by all people by the end of the twentieth century has caused and will cause by 2100 an estimated 430,000 fatal cases of cancer.102 The Legacy of Nuclear Armament The theoretical capabilities for the construction of a nuclear bomb have existed in principle since before World War II. But without the war, the superpowers would not have developed nuclear weapons so early; without the Cold War, the massive nuclear weapons development programs, which the superpowers began in preparation for the third and probably final world war, and the vast increase in nuclear weapons likely would not have happened. World War III never broke out, and both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union have disappeared. However, the shadow of nuclear armament will linger for countless generations.

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In evaluating its legacy, we must consider the political and social conditions under which decisions affecting future generations were made. In the first decades of the atomic age, there was not much information about pollution and its effects. Once the nuclear bomb was developed, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union had, in the context of the Cold War, any choice but to keep up with the self-perpetuating vicious circle of nuclear armament. The alternative was the supremacy of the enemy in the arena of international politics as well as the global victory of a competing way of life. However, for decades pollution was approached in both the Soviet Union and the United States in a way that was irresponsible. As a result, the legacy of nuclear armament for the world has been destructive. Tens of thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes in order to avoid deadly radiation. There have been many deaths. Hundreds of thousands, even millions of people have fallen ill and will fall ill from exposure to radioactive substances that were released from nuclear weapons production into the environment. The majority of victims have been the very people whom the superpowers claimed to be protecting through the development of nuclear weapons: the average citizens of both the United States and the Soviet Union.103 The effects of nuclear armament have appeared in their most destructive form in those places where, as a by-product of the manufacture of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, the nuclear industry created 10 billion curies worth of nuclear waste.104 Yet, it has not been possible to develop one single, completely safe solution to neutralize its destructiveness. Most waste has been buried in the territories of the United States and the former Soviet Union or is waiting in storage for final disposal. Studies have shown that even in the 2000s, radioactive substances have leaked into the environment from these repositories, locally polluting the wells of nearby residents and threatening in the near future to contaminate the groundwater needed by millions of people for their everyday use.105 If an accident occurred, the stored waste could pollute large areas so badly that they would be uninhabitable.106 In addition, stores of nuclear waste are dangerous as possible targets of terrorists. Although a large proportion of this waste’s activity will disappear over time, numerous radioactive substances have half-lives of thousands of years. For instance, the half-life of the plutonium isotope used in nuclear weapons (plutonium-239) is 24,110 years. Maximum radioactive substances remain dangerous to humans for the equivalent of ten half-lives; over the past seventy years humans have created a problem

46  Tuomas Räsänen

that may remain a concern for coming generations for thousands of years. Since the end of the Cold War, authorities have been planning production facility cleaning programs, which take many years and cost hundreds of billions of US dollars.107 Cleanup of the environment at many production sites has proven so effective that their future use is already feasible, as it has been possible to greatly reduce the risk of dangerous accidents. But even in the United States, with more resources for cleanup than Russia, cleanup projects have not always progressed according to plan. In some places, from the safe storage of high-level waste deep underground to the treatment of waste that has gotten into the groundwater, restoring the environment to a safe condition for humans has proven ineffective, problematic, and has not been resolved. In some cases, converting the most seriously contaminated areas into a habitable condition is perhaps not feasible.108 The only option in such situations is to store the waste in containers that are as safe as possible and isolate the areas. For this reason, the US authorities have planned for nature preserves in such areas.109 Similarly, in the former Soviet Union, some places cannot be saved. Lake Karachay, for example, had radioactivity in 1990 still at about 120 million curies, twice the amount of the radioactivity released at Chernobyl. The lake has subsequently been covered with a concrete shell, but it continues to emit deadly pollution into the surrounding environment, in some areas at levels where in less than an hour an adult in the area is exposed to a fatal dose of radiation.110 The only option in such cases is to isolate the most badly contaminated areas from society. But pollution cannot always be limited to closed areas, as established in Russia and the United States, because the long-term radioactive isotopes dumped in the soil will spread more widely into groundwater. Improving the state of the environment at production facilities and cutting off polluted areas from society demonstrate the enormous strides in environmental awareness that have taken place since the first decades of the Cold War. This legacy of nuclear armament exists alongside the damaged environments and human victims. In many Western countries, opposition to nuclear testing flourished from the 1950s and provided the spark for a new kind of environmentalism, where human environmental concern expanded from purely local incidents of environmental pollution to examine the destruction of systems that sustain life on the entire planet. Growing awareness of the dangers of radioactivity influenced diplomacy between the superpowers. The

Environmental Effects of Nuclear Armament  47

Limited Test Ban Treaty signed in 1963 emerged from the need to prevent global radioactive fallout and as a response to the emerging international movement concerned about pollution and the environment.111 The treaty decreased the global radioactive fallout to as little as one tenth of the preceding level.112 Thus the Limited Test Ban Treaty was the first successful international environmental treaty covering the entire planet. Nevertheless, the threats that originated in the military technology of World War II remain a grim reality. Mayak is still functioning, and although the production of nuclear weapons has ceased, nuclear waste generated by nuclear power plants in Russia, Europe, and Southeast Asia is reprocessed there. According to the Russian environmental authorities, the radioactivity of the Techa River has once more risen alarmingly in the 2000s, because radioactive substances are continuously released directly from the reprocessing facility into the river.113 In Hanford, scientists have found that liquid nuclear wastes have migrated downward into the groundwater and contaminated soils more than 60 metres below the surface. The concentration of radionuclides escaping into streams and rivers in Hanford, Savannah River, and elsewhere is currently relatively low. However, unsafe old storage tanks, some of which were built back in the 1950s, are still there, containing millions of litres of high-level waste and posing a continuous risk to the drinking water supplies of hundreds of thousands of people.114 The legacy of nuclear arms production will remain with us very far into the future, perhaps in perpetuity. Plans for maintaining the environment assume that nuclear waste remains under human control. This idea is unrealistic because the activity of many radionuclides will exist for thousands of years. It is as if humanity has not learned anything from the dangerous decades of the Cold War nuclear arms race. There are over sixty nuclear power plants currently under construction without any idea, in most projects, of how to get rid of the nuclear waste permanently. The nine nuclear weapon states still have altogether thousands of missiles in their silos. As tensions between the superpowers are growing again, nuclear disarmament seems at the moment a distant dream. On the contrary, history shows that the diffusion of any technology cannot be undone forever. Sooner or later there will be more states or, even worse, non-governmental actors with nuclear weapons. This could once again speed up the vicious circle of the production of nuclear weapons, no doubt with terrible costs to the environment and human health.

48  Tuomas Räsänen Figure 1.2. Karl Marx Street in Muslyumova village near Techa River, 50 kilometres east of the Majak.

Source: Robert Knoth, by courtesy of Greenpeace.

NOTES 1 Great Britain, France, and China are considered the traditional nuclear weapon states, in addition to the United States and the Soviet Union/ Russia. Since the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons signed in 1968, at least India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea have joined the nuclear weapon states. During the Cold War, the Republic of South Africa had its own nuclear weapon, but it gave it up in the 1990s. Some security analysts also believe that Iran can be considered a de facto nuclear weapon state, because in their view Iran could manufacture a nuclear weapon very rapidly if desired. For a short overview of the environmental effects of nuclear armament in these other states (excluding Iran), see, for example, Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands. 2 Plutonium is an exceptionally dangerous substance. It is estimated that 500 mg of plutonium is a lethal dose if it makes it into the digestive system. This amount is five times greater than a lethal dose of cyanide. Inhaled botulinum is 1,000 times more deadly than plutonium. Because of its long half-life, plutonium is also not as radioactive as many other

Environmental Effects of Nuclear Armament  49 radioactive substances produced during the exploitation of nuclear energy. On the dangers of plutonium, see Sutcliffe et al., A Perspective on the Dangers of Plutonium. 3 See, for example, Cirincione, Bomb Scare, 1–4. 4 All told, by the end of 1945 the numbers of those who died in Hiroshima rose to 140,000 (±10,000) and in Nagasaki to 70,000 (±10,000) (Summary of Relief Measures for Atomic Bomb Survivors). The figures presented here are based on studies on the effects of radiation on those who survived the nuclear explosion; these studies were conducted by Hiroshima University, a US and Japanese joint foundation called the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF), and the Hiroshima A-Bomb Casualty Council. The human suffering caused by the Japanese nuclear strikes did not, of course, come to an end in 1945: many people fell ill and died due to radiation sicknesses in the decades that followed, and many were forced to live out the remainder of their lives with permanent injuries. 5 “Report of the Committee on Political and Social Problems”; “Niels Bohr’s Memorandum to President Roosevelt, July 1944”; Holloway, “The Soviet Union,” 100–1; Sherwin, “The Atomic Bomb,” 83–91. 6 Holloway, “The Soviet Union,” 100. See also Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War, 27–9, 44–5. During the war, Stalin still believed and hoped that, upon Germany’s defeat, cooperation between the Allies would continue on equal footing. 7 Clark, The Greatest Power on Earth, 269–70. The United States detonated the first H-bomb in 1952; the Soviet Union detonated its first H-bomb in 1953. These nuclear tests were, however, much smaller in scale than the Bravo nuclear test. The Mike nuclear test device detonated by the United States in 1952 would have been classifiable as a superbomb based on the force of its explosion, but the bomb was far too large to transport into enemy airspace by aircraft. 8 “The Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program.” The revelation of the enormous destructive power of the H-bomb and Stalin’s death in 1953 did, indeed, spark momentary hopes for curbing the arms race. Among Soviet leaders, a policy of detente was supported particularly by Lavrentiy Beria and Georgy Malenkov. When the former was executed in 1953 and the latter banished to Asia, Nikita Khrushchev’s rise to power ended a brief “interregnum” and at the same time smothered the opportunity for a more Western-friendly policy. Loth, Overcoming the Cold War, 19–24, 34–5; Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War, 166–8. 9 Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 356. The Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) replaced the Atomic Energy Commission in 1974.

50  Tuomas Räsänen However, ERDA only functioned for a few years, and from 1977 to the present day, the exploitation of nuclear energy has been the responsibility of the US Department of Energy (DOE). 10 “Nuclear Notebook.” With the term “nuclear weapons,” I refer here to both individual nuclear bombs as well as nuclear warheads. It is possible for one nuclear missile to hold several warheads. 11 Appleby, “NATO/SCOPE-RADTEST,” 18; Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War, 257–8. 12 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 580–1; Renner, “Environmental and Health Effects,” 126. 13 Hanford is perhaps the most polluted of all nuclear production facilities located in the United States, for which reason it and certain other production facilities receive special attention in this chapter. In the final moments of the Cold War, there were a total of over 3,200 production facilities in the United States at over 100 different locations. Renner, “Environmental and Health Effects,” 127. 14 Fiorovanti and Makhijani, Containing the Cold War Mess, 151. 15 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 55, 220–3, 249–52; Renner, “Environmental and Health Effects,” 127. 16 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 223. 17 Fiorovanti and Makhijani, Containing the Cold War Mess, 16; Makhijani and Saleska, High-Level Dollars, Low-Level Sense, 22–6. The curie (Ci) is a unit of measurement of radioactivity that describes the activity of the source of the radiation, in other words the number of disintegrations of the atoms’ nuclei. Nowadays the more commonly used unit of measurement is the becquerel (Bq). 1 Bq corresponds to one disintegration per second. 1 Ci = 3.7·101° Bq. In this chapter, I use the older unit because with large figures the scale of radioactivity is easier to understand in curies than in becquerels. 18 Transuranic waste is waste that includes elements that are heavier than uranium. According to the practices followed in the United States, waste is transuranic if it includes substances exceeding the atomic number of uranium and whose half-life is longer than twenty years. In addition, the activity of the waste must be greater than 100 nanocuries per gram. 19 Fiorovanti and Makhijani, Containing the Cold War Mess, 8–12; Makhijani and Boyd, Poison in the Vadose Zone, 12–13, 86–8, 92–3. The name of the INL was changed in 1977 to Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL); in 1997 it was renamed the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL), and in 2005 the name was restored to the original

Environmental Effects of Nuclear Armament  51 Idaho National Laboratory (INL). See Power, America’s Nuclear Wastelands, 15, reference 3. 20 On charges against the authorities responsible for nuclear production, see, for example, Mogren, Warm Sands, 123–33, 143–4. 21 Fiorovanti and Makhijani, Containing the Cold War Mess, 8, 154–5. 22 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 215, 223, 238; Makhijani and Boyd, Poison in the Vadose Zone, 22–3, 33–4, 73–4. 23 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 326–8; Kolesnikov and Yemelyanenkov, “Nuclear Pollution in the Former USSR,” 421. In later studies, it has also been demonstrated that traces of the waste dumped into the Techa River are detectable thousands of kilometres away, all the way to the lower reaches of the Ob River. 24 Feshbach and Friendly, Ecocide in the USSR, 175. In a study conducted in the 1960s, it was detected that pollution had travelled from the lake into the groundwater. High-level waste was released into Lake Karachay prior to 1953, at which time a waste storage unit was completed at Mayak, as well as again in 1957 after an accident that occurred at the storage unit. Low-level waste was released into the lake continuously. Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 331–2, 337–8. 25 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 344–5; Nuclear Wastes in the Arctic, 43–4. The estimates of various researchers and official sources on the amount of buried nuclear waste vary clearly after 1967 as well. The amount mentioned here is based on the report Nuclear Wastes in the Arctic, which emerged from cooperation between Alexander Penyagin, a former chair of the Soviet committee on nuclear energy, the governments of the United States, Russia, and Norway, and several NGOs. 26 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 346–50. 27 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 356–7; Nuclear Wastes in the Arctic, 42–3. 28 Makhijani and Saleska, High-Level Dollars, Low-Level Sense, 27–8. 29 Nuclear Wastes in the Arctic, 27–30; Yemelyanenkov and Zolotkov, “Military Pollution.” 30 Eileen Welsome, The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War (New York: Delta, 1999), 15–19, 109–13, 184–6. 31 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 241–2; Renner, “Environmental and Health Effects,” 127. Naturally no plutonium was detected at Hiroshima, as uranium was used in nuclear fission. 32 Despite its seriousness, the Fukushima power plant accident in 2011 will probably not affect this assessment.

52  Tuomas Räsänen 33 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 334–6; Kolesnikov and Yemelyanenkov, “Nuclear Pollution in the Former USSR,” 420; Renner, “Environmental and Health Effects,” 131. 34 Feshbach and Friendly, Ecocide in the USSR, 175. 35 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 332–3. 36 Since 1963, at least two accidents involving nuclear explosions have taken place during military exercises in the Soviet Union. Appleby, “NATO/ SCOPE-RADTEST,” 16. In addition, in 1965 the Soviet Union conducted an underground nuclear detonation at the Semipalatinsk site with the intent of creating a reservoir. Because the detonation was carried out so close to the surface of the earth, it led to serious pollution of the environment. For this reason, it has often been classified as an above-ground test. See Radioactive Heaven and Earth, 100. 37 Goldblat and Cox, “Part I: Summary and Conclusions,” 9; McEwan, “Environmental Effects,” 83; Loth, Overcoming the Cold War, 77–8. Radioactive substances have also escaped into the atmosphere from some underground nuclear tests. 38 Appleby, “NATO/SCOPE-RADTEST,” 11; Matushchenko et al., “Some Characteristics of Atmospheric Nuclear Tests,” 63; “SIPRI Nuclear Testing Tally Table.” Slightly diverging figures appear in the literature with regard to the number of atmospheric nuclear tests conducted by the United States and the Soviet Union. The reasons for this include the fact that data has been updated as new sources come to light, and in addition, nuclear tests that have been conducted in the atmosphere have been defined in slightly different ways. A small proportion of atmospheric nuclear tests were socalled peaceful nuclear explosions conducted with an eye to economic use. 39 Nuclear Wastes in the Arctic, 33–4. Approximately 41 million curies of cesium-137 and strontium-90 alone were released in atmospheric tests, whereas approximately 6.8 million curies of corresponding radionuclides were released at Chernobyl. 40 Barkjudarov, “Radiological Consequences,” 262–4. 41 It must be added to the environmental effects listed here that, as a result of underground nuclear tests conducted since 1963, the earth and bedrock of nuclear test sites may have been seriously polluted. For instance, millions of curies of radioactive substances remain under the surface of the earth at the US test site in Nevada. McEwan, “Environmental Effects,” 82–3; Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 225–6. It is possible that the radiation will travel from the soil to the groundwater and, via upheavals of the earth’s crust, into the atmosphere as well. 42 Appleby, “NATO/SCOPE-RADTEST,” 11.

Environmental Effects of Nuclear Armament  53 43 Freedman, Environmental Ecology, 309; Merlin and Gonzalez, “Environmental Impacts,” 178, 183–7, 199. Eight percent of the original surface area of Enewetak Atoll disappeared as a result of nuclear explosions. 44 Appleby, “NATO/SCOPE-RADTEST,” 41–3; Church et al., “Overview of ORERP,” 133. 45 Appleby, “NATO/SCOPE-RADTEST,” 17–18. 46 Bersimbaev et al., “Minisatellite Mutations,” 40–1; Pavlovski, “Radiological Consequences,” 221. See also Appleby, “NATO/SCOPE-RADTEST,” 49–51. 47 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 327. 48 Ian Stacy, “Roads to Ruin.” On the inadequacy of scientific data on the spread of radioactive substances, see also Higuchi, “Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing,” 304–5. 49 Makhijani and Saleska, High-Level Dollars, Low-Level Sense, 37. 50 Stacy, “Roads to Ruin,” 425–8. 51 Makhijani and Saleska, High-Level Dollars, Low-Level Sense, 103–5; Mogren, Warm Sands, 45–7. 52 Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 4–5. 53 Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War, 150. For instance, over 65,000 prisoners and over 100,000 soldiers participated in the digging of Krasnojarsk-26, quarried into a mountain. Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 340. 54 Feshbach and Friendly, Ecocide in the USSR, 27; Charles E. Ziegler, Environmental Policy in the USSR (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987), 3–6. 55 Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 434–5. 56 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 3–4. 57 Radioactive Heaven and Earth, 50, 54–7. In order to protect locals but also out of fear of their opposition, attempts were made to minimize the detrimental effects of explosions to human health and livelihood in the selection of nuclear test sites. In the selection process, the decision was made to locate the nuclear test site in Nevada despite the fact that the prevailing west wind would spread radioactive fallout from Nevada over a large part of the country. The best option in terms of wind would have been the nation’s East Coast, but it was too densely populated, and in addition it was feared that the radioactive fallout from the nuclear tests would harm Atlantic fishing. 58 Wittner, Resisting the Bomb, 1–3. On the US discussion on radioactive fallout, see Higuchi, “Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing,” 313–20. The precautionary area for the Bravo nuclear test proved to be too small because the explosion was much more powerful than was initially

54  Tuomas Räsänen estimated. Some researchers have interpreted that the US authorities intentionally exposed the residents of nearby islands to the radioactive pollution in the Bravo test to get an opportunity to study the effects of pollution on humans. The authorities were aware of the change in winds in good time before the test, and yet they did not cancel it. See Merlin and Gonzalez, “Environmental Impacts,” 192–3. 59 Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 411–13, 423. 60 Hacker, “Hotter than a $2 Pistol,” 157–9; Higuchi, “Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing,” 314–19; Welsome, The Plutonium Files, 257–60. 61 Hacker, “Hotter than a $2 Pistol,” passim. 62 Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 407. 63 Nuclear Wastes in the Arctic, 44. 64 Feshbach and Friendly, Ecocide in the USSR, 172–5, 183–4; Kolesnikov and Yemelyanenkov, “Nuclear Pollution in the Former USSR,” 420–1. 65 The leaders of the Soviet Union had a tendency in their statements to blame the atmospheric nuclear tests conducted by the United States for increased radioactive pollution. In contrast, the effects of their own nuclear tests were forgotten or belittled in the international arena; at home, they were not discussed at all. Ziegler, Environmental Policy in the USSR, 136. 66 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 4–5, 327–8, 334–7. Information about the Soviet Union’s nuclear catastrophes did not begin to appear in the Western press until the end of the 1970s, as a result of the revelations of a scientist who defected from the Soviet Union. Yet people in the West did not initially believe or want to believe the claims. The Soviet Union systematically denied everything. See Clark, The Greatest Power on Earth, 295; Feshbach and Friendly, Ecocide in the USSR, 174. 67 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 71. 68 Because of this, researchers have primarily relied on studies that were conducted on the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions. 69 Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 398–401; Renner, “Environmental and Health Effects,” 128–9. 70 Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 398–400; Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 264–82, 371. Cases of death resulting from leukemia and brain tumours have increased most acutely. Acland, Making a Real Killing, 231. 71 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 368–74. 72 Scott, “Radiation Effects.” The sievert (Sv) is a unit of measurement for radioactive radiation that measures the biological effect of radiation. About half of those exposed to a one-time dose of 3–4 sieverts die within a few weeks; a one-time dose of 1 sievert causes symptoms of radiation sickness, such as exhaustion and nausea, within 24 hours.

Environmental Effects of Nuclear Armament  55 7 3 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 376–7. 74 Ibid., 588. 75 Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 404–6. The amount of compensation was established at 75,000 dollars in said law. 76 Ibid., 427. 77 Letter from Congressional Representative Edward Markey to Secretary of Energy Hazel O’Leary, 24 August 1994. 78 Ibid.; Moreno, Undue Risk, 153–5. 79 For more information on radioactive testing on human subjects in the United States, see “DOE Openness: Human Radiation Experiments”; Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 421–8; Moreno, Undue Risk; Welsome, The Plutonium Files. Some of the tests were initially conducted for medical use alone, but at times they were later used when pondering issues of radiation. The Soviet Union is also known to have conducted many human tests with radioactive substances. 80 Bersimbaev et al., “Minisatellite Mutations,” 40–1; Voigt and Semiochkina, “The Present Radioecological Situation of the Semipalatinsk Test Site,” 14–15. 81 Bauer et al., “Semipalatinsk Historical Cohort,” 64–5. 82 Pavlovski, “Radiological Consequences,” 247, 251. 83 Sidel, “The Impact of Military Preparedness,” 433. 84 Carr et al., “Thyroid Disease Prevalence,” 55–6. Cancer of the thyroid gland, for instance, develops more easily in children than adults. 85 Bersimbaev et al., “Minisatellite Mutations,” 45. 86 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 376–87. Heavy industry that has put a big strain on the environment has long existed in the Chelyabinsk area, and this has also had an effect on the health of residents. 87 Feshbach and Friendly, Ecocide in the USSR, passim; Kolesnikov and Yemelyanenkov, “Nuclear Pollution in the Former USSR,” 421. 88 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 269; Renner, “Environmental and Health Effects,” 128–9. 89 Renner, “Environmental and Health Effects,” 129; Sidel, “The Impact of Military Preparedness,” 436. 90 Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 414. 91 Church et al., “Overview of ORERP,” 128; Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 280–1; Sidel, “The Impact of Military Preparedness,” 431–2. 92 Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 415–20; Merlin and Gonzalez, “Environmental Impacts,” 191, 194–5. 93 Edward Martell’s Letter to Hazel O’Leary, 9 February 1994. In his letter, Martell deals solely with pollution that has taken place on US soil. The policies practiced in the Pacific Proving Grounds do not, however, differ

56  Tuomas Räsänen in their “criminality” from the policies carried out on the continent. Quite the opposite: there was even less attention paid to the well-being of the residents in the Pacific than in the United States. 94 Radioactive Heaven and Earth, 92, 95, 99–101. 95 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 129–45. 96 Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 402; Mogren, Warm Sands, 60–4, 71–2; Kuletz, The Tainted Desert, 12, 13, 27, 38. 97 Quoted in Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 106. See also MacDowell, “Elliot Lake.” 98 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 106. 99 Ibid., 148–50. In addition, approximately 15,000 workers died of pneumoconiosis. 100 Mogren, Warm Sands, 9–10, 78. 101 Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 417. This statement was made regarding Rongelap Atoll, located in the northern Marshall Islands. 102 Ibid., 428–9; Radioactive Heaven and Earth, 36–43. Over the coming millennia, exposure to radioactive carbon-14 in particular, with its halflife of 5,730 years, may raise the number of victims into the millions. 103 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 331–2. Already by 1977, the United Nations estimated that radioactive radiation had caused 150,000 premature deaths and 86,000 birth defects. 104 Renner, “Environmental and Health Effects,” 127. 105 For example, Makhijani and Boyd, Poison in the Vadose Zone, 24–32; Makhijani and Gopal, Setting Cleanup Standards, 25–8; Makhijani and Saleska, High-Level Dollars, Low-Level Sense, 51–67, 94–6; Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 223; Power, America’s Nuclear Wastelands, 119. In 2010, the United States withdrew its long-term plan to permanently store nuclear waste in tunnels to be dug into the Yucca Mountains in the Nevada desert. See, for example, Wald, “Panel on Nuclear Waste.” 106 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 223; Renner, “Environmental and Health Effects,” 128; Sidel, “The Impact of Military Preparedness,” 430, 436. As an example of the possibility of accidents, a burned waste container was found at Hanford in 1998 that contained enough plutonium to build twelve nuclear bombs. Sidel, “The Impact of Military Preparedness,” 430. 107 Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 381, 385–9; Power, America’s Nuclear Wastelands, 7. According to an estimate by the Office of Environmental Management established by the US Department of Energy, cleaning the US production sites will last seventy years and cost 212 billion dollars.

Environmental Effects of Nuclear Armament  57 108 Fiorovanti and Makhijani, Containing the Cold War Mess, 32–3; Karen Lowrie and Michael Greenberg, “Local Impacts of US Nuclear Weapons Facilities”; Power, America’s Nuclear Wastelands, 118, 146–51. 109 On turning nuclear production facilities into nature preserves, see Makhijani and Gopal, Setting Cleanup Standards, 23–38. Production facilities for which nature preserves are planned are the most badly contaminated areas including Hanford, Washington; the INL in Idaho; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Rocky Flats, Colorado; and Savannah River, South Carolina. 110 Makhijani, Hu, and Yih, Nuclear Wastelands, 331. 111 See Higuchi, “Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing,” 309–13, 320. 112 Goldblat and Cox, “Part I: Summary and Conclusions,” 9; McEwan, “Environmental Effects,” 83; Loth, Overcoming the Cold War, 77–8. Global pollution did not end with the treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union, because China and France continued atmospheric nuclear explosions. Radioactive substances have escaped into the environment from some underground nuclear tests as well. 113 Russian Environmental Directory. RED Files 11, vol. 7, no. 16 (17 April 2005). 114 See, for example, Power, America’s Nuclear Wastelands, 146, 149–51; Makhijani and Boyd, Nuclear Dumps by the Riverside, 39.

REFERENCES Archival Sources Edward Martell’s Letter to Hazel O’Leary, 9 February 1994. Accessed 4 August 2011. http://www.serv.org/?page_id=151. “DOE Openness: Human Radiation Experiments, Roadmap to the Project.” US Department of Energy. Accessed 12 February 2013. https://ehss.energy. gov/ohre/roadmap/index.html. Letter from Congressional Representative Edward Markey to Secretary of Energy Hazel O’Leary, 24 August 1994, Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. Accessed 4 December 2003. http://nsarchive.gwu. edu/radiation/dir/mstreet/commeet/meet6/brief6/tab_l/br6l1h.txt. “Niels Bohr’s Memorandum to President Roosevelt, July 1944.” The Atomic Archive. Accessed 12 February 2013. http://www.atomicarchive.com/ Docs/ManhattanProject/Bohrmemo.shtml.

58  Tuomas Räsänen “Nuclear Notebook: Nuclear Arsenals of the World.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Accessed 16 September 2016. http://thebulletin.org/nuclearnotebook-multimedia. “Report of the Committee on Political and Social Problems (the Franck Report), 11 June 1945.” The Atomic Archive. Accessed 12 February 2013. http:// www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/ManhattanProject/FranckReport.shtml. Russian Environmental Directory. RED Files 11, vol. 7, no. 16 (17 April 2005). “SIPRI Nuclear Testing Tally Table.” Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization. Accessed 16 September 2016. https://www.ctbto.org/ nuclear-testing/history-of-nuclear-testing/world-overview. “The Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program.” The Nuclear Weapon Archive. Accessed 12 February 2013. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/ Sovwpnprog.html.

Other Sources Acland, Len. Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999. Appleby, Linda J. “Overview of the Proceedings and Papers of the NATO/ SCOPE-RADTEST Advanced Research Workshop in Vienna.” In Atmospheric Nuclear Tests: Environmental and Human Consequences, edited by Charles S. Shapiro, 9–60. Berlin: Springer, 1998. Barkjudarov, Rudolph M. “Radiological Consequences of Global Fallouts of Nuclear Explosion Products over the USSR Territory in 1966–1986.” In Atmospheric Nuclear Tests: Environmental and Human Consequences, edited by Charles S. Shapiro, 261–70. Berlin: Springer, 1998. Bauer, S., B. Grosche, B.I. Gusev, A. Strelnikov, L.M. Pivina, N.N. Kurakina, A.Kh. Sekerbaev, et al. “Semipalatinsk Historical Cohort: Causes of Death in a Study Group from Settlements Adjacent to the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site.” In Workshop on Dosimetry of the Population Living in the Proximity of the Semipalatinsk Atomic Weapons Test Site, edited by Carita Lindholm, Steve Simon, Beatrice Makar, and Keith Baverstock, 62–68. Helsinki: Publications of the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority Finland, STUK-A187, 2002. Bersimbaev, R.I., C. Lindholm, Y.E. Dubrova, M. Hulten, A. Koivistoinen, M. Tankimanova, Z. Mamyrbaeva, et al. “Minisatellite Mutations and Biodosimetry of Population Living Close to the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site.” In Workshop on Dosimetry of the Population Living in the Proximity of the Semipalatinsk Atomic Weapons Test Site, edited by Carita Lindholm, Steve Simon, Beatrice Makar, and Keith Baverstock, 40–7. Helsinki: Publications of the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority Finland, STUK-A187, 2002.

Environmental Effects of Nuclear Armament  59 Carr, Z.A., A. Bouville, N. Luckyanov, S.L. Simon, R. Weinstock, B. Gusev, M. Hartshorne, et al. “Thyroid Disease Prevalence and Fallout Exposure in Kazakhstan.” In Workshop on Dosimetry of the Population Living in the Proximity of the Semipalatinsk Atomic Weapons Test Site, edited by Carita Lindholm, Steve Simon, Beatrice Makar, and Keith Baverstock, 55–61. Helsinki: Publications of the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority Finland, STUK-A187, 2002. Church, B.W., D.L. Wheeler, C.M. Campbell, R.V. Nutley, and L.R. Anspaugh. “Overview of the Department of Energy’s Off-site Radiation Exposure Review Project (ORERP).” In Atmospheric Nuclear Tests: Environmental and Human Consequences, edited by Charles S. Shapiro, 127–38. Berlin: Springer, 1998. Cirincione, Joseph. Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Clark, Ronald. The Greatest Power on Earth: The Story of Nuclear Fission. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1980. Feshbach, Murray, and Alfred Friendly, Jr. Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature under Siege. New York: Basic Books, 1992. Fiorovanti, Marc, and Arjun Makhijani. Containing the Cold War Mess: Restructuring the Environmental Management of the US Nuclear Weapons Complex. Tacoma Park, MD: Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, 1997. Freedman, Bill. Environmental Ecology: The Impacts of Pollution and Other Stresses on Ecosystem Structure and Function. San Diego: Academic Press, 1989. Goldblat, Jozef, and David Cox. “Part I: Summary and Conclusions.” In Nuclear Weapon Tests: Prohibition or Limitation? edited by Jozef Goldblat and David Cox, 3–27. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Hacker, Barton C. “‘Hotter than a $2 Pistol:’ Fallout, Sheep, and the Atomic Energy Commission, 1953–1986.” In The Atomic West, edited by Bruce Hevly and John M. Findlay, 157–75. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998. Higuchi, Toshihiro. “Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Debate on Risk Knowledge in Cold War America, 1945–1963.” In Environmental Histories of the Cold War, edited by John R. McNeill and Corinna R. Unger, 301–22. Washington, DC, and New York: German Historical Institute and Cambridge University Press, 2010. Holloway, David. “The Soviet Union and the Origins of the Arms Race.” In Origins of the Cold War: An International History, edited by Melvyn P. Leffler and David S. Painter, 95–106. London: Routledge, 1994. Kolesnikov, Sergei, and Aleksander Yemelyanenkov. “Nuclear Pollution in the Former USSR.” In War or Health? A Reader, edited by Ilkka P. Taipale, et al., 420–425. London: Zed Books, 2002.

60  Tuomas Räsänen Kuletz, Valerie L. The Tainted Desert: Environmental and Social Ruin in the American West. New York: Routledge, 1998. Loth, Wilfried. Overcoming the Cold War: A History of Détente, 1950–1991. Wiltshire: Palgrave, 2002. Lowrie, Karen, and Michael Greenberg. “Local Impacts of US Nuclear Weapons Facilities: A Survey of Planners.” Environmentalist 20, no. 2 (2000): 157–68. MacDowell, Laurel Sefton. “The Elliot Lake Uranium Miners’ Battle to Gain Occupational Health and Safety Improvements, 1950–1980.” Labour/Le Travail 69 (Spring 2012): 91–118. Makhijani, Arjun, and Michele Boyd. Nuclear Dumps by the Riverside: Threats to the Savannah River from Radioactive Contamination at the Savannah River Site. Tacoma Park, MD: Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, 2004. –  Poison in the Vadose Zone: An Examination of the Threats to the Snake River Plain Aquifer from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. Tacoma Park, MD: Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, 2001. Makhijani, Arjun, and Sriram Gopal. Setting Cleanup Standards to Protect Future Generations: The Scientific Basis of the Subsistence Farmer Scenario and Its Application to the Estimation of Radionuclide Soil Action Levels (RSALs) for Rocky Flats. Boulder, CO: The Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, 2001. Makhijani, Arjun, Howard Hu, and Katherine Yih, eds. Nuclear Wastelands: A Global Guide to Nuclear Weapons Production and Its Health and Environmental Effects. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000. Makhijani, Arjun, and Scott Saleska. High-Level Dollars, Low-Level Sense: A Critique of Present Policy for the Management of Long-Lived Radioactive Waste and Discussion of an Alternative Approach. New York: The Apex Press, 1992. Matushchenko, Anatoly, Alexander Chernushev, Konstantin Kharitonov, Victor Mikhailov, Georgy Tsyrkov, Sergey Zelentsov, and Gennady Zolotukhin. “Some Characteristics of Atmospheric Nuclear Tests at the USSR Test Sites (1949–1962).” In Atmospheric Nuclear Tests: Environmental and Human Consequences, edited by Charles S. Shapiro, 63–8. Berlin: Springer, 1998. McEwan, A.C. “Environmental Effects of Underground Nuclear Explosions.” In Nuclear Weapon Tests: Prohibition or Limitation? edited by Jozef Goldblat and David Cox, 75–91. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Merlin, Mark D., and Ricardo M. Gonzalez. “Environmental Impacts of Nuclear Testing in Remote Oceania, 1946–1996.” In Environmental Histories of the Cold War, edited by J.R. McNeill and Corinna R. Unger, 167–201. Washington, DC, and New York: German Historical Institute and Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Environmental Effects of Nuclear Armament  61 Mogren, Eric W. Warm Sands: Uranium Mill Tailings Policy in the Atomic West. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002. Moreno, Jonathan D. Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans. New York, London: Routledge, 2001. Nuclear Wastes in the Arctic: An Analysis of Arctic and Other Regional Impacts from Soviet Nuclear Contamination. OTA-ENV-623. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995. Pavlovski, O.A. “Radiological Consequences of Nuclear Testing for the Population of the Former USSR (Input Information, Models, Dose, and Risk Estimates).” In Atmospheric Nuclear Tests: Environmental and Human Consequences, edited by Charles S. Shapiro, 219–60. Berlin: Springer, 1998. Power, Max S. America’s Nuclear Wastelands: Politics, Accountability, and Cleanup. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 2008. Radioactive Heaven and Earth: The Health and Environmental Effects of Nuclear Weapons Testing In, On, and Above the Earth. A Report of the IPPNW International Commission to Investigate the Health and Environmental Effects of Nuclear Weapons Production and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. New York: The Apex Press, 1991. Renner, Michael. “Environmental and Health Effects of Weapons Production, Testing and Maintenance.” In War and Public Health, edited by Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel, 117–36. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Schwartz, Stephen I., ed. Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons since 1940. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998. Scott, Bobby R. “Radiation Effects in Mayak Workers.” Accessed 12 February 2013. http://www.radiation-scott.org/yell_may.htm. Sherwin, Martin J. “The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War.” In Origins of the Cold War: An International History, edited by Melvyn P. Leffler and David S. Painter, 77–94. London: Routledge, 1994. Sidel, Victor W. “The Impact of Military Preparedness and Militarism on Health and the Environment.” In The Environmental Consequences of War: Legal, Economic and Scientific Perspectives, edited by Jay E. Austin and Carl E. Bruch, 426–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Stacy, Ian. “Roads to Ruin on the Atomic Frontier: Environmental Decision Making at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, 1942–1952.” Environmental History 15, no. 3 (2010): 415–48. Summary of Relief Measures for Atomic Bomb Survivors. City of Hiroshima, Social Affairs Bureau, Atomic Bomb Survivors Relief Department, 2003. http:// www.city.hiroshima.lg.jp/shimin/heiwa/relief.pdf. Sutcliffe, W.G., R.H. Condit, W.G. Mansfield, D.S. Myers, D.W. Layton, and P.W. Murphy. A Perspective on the Dangers of Plutonium. UCRL-JC-118825. Livermore, CA: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 1995.

62  Tuomas Räsänen Voigt, G., and N. Semiochkina. “The Present Radioecological Situation of the Semipalatinsk Test Site and Internal Dose Estimations for Selected People Living on the Site.” In Workshop on Dosimetry of the Population Living in the Proximity of the Semipalatinsk Atomic Weapons Test Site, edited by Carita Lindholm, Steve Simon, Beatrice Makar, and Keith Baverstock, 8–16. Helsinki: Publications of the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority Finland STUK-A187, 2002. Wald, Matthew L. “Panel on Nuclear Waste Disposal to Propose AboveGround Storage.” New York Times, 13 May 2011, East Coast edition, A16. Welsome, Eileen. The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War. New York: Delta, 1999. Wittner, Lawrence S. Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954–1970. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Yemelyanenkov, Aleksander, and Andrei Zolotkov. “Military Pollution – Nuclear Waste: Sailing Directions Classified.” In War or Health? A Reader, edited by Ilkka P. Taipale et al, 416–19. London: Zed Books, 2002. Ziegler, Charles E. Environmental Policy in the USSR. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987. Zubok, Vladislav, and Constantine Pleshakov. Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.

2 The Face of the Earth, the Shadow of the Bomb: Nuclear War and the First International Environmental Conference, “Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth,” Princeton, New Jersey, 1955 f r e d wa a g e

[Nature] has left it within the power of man irreparably to derange the combinations of organic matter and of organic life, which through the night of aeons she had been proportioning and balancing, to prepare the earth for his habitation, when, in the fullness of time, his Creator should call him forth to enter into its possession. George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (1864) I think we can no longer permit the economic advance of our country to take place so extensively at the cost of the devastation of its natural resources and its natural beauty. George Kennan, Realities of American Foreign Policy (1954)

The first interdisciplinary academic conference on the environment in the United States, “Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth,” was dedicated to George Perkins Marsh, and was significant in the environmental history of the United States. It was, explicitly and implicitly, a direct commentary on nuclear fear and the Cold War escalation of nuclearism that created this fear. As Christian Young says of the conference, which he studied thoroughly, “The convergence of nuclear testing with environmental science transformed ecology from a professionalized specialty of natural history into a twentieth-century systems science.”1 As a result of the new public awareness and fear of radioactive fallout from above-ground nuclear tests (particularly the Mike and King initial hydrogen bomb explosions at the Nevada test site in November 1952), in 1953 the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) established an off-site

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monitoring program for airborne radioactivity.2 Initially, the primary air sampler was a modified Electrolux vacuum cleaner. Axel WennerGren, a high-rolling adventurer with a Bahamian estate, invented and promoted the “Electro-Lux” vacuum cleaner, a ubiquitous appliance in every 1950s middle-class American household. A wealthy man by 1941, he created the Wenner-Gren Foundation, which funded the “Man’s Role” symposium. Both his foundation and his institute funded much nuclear research. After the war, to increase his public identity, WennerGren was active in philanthropic areas and was interested in both technology and in humanity’s redemption from technology’s misdemeanors. His foundation’s continuing goal was “to advance significant and innovative basic research about humanity’s cultural and biological origins.”3 In the early 1950s, members of the public raised concerns about the human condition and feared humanity’s imminent annihilation. A study of how the “Marsh Festival,” as its main academic organizer Carl Sauer called it, was developed suggests that the symposium’s collective examination of the earth’s history, contemporary condition, and possible fate constituted a timely, critical commentary on the nuclearization of the earth. Its use of an ecological vision to oppose nuclear development was not current in the 1950s. But a review of its proceedings, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1956, represented “a highly productive synthesis of the varied disciplines involved,” although it left out many areas.4 The volume “covers man’s modifications of the earth from the time of the dimly imagined food gatherers … to the possible effects in the future of the fall-out of the hydrogen bomb.”5 Interestingly, the most authoritative article on the symposium by Michael Williams employed extensively the manuscript correspondence between Carl Sauer and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. He asserts that the published volume “validated the interdisciplinary approach, heightened the environmental consciousness of the English-speaking world, and exerted an unprecedented influence on the development of a unified approach to environmental issues.”6 Williams provides an enlightening history of the symposium’s development, but does not place it in the nuclear context at all, although he rightly concludes that few contemporaries “sensed that the volume marked a principal turning point in intellectual and environmental thinking.”7 Perhaps the most insightful discussion is Sharon Kingsland’s history of American ecology. She emphasizes that the conference speakers constantly referred to the United States’ “exaggerated faith in progress,”

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and expressed “the acute awareness of how seriously humans were interfering with nature.” She also connects the conference with public nuclear awareness – that “Americans were learning to live with the bomb.”8 In Kingsland’s view, ecology was coming of age as a discipline developing in sync with the evolution of nuclear fear: “Ecosystem ecology emerged in this postwar context of deep anxieties and high hopes, [and] reflected the changing priorities of American science in the atomic age.”9 Christian Young points out that the symposium demonstrated a multidisciplinary approach that applied science to urban, social, and natural problems, and could combine technology and conservation. He focuses particularly on Paul Sears as an ecologist sceptical of technological boosterism, noting “the recent lessons offered by nuclear fallout.”10 With these judgments as background, this chapter examines the symposium and resultant text in the context of the 1950s nuclear discourse in two ways: by juxtaposing the development of the symposium from 1953 to July 1955 with simultaneous nuclear events and developments, and by showing nuclear presence in the texts of symposium papers and in summaries of symposium discussions. The divisions of this paper into “origins,” “process,” and “prospect” are borrowed from the conference proceedings. Origins of the Conference The history of postwar nuclear events was marked particularly by the Bikini and Enewetak A-bomb tests in 1946, the proof of Soviet testing in 1949, President Truman’s announcement in January 1950 that the United States would develop a hydrogen (fusion) bomb, and the successful testing of that bomb at Enewetak in November 1952. This progressive escalation of events made the bomb into a “numinous phenomenon” in public consciousness. Sheldon Ungar writes that it was not just a weapon but “a source of numinous terror and an instrument of mass death, if not extinction.”11 Ungar’s idea of a “moral panic,” a “social construction” of the bomb was borne out by contemporary comments from participants at the symposium. Harrison Brown, one of the few nuclear scientists who participated in “Man’s Role,” had dedicated his 1946 book Must Destruction Be Our Destiny? to humanity “in the hope that it may exist longer than recent events would lead us to suppose.” F.S.C. Northrop saw the Hiroshima bombing as both an actual past event and as “also an eternal object in each successive moment of the present. It hangs over men everywhere as an ever present threat – the

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threat of world war in an atomic age.”12 Commenting on Brown’s The Challenge of Man’s Future (1954) in 1955, Marston Bates, a distinguished writer and naturalist, agreed with Brown that “there is great likelihood that the world will again become involved in total war.”13 In July 1951, William Leroy Thomas Jr, the eager young assistant to Paul Fejos, director of research at the Wenner-Gren Foundation, sent Marston Bates a note of thanks for a luncheon discussion.14 This was a few months after the latest US A-bomb test, Greenhouse, on the Enewetak Atoll. Bates and Thomas’s continuing correspondence led to an International Symposium on Anthropology in June 1952, chaired by Berkeley anthropologist Alfred Kroeber. Bates was asked to prepare a “background or data paper” on “ecology” as a basis for discussion.15 He accepted, and the conference was held at exactly the same time as Edward Teller was organizing the Livermore Laboratories to produce the hydrogen bomb. The conference had many renowned participants, including Daryll Forde, a British anthropologist educated in the United States and influenced by the growing movement for an ecological anthropology; Edward Evans-Pritchard, an English anthropologist who was instrumental in the development of social anthropology; and Julian Huxley, an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist who was a proponent of natural selection, a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century evolutionary synthesis, and later a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund. “Present complexities” is one of the numerous euphemisms for nuclearism that Bates and Sauer used in their correspondence about what would become the “Man’s Role” symposium. The phrase also expressed an idea fairly current among philosophical historians in the early nuclear era. In a 1947 paper, “Survival of the Fittest in the Atomic Age,” Rushton Coulborn argued that there was a “curious and significant congruence” between the nuclear crisis and prehistoric human crises of survival.16 In his The Prevalence of People, Bates suggested, as contemporary post-apocalyptic novelists did also, that after a nuclear war “peoples everywhere might be reduced to the old levels of agrarian economy.”17 One of the topical rationales for “Man’s Role” was the enlightenment of the “present complexities” through a multidisciplinary examination of them. Bates’s ruminations occurred in the period of the first successful H-bomb tests, Mike and King, at Enewetak (1952), the “nuclear snow” fallout over Troy, New York (27 April 1953), and the Soviets’ first test of an H-bomb prototype (8 August 1953). In October 1953, Thomas wrote

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to Sauer, requesting him to chair a new conference on “Man’s Impact as a Dynamic Agent in Changing the Face of the Earth.” Sauer replied on 14 October, “aghast, excited, and somewhat scared,” but enthusiastic, except for the word “dynamic,” because it is “used too much and by the wrong people … the sons of Daedalus who are confident that we have a new knowledge.” Further reflection in November caused Sauer to realize the “bear traps” that might await the conference in the current nuclear environment. Any prophetic content, he wrote to Thomas on 6 November, could create “real emotional disturbances … The more you look into the future the more identification is there between what you hope or fear and what the available evidence indicates.” Any discussions of the future “cannot be construed without a political philosophy,” and the opposing sides are irreconcilable. He repeated his condemnation of the “sons of Daedalus,” represented by Vannevar Bush and Frederick Osborn, both central figures in the development of the nuclear arms race. In other letters (11 and 23 November 1953), Sauer urged Thomas to beware of “salesmen” and “Government men” with no critical faculties, who are unconcerned about the “hour of truth.” He trusted the army more with their experience of the “hora de veridad” (his allusion to a nuclear decision).18 Beginning to speculate on participants who could lead sessions, Sauer emphasized the engagés, those aware of man’s “deformation” of the environment: Fairfield Osborn, Frank Fraser Darling, and in particular Lewis Mumford. They were environmentalists, and Lewis Mumford was “the person who rediscovered George [Perkins] Marsh” in his “The Renewal of the Landscape” chapter in The Brown Decades (1931). Marsh was “the first man to sense the destruction that was being wrought, weigh its appalling losses, and pointed out an intelligent course of action.”19 Several participants in the future “Man’s Role” conference were presenters at the “Mid-Century Conference on Resources for the Future,” held in Washington from 2 to 4 December 1953; its proceedings were published in 1954 as The Nation Looks at Its Resources. One issue in “Man’s Role” would be the question of what constituted “resources.” Eugene Ayers, whose “Man’s Role” paper was on fossil fuels, was the only earlier conference participant to mention atomic power explicitly. He emphasized the unnecessary resource consumption involved in providing energy and also criticized the overuse of water as a coolant in the production of atomic bombs.20 Another participant, Paul B. Sears, who made his mark in botany, natural history, ecology, and

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conservation, provided the “Resources for the Future” conference’s most critical nuclear commentary, without mentioning the bomb per se. He saw the “best young minds” being drawn to physics and chemistry, neglecting the “great pattern” of life on earth. The “world community of living organisms” cried for attention.21 Interestingly, at the “Resources” conference, nuclear and solar energy were addressed only under the rubric of “unconventional sources.” Four days after this conference, on 8 December 1953, President Eisenhower addressed the UN General Assembly on the world nuclear threat. His address was notable for its direct language and for its assumption about the inevitability of an arms race. It echoed in many ways the “Man’s Role” organizers’ sentiments. He suggested the world faced, in effect, an “end of history,” and that the United States must determine “to help us move out of the dark chambers of horror into the light.”22 Beyond this strong imagery was a vision of future historical regress akin to that suggested or explicitly formulated by people like Sauer, Mumford, American physicist and geochemist Harrison Brown, and a host of fiction writers. In mid-January 1954, Carl Sauer’s letter to Lewis Mumford asking him to talk to Thomas at the Wenner-Gren Foundation about participating moved the conference idea forward.23 Mumford was necessary for the conference’s success, and he did contact Thomas and provided him with a proposed outline of the conference. The first topic Mumford wanted emphasized was “the matter of permanent atmospheric pollution from fissionable materials”; the whole matter of “man’s reaction on the environment through the production of atomic fission” should be a main topic set apart from the others, with subset discussions of its effects on different parts of the earth’s biota. All subjects should be directed towards contemporary acts of pollution – from industrial wastes to disposal of the dead.24 Thomas needed to reconcile the strong personalities he had enlisted. He was obviously sympathetic to Mumford, writing to Sauer, “We are on a ‘tight-rope’ of decision,” but declared that he wanted a “powerful statement” that our environment is irrevocably “man-altered,” and that there can be no separation of human culture from the nature in which it is embedded.25 Sauer wrote Mumford about the conference on 3 March 1954, urging him to give Thomas “all the help he could.” He thought “the meeting should face up to the kind of world we should have and are not likely to get … We don’t want to turn the conference over to the prophets of

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technology or of political action but we do want some light on where we’re going and whether we like it.”26 As he wrote these lines, Sauer could not have known that the previous day, the most deadly H-bomb explosion, Bravo, was detonated in the Pacific. Because of supposedly unanticipated winds, it had spread fallout widely across the ocean and onto a Japanese fishing trawler, the Lucky Dragon, which in time became known all over the world. The United States announced Bravo and told the world that it “had developed a deliverable version of ‘Super,’ the decade-old ambition of Edward Teller,” the American theoretical physicist who was later called “the father of the hydrogen bomb.”27 Perhaps the most outspoken letter in the correspondence that developed “Man’s Role” was Sauer’s letter to Thomas on 8 April 1954. Its passion was inspired, perhaps by Mumford’s widely distributed letter and by television coverage. On 28 March, The New York Times published a strongly worded letter from Mumford: “The government’s very hesitation to give away the facts in itself gives away the facts. Under what mandate, then, do they continue to hold as secret the results we may expect from the use of weapons of extermination?” The first thermonuclear blast in the series named Operation Ivy (Mike) had occurred on 1 November 1952. The success of these blasts spurred Edward Teller’s famous code message, “It’s a boy.” Under pressure from the media and civil defence officials, a censored version of this news was eventually released to the public on 2 April 1954. “American television stations played it repeatedly all day, and it was soon riveting audiences around the world,” creating a marked escalation in public knowledge and fear of the H-bomb.28 As conference planning went ahead, on 8 April Sauer discussed the tentative temporal division of the conference sessions into “retrospect,” “process,” and “prospect.” He commented: “About PROSPECT I know little except that I suspect there’s going to be the damnedest collapse of civilization in history coming up but that at least there might be some questioning of the silly bleating about progress. I’m afraid the fates are spinning their thread but we might as well be stout hearted about it and not take refuge in wishful thinking but size up the sober prognoses we can get.” Sauer discussed the fast “rate of acceleration of technology” and noted that “our society produces the sharpest of scientists and technicians, but has shown no wisdom superior to the uncivilized. I’m mildly insistent on the increment of stupidity with growth of our civilization.”29 A week later Thomas succeeded in his long-term effort to enlist the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a co-sponsor of “Man’s Role.” The problem was that the NSF had a charged history in relation to

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nuclear research. First proposed in the 1940s by Senator Harley Kilgore, the NSF was promoted through Vannevar Bush’s famous 1945 book, Science – The Endless Frontier, which was a report to the president from Bush as director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. It was injected into the postwar debate over military versus ­government-civilian control of the nation’s nuclear programs. Another conflict in the NSF was over whether/which “borderline” disciplines such as the social sciences should be included in its mandate.30 The initial years of the NSF involved funding through grant applications, such as Thomas’s, after they had been carefully vetted. But the grant for “Man’s Role” was somewhat precocious, in that it was not until 1955 that anthropology, human ecology, and demography were included in the biological sciences division, and “sociophysical sciences” in the mathematics, physics, and engineering category. To the degree that the sciences most widely represented in “Man’s Role” were borderline sciences, the success of Thomas’s application could be seen in two ways. Either the NSF grant was aimed at co-opting any conference content relating to the effects of nuclear war on humanity or, given the high profile of nuclearism’s negative social effects at that time, it was meant to promote, tacitly, discussions that could touch on the downsides of the US nuclear program. There is no evidence that the NSF influenced the choice of conference participants. The public announcement of the conference had some interesting wording. Under “Aim and Scope of the Conference Idea,” it said that “within the last century man has developed the idea that change is continuous and includes himself.” If “change” is coded as “progress,” the implication is that this idea does not have deep historical roots. The announcement continued: “Culture development may be viewed as man’s growing knowledge of, and control over, forces external to himself. By so increasing his range of action, man has intervened ever more in the rest of the organic world as to change and survival. Man’s evolutionary dominance is assured – only he, himself, can change it.” This last phrase had Cold War resonance, but the statement also noted that the conference “recognizes that man is a part and an active part, of nature, and in so doing, provides the means whereby the course of the social sciences may be linked somewhat more with the physical and biological sciences.”31 This linkage was not common in 1954 and often considered a threat by the “sons of Daedalus.” Finally in the text Paul Fejos approved for mailing, Thomas’s “quantitative effects” mysteriously became “qualitative effects,” suggesting perhaps the influence of Sauer.

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Ongoing Nuclear Concerns The development of “Man’s Role” had reached a plateau by the summer of 1954, but in the background in 1954 and 1955, there was a great escalation in public debate about the nuclear threat and its significance. The organizers were busy exchanging correspondence with the invitees and retooling the shape of the conference to fit their acceptances, rejections, and suggested subject changes. However, as all the participants were preparing their papers, they were influenced by the “background noise.” The Atomic Energy Act, originally passed in 1946, was amended and approved on 31 August 1954. Among its major provisions were definitions of civilian and military uses of nuclear materials and provision for their development and regulation.32 Also in 1954, two significant non-fiction accounts of US nuclearism were published: Daniel Lang’s The Man in the Thick Lead Suit and Robert Jungk’s Tomorrow Is Already Here: Scenes from a Man-Made World. Most noted was another book published in 1954 by J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had headed the Manhattan Project. His Science and the Common Understanding came out nearly simultaneously with his notorious security clearance denial in April, the result of FBI criticism of what it construed as his sympathy for communism and engineered by figures such as scientist Lewis Strauss, who feared Oppenheimer’s influence as an opponent of H-bomb development. Oppenheimer’s public presence nevertheless kept the H-bomb in popular consciousness. Later, in the 15 January 1955 issue of The New Yorker, E.B. White began a “Talk of the Town” piece with commentary on Oppenheimer’s Edward R. Murrow interview, televised on 4 January. Oppenheimer had said he was “not unworried” about the effects of nuclear explosions and that we live “at the edge of mystery.” White himself bewailed “the problem of contamination by experimentation, of extinction through curiosity.”33 Throughout 1954 word had spread of a hyper H-bomb. AEC commissioner Willard Libby suggested in a speech reported in the 12 June Times that such a bomb “can be made with the cheapest atomic explosives in virtually limitless size.” This caused one letter writer to the paper to coin the term “vivacide” – to signify the death of all life on earth. As the troubled year moved to its close, Albert Schweitzer gave his Nobel Lecture on 4 November 1954, as he had been unable to be present when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952. His subject was in tune with the historical emphasis of “Man’s Role,” with its

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implications for “process” and “prospect.” He said, “The true source of what is untenable in our present situation … lies in the fact that not enough thought was given to the realities of historical fact and consequently, to what is just and beneficial.” Through atomic weapons, “man has become superman; past wars were in many cases enablers of progress; nuclear war can bring only annihilation … The superman suffers from a fatal flaw. He has failed to rise to the level of superhuman reason which should match that of his superhuman strength.”34 The Bravo test had led philosopher Bertrand Russell and physicist Joseph Rotblat to collaborate on a BBC program (13 April 1954) to explain the H-bomb in lay terms.35 The response to this program was so great and Russell’s sense of urgency so aroused that he agreed to do another program on the bomb, titled “Man’s Peril,” which aired to a Europe-wide audience on 23 December 1954. A movement in the spirit of Albert Schweitzer that developed around the same time as “Man’s Role” ultimately created one of the most important anti-nuclear documents of the Cold War: the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, issued in London in July 1955. It began a collaboration between Russell and Rotblat, the only project scientist to quit the Manhattan Project on the grounds of conscience, whose later work on nuclear fallout was a major contribution towards the ratification of the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Einstein agreed in February to sign the Manifesto, which was his last public act before his death on 18 April. The Manifesto led to the first of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, held in July 1957. After the Operation Teacup explosions in Nevada in February 1955, evidence of a fallout threat created “public concern, at times bordering on panic … Throughout the spring of 1955, the Atomic Energy Commission conducted an intensive public relations campaign, designed to convince the American people that the fear of fallout was groundless.” At a Joint Committee on Atomic Energy hearing (15 April), scientists were allowed a forum to deny there were any negative genetic effects to radiation.36 In September, Caltech genetics professor Alfred Sturtevant laid out evidence of mutational and other biological effects definitely attributable to radiation.37 These events contributed to the spirit of the age in which the “Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth” conference took place; it was held from 16 to 22 June 1955 at the Princeton Inn in Princeton, New Jersey. As the participants journeyed to the meetings, they could have read plenty of nuclear news: Japanese leaders rejected US limits on their

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atomic research; President Eisenhower would leave Washington on the 15 June during a three-day air-raid test carried out as Operation Alert in fifteen cities; Vice-President Nixon said that the forthcoming Big Four meeting might be the world’s last chance to avoid “catastrophic war”; Admiral Radford denied he wanted to nuke Communist China; Senator Kefauver said US doctors were not prepared to deal with a thermonuclear war; Lewis Strauss announced plans for a more than 40 per cent increase in atomic production, including a 20 per cent increase in atomic weapons; President Eisenhower gave the West Point commencement address, exhorting the cadets to “an inspired faith that men’s determination and capacity to better their world will in time override their ability to destroy it.” On 16 June a feature article by Daniel Lang in The New Yorker was called “Fallout,” and on the 18 June Bertrand Russell wrote in The Nation, “The Choice is Ours: Coexistence or No Existence,” in which he commented: “We can make a world of light or we can banish light from our planet. One or other we must do, and do soon. A great duty rests upon those who realize these alternatives, for it is they who must persuade mankind to make the better choice.”38 Process: The Conference Program and Discussions Thomas had decided early on that the conference would have three different modal identities, as he made clear in a letter to American botanist Edgar Anderson.39 First, there would be a manuscript “pre-Conference book” containing all the conference papers, which the participants would read prior to the conference to prepare “for discussion of ideas.” The conference itself would consist of topically defined discussion sessions based on the papers: “I know from experience,” he said, “that people, having the floor, talk about that which they wish, regardless of what it says on the printed program.” The third part would be a twovolume printed book, containing the texts of the pre-Conference book papers plus “an edited version of the Conference discussions.” From the opening session on Thursday, 16 June to its closing banquet on Wednesday, 22 June, there were ten topical sessions at the conference, each about three hours long, with a title, a chair, and a list of the “principal background papers” for that session. The final session consisted of closing remarks by Sauer, Bates, and Mumford. The published text would have a forward by anthropologist Paul Fejos, who was director of research at the Viking Fund established by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and an introduction by Thomas. It was divided into the three

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sections “retrospect,” “process,” and “prospect,” with the discussants’ papers under topical subheads. At the end of each of these three sections was the summary of conference discussions (titled “Symposium Discussion”), leveraged to fit under that section title and itself divided into three topical subheads. A reader of the two-volume Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth will notice three levels of engagement between the contents and the nuclear question. Many of the papers do not engage the subject at all – they were purely historical and/or contemporarily analytical – and, in many cases, “quantitative.” Similarly Thomas’s introduction did not mention the nuclear issue. He noted, however, that George Perkins Marsh saw man as “a dynamic force, often irrational in his treatment of the environment. Because of this irrationality, man created a danger to himself that he would destroy his base of subsistence. Marsh decried the environmentalism of many of his contemporaries, who regarded man simply as a passive being acted on by the environment. One of his main objects was to show that, far from being will-less and impotent, man was a free agent ‘working independently of nature.’”40 Many speakers, in Thomas’s words, simply “read the plot” of some element in terrestrial ecology. But by presenting the conference as simply about “what has happened and is happening,” Thomas tied it to the dominant world concern of the 1950s, which was focused on nuclear war. A second level of engagement in a number of the papers and in the symposium discussions, which did not address the bomb directly, provided qualitative commentary on environmentally destructive activities sanctioned by contemporary governments and societies – in other words, changes enabling nuclear destruction. The very first paper, E.A. Gutkind’s “Our World from the Air: Conflict and Adaptation,” did this. Gutkind, a distinguished British demographer and city planner, had written Our World from the Air: An International Survey of Man and His Environment (1952), which sequenced with commentary aerial views of the human impact on spaces around the entire globe. Gutkind’s first photo was of Krakatoa and the last was of an Operation Crossroads nuclear explosion, which, he wrote, “demonstrated our destructive instincts, and our fear of the future, of our fellow men, and of our own power.”41 Gutkind, in his “Man’s Role” article, claimed that an aerial view moves our sense of the earth from the analytical to the synthetic, the “synoptic.” He propounded a “new unitary vision which will hold together the innumerable aspects of the dialogue between man and

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nature.”42 It will “re-personalize” this relationship. The unfortunate “I-It” relationship to nature “has destroyed the continuity of the intimate and personal contact between man and environment and also the unity of thought linking the everyday events and the immediate environment to the order of the universe.”43 Gutkind’s implication was ironic: depersonalization created helplessness, “the product of fear,” but it also allowed the illusion of separation (nature as “it”), permitting human imposition of destructive technology – a source of fear – without awareness of its risks. Many participants in “Man’s Role” contrasted this current “instrumental attitude,” in the words of Alexander Spoehr, towards nature to the integrative ones of earlier societies, although some considered instrumentality as originating earlier than did others. In his study of the Marshall Islanders, conducted in 1947, Spoehr evoked the Bikini and Enewetak tests to show that despite the less instrumental Marshallese culture, they “share with us and with the world an uncertain future. Democratic ideals demand that we accord them our understanding.”44 Karl Wittfogel analysed early “hydraulic” agrarian civilizations as having originated water-moving technology that allowed “organizational methods of hydraulic despotism” and “hydraulic statecraft and social control.”45 Wittfogel provided an almost pre-classical allegory of twentieth century control of weapons of mass destruction in the form of state hydraulic technology control, disempowering the individual irrigator and, by extension, his “integrative” connection to his own land. Mumford’s own contribution as an “ecologist of the city,” called “The Natural History of Urbanization,” emphasized the effect of movement from town to city in loosening “the bonds that connect its inhabitants with nature” and destroying “its earth-bound aspects.” “Having thrown off natural controls and limitations, modern man must replace them with an at least equally effective man-made pattern.”46 Another emphasis of the “Man’s Role” participants who did not directly evoke the bomb was on pollution of the earth from non-nuclear sources. Paul Sears, one of the most respected ecologists at the conference, in “The Processes of Environmental Change by Man,” gave a synoptic presentation of human environmental modifications that he considered to be unsustainable. To Sears there was a false “widespread confidence that this impact of man upon environment can continue indefinitely … The economy and the social and political policy of the United States is based upon this assumption of more and more, bigger and better.”47

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Another prophetic example of humankind as polluter was William Albrecht’s “Physical, Chemical, and Biochemical Changes in the Soil Community.” He wrote, “Man, in changing the face of the earth, has altered the soil community by moving it … more rapidly into the sea … While exploiting his soils, man is destroying [like a parasite] his host and accomplishing slowly his own death.”48 Albrecht was very circumstantial about the chemical degradation from diverse sources of the soil on which we depend. “This breakdown or degeneration of the soil body” was the product of biochemical changes produced by tillage.49 Albrecht discussed collective “hydrophobia,” manifested in excessive drainage technology, and the “hidden hunger” produced by agricultural self-exile onto soils that produced only low-nutrition foods.50 Humans failed to recognize their depletion of the soil, and Albrecht concluded his essay with a literary prophecy, using the famous Fitzgerald Rubaiyat verse: The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears wash out a Word of it.

While a number of other participants took a qualitative view similar to Sears’s and Albrecht’s respecting contemporary modification of the earth, numerous others very explicitly evoked the elephant in the room: the bomb. The conference participant closest to the bomb, in both his career and topic, was John C. Bugher, whose paper directly concerned itself with radiation, “Effects of Fission Material on Air, Soil, and Living Species.” Bugher, as director of the AEC Division of Biology and Medicine, had been a major player in the development of nuclear weapons. Neal Hines has demonstrated that biologists were involved in nuclear experimentation beginning at least in 1943, when the Hanford nuclear facility was established. At this time, the pre-existing Applied Fisheries Laboratory of the University of Washington became the cover entity for secret research on X radiation, initially focused on salmon.51 Its activities became more overt and biologists’ involvement more expansive in the postwar testing on Bikini and Enewetak, as vividly described in David Bradley’s classic No Place to Hide (1948). Rachel Carson was invited to observe the 1946 testing there.52 In 1948 the AEC developed a Division of Biology and Medicine, and temporary marine biological laboratories were subsequently established at both Bikini

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and Enewetak.53 Bugher became director of the division in 1952, and immediately became involved in planning surveys for the forthcoming Operation Ivy.54 A result of the Ivy blasts, the permanent Enewetak Marine Biological Laboratory was established in 1953, and Eugene and Howard Odum were assigned to it.55 The upscaling of marine radiobiological studies was done partly at the urging of Bugher, who wrote at year’s end, “We begin more and more to realize that we are dealing with the small end of a large subject. This is particularly true of atomic weapons. Somewhere in the use of our large-scale weapons is a tolerance dose for humans.”56 Bugher was also prominent in defending the AEC’s refusal to acknowledge the biological damage caused by the testing in Nevada. Following an initial 1953 test, Bugher issued a statement in March 1953 discounting fallout warnings from Dr Lyle Borst, a former AEC commissioner.57 After test shot Simon (25 April 1953) and despite the Troy, New York, “radioactive snow” incident a day later, Bugher reported to the AEC that “only thinly populated areas had been affected” by fallout, and reported similarly at a subsequent meeting following the “Dirty Harry” blast of 19 May 1953.58 The AEC was preparing a report on the entire series of tests (UpshotKnothole), and Bugher did urge the commissioners, in the case of the widely reported radiation poisoning of sheep, to let the public know that radiation had not killed the sheep and tell them what actually had.59 On 15 July 1953, Bugher reported to the AEC that some horses may have been affected by beta radiation, but the sheep were probably affected by eating toxic plants.60 In September 1954, he gave a speech disdainfully rejecting the genetic effect findings made by Sturtevant.61 In AEC meetings of early 1955, relocation of tests from Nevada to the Pacific because of fallout was decisively rejected. Referring to the negative reactions of St. George, Utah, residents to this decision, Bugher said “St. George is hypertensified. It is not a question of health or safety with St. George, but a question of public relations.”62 Given this history of dubious governmental advocacy, how did Bugher discuss the effects of fission at the conference? First, he stated that the earth was itself a radioactive mass.63 But the atomic era did present “biological problems.”64 After presenting charts and discussing the amount of radiation released by different processes, he divided the effects of “radioactive products, created by natural processes under human control” into three ecological compartments: atmosphere, land, and oceans.65 As far as “the radioactive contamination of the

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atmosphere by fission products” went, it “is important as a mechanism for their transport but is not directly a source of biological concern.”66 He downplayed the nuclear effects on soil contamination – fallout appeared in only the top inch of soil – except for strontium-90, whose significance he acknowledged as it affected the food chain of “soil, forage, crops, grazing cattle, milk, and man.”67 But he contended that only “minute amounts” of strontium-90 “inevitably become part of our ecological situation.”68 Bugher was most informative on ocean effects, since his greatest experience lay there. He discussed prior surveys in the Pacific, and repeated his contention that greater resources should be devoted to marine studies. When he summarized the issue, he demonstrated amazing nonchalance and gall: “[T]here probably is little that we can add to what has been said [about] the ultimate effects on man of the radioactive contamination of his environment.” He also asserted that modifications of animal and plant life “through radiation-induced mutations may be turned to man’s economic or material advantage in various ways,” despite the highly publicized work of geneticists Hermann Muller and Alfred Sturtevant.69 Bugher’s final speculations were on the indubitable risk of serious contamination when large-scale reactors came into use and the lack of serious effects under current conditions. He recognized that “greatly increased levels of contamination, such as might result from general atomic war, would unquestionably lead to serious biologic complications, along with other aspects of a transcendent catastrophe.”70 It is interesting to place Bugher’s address directly on fission effects beside other comments in papers not directed explicitly at this subject. The greatest number of bomb comments appeared in the “prospect” papers and discussion, but the concern emerged in other contexts as well. Direct reference to nuclear war was made by James C. Malin, one of the revered figures in ecological thought, then approaching the end of his public career. Malin was “a maverick thinker in the historical profession,” and beginning in the 1930s “pioneered an ecological approach to the writing of history in various studies of grasslands,” which was the subject of his paper at this conference.71 Malin’s ecological and historical views were tightly connected with his concern about the policy choices generated by such views. Thus he opposed what he saw as the historical determinism of Frederick Jackson Turner and the ecological determinism of Frederic Clements, and considered the “organicist” and collectivist tendencies of both could lead, if translated into social terms, to totalitarianism.72 He opposed the idealization of early peoples (for

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example, Spoehr, Mumford), and opposed many conservation measures as unnecessary extremism: the earth would never lack resources for humans but, if anything, “men will fail themselves.”73 At the conference Malin said, “As the first draft of this paper was being written, [on] March 11, 1955, a thermonuclear bomb had just been exploded in the Nevada desert.”74 Malin insisted on bringing the radiation problem into his ecological consideration of grasslands, located at the centre of the North American continent. “Instead of a return to the simplicity of a grazing country, the challenges of atomic power indicate a further incorporation into the complex network of areal and cultural interdependence.”75 Malin was at odds with Mumford’s assertions of “radical and irretrievable pollution to come through the use of atomic reactors,” but was also opposed to dismissal or denial of the atomic presence.76 Other participants briefly evoked atomic effects. Richard Russell, on environmental changes by forces “independent of man,” felt human vulnerability to any “bombardment from space” and the impact of a “huge mass of spatial material” would have results “as tragic as those which might accompany a man-devised thermonuclear reaction.”77 Some suggested “constructive” future uses of atomic energy. Michael Graham suggested undersea nuclear explosions as a means of ocean floor phosphate mining, just a month after an underwater nuclear device had been detonated off the California coast. This Operation Wigwam was considered a success, and it took a couple of decades for sailors who were on the ships facilitating it to start dying of cancer.78 An otherwise enlightened environmentalist, Samuel Ordway, suggested that atomic-powered plants would spare the building of additional hydroelectric dams.79 Charles Scarlott concluded his paper on the limits to energy use by suggesting “the possibility that the nuclearfusion reaction can be made a controlled energy source.”80 (In 1954, the AEC had initiated its Power Reactor Demonstration Program, but found securing private funding for reactor development slow.)81 Even Harrison Brown, taking up Mumford’s theme of “technological denudation,” saw energy being produced by, for example, “controlled thermonuclear reactions utilizing deuterium extracted from the oceans.”82 This would make technological denudation of the land to produce such energy less prevalent. Brown made this speculation assuming “the absence of a world catastrophe.” In fact, he suggested one way to end technological denudation absolutely: “If there is a world catastrophe or civilization regresses to an agrarian existence, technological denudation will be halted.”83

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The final papers, symposium discussion, and chairs’ commentaries provided the most explicit connection at the conference between the environment and nuclearism. F.S.C. Northrop was probably the most direct discussant in addressing nuclear war. He had been close to the Wenner-Gren Foundation for some time and was editor of a volume sponsored by its predecessor, the Viking Fund, Ideological Differences and World Order (1949). In The Taming of the Nations (1952), he had sounded much like Bertrand Russell: “It is not likely that any nation can survive an atomic world war. Again the choice is between collaboration and suicide.”84 In his “Man’s Role” paper, Northrop asserted a form of intellectual corruption as the source of the bomb: an obsessive theoretical manipulation, which derived “tools” (such as the bomb) not from inductive experimentation but from “deductive” formulation.85 Theory was utopian. And “utopias tend to turn themselves into crusades. When these crusades of a technological society become armed with its instrument, the atomic bomb, the possibilities are appalling.” Implicitly, the human “absorbed by the intellectual imagination, its technological tools, and its abstract legal codes … is starved emotionally and with respect to aesthetic immediacy.”86 He becomes a “halfman.” Northrop’s point was that deprivation created distance from real, tangible nature and the effects the technological artefact had on the environment. Mumford also considered this perspective in terms of the “cushion” between contemporary humans and their physical environment. “We can’t avoid living on the earth, but we can cushion this fact by becoming no longer conscious that we are living on the earth.”87 Prospect: Conference Summation Judging from some of its content, the symposium discussions of “prospect” became pretty animated. Bugher predicted that the upcoming generation would get so much of its energy from fission products that oil and coal development would scarcely be necessary. Thomas quizzed him on the radioactive waste that would be generated by so many power plants. Bugher suggested disposal sites such as abandoned oil fields, but made the strange assertion that the decay time of such by-products would not be more than a hundred years.88 Sol Tax recited twin poems written by Kenneth Boulding, “A Conservationist’s Lament” and “A Technologist’s Reply.” The former begins, “The world is finite, resources are scarce, things are bad, and will be worse.” The reply begins, “Man’s potential is quite terrific; you can’t go back to the Neolithic.”89

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Anderson said the United States was getting into a terrible mess by ignoring the facts of life. “An individual who denies the world as it is … is psychotic. A civilization which will not face the first fact of human existence [death] is psychotic. On this criterion, the United States not only belongs to the most psychotic of all civilizations but also is the most psychotic of countries in that civilization.”90 Andrew Clarke and Albert E. Burke both agreed that the United States’ “environmental disorientation perhaps has led to mental illness.”91 These assertions are uncannily similar to the speculations of Irving Janis in a famous 1949 report on the psychological effects of nuclear war. Janis described symptoms we today characterize as “depressive,” as involving futility, anxiety, and demoralization. He saw a “myth” developing about future atomic attacks – “a high percentage of the bombed civilian population would break down mentally and become chronically psychotic or neurotic.”92 That such extreme statements could emerge from a gathering of eminent thinkers suggests an intensely nervous intellectual environment in which the conference took place. A sense of loss of control, along with an elegiac mood about the human condition, emanated from the closing remarks of Sauer, Bates, and Mumford. Sauer said that at times during the conference he “felt about life, that I would not have missed it but would not want to go through it again.”93 Bates considered the motivation for organizing conferences like this one was that “man has the illusion, at least, of having some control over his destiny.”94 Bates felt that during the conference he had become increasingly aware of science’s limits and use in solving human problems. Contemplating “the frightening aspects of a scientific world,” he considered it possible that “human beings may not be able to withstand the stresses of the very environment they are creating.”95 He wished there had been more discussion of war, but he was to summarize the “process” section; war belonged to the “prospect.” As the summarist of “prospect,” Mumford had the last word in the published version of the conference. It was not cheerful. “I would say that man’s future seems black, though perhaps a shade lighter than it was five years ago.”96 His governing question was “Quis custodiet custodies” (Who watches the watchman.) Nuclear power was a danger because it had been released into a “savagely demoralized” world, which had been taken over by “every person or agency that subscribes to the conception of total war – or, in plain English, unlimited extermination.”97 Peacetime uses of atomic energy were almost as threatening

82  Fred Waage Figure 2.1. An informal moment at the Symposium with Marston Bates, John Dodds, and Lewis Mumford.

Source: The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc., New York, NY. Reprinted with permission.

as war. “The problem of atomic pollution must be faced, not at the last possible moment, when irreparable damage has already been done, but at the earliest possible moment.”98 Mumford presented the atomic threat as the greatest problem facing humanity, but as the small end of a very large problem: our transformation into a society of technologically based non-exceptionalism. He suggested that we remove “as a constant temptation for man to sin against his god, the machine, any memory of things that are wild and untamable, pied and dappled, unique and precious: mountains one might be tempted to climb, deserts where one might seek solitude and inner peace, jungles whose living creatures would remind us of nature’s original prodigality in creating a grand diversity of habitats and habits of life out of the primeval protoplasm with which it began.”99

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Prospect: Beyond the Conference The “Man’s Role” conference had just as little effect as the United Nations’ “International Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy” held in Geneva, Switzerland, in August 1958. Internationally, a pattern of “nuclear blackmail” was initiated by Russian bomb threats to Britain and France during the 1956 Suez Crisis, and reoccurred at different intervals, culminating in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.100 The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock hand did move back from two to seven minutes to midnight between 1953 and 1960, but the latter 1950s saw a sequence of events that increased nuclear proliferation. In 1955 the US nuclear arsenal was 3,057 and the Soviet Union’s was 200; in 1959 the United States was at 15,468 and the Soviet Union had 1,060.101 The surge to produce private power plants that could eventually provide all of the nation’s energy also led to anti-nuclear activism. The Price-Anderson Act of 1957 put limitations on private power-plant development, but in 1958 a specific private plan created a movement.102 In 1958, the utility Pacific Gas and Electric unveiled a plan to acquire land at Bodega Bay, California, with the goal of building there the first commercially viable nuclear power plant in the United States.103 The campaign against the Bodega Bay plant became so distracting to the AEC’s attempts to root a private nuclear power industry that it suspended the plant’s construction in 1963. In the five years it took to defeat Bodega Bay, the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations and individuals moved away from an aesthetically oriented conservationism towards one based more on historic change in relations between nature and technology, “from preserving scenic beauty to an environmental perspective that focused on the problems of modern industrial life.”104 The texture of public discourse in the later 1950s began to give growing attention to ecosystems and the effects of human technology on them. In 1959 the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy held hearings on the “Biological and Environmental Effects of Nuclear War.” The committee a few short years before had been a great booster of expanded above-ground testing. At these hearings AEC scientist John N. Wolfe introduced himself by saying, “I may be perhaps the only ecologist that has been [before this committee]”; he gave a horrifying description of the environmental destruction human survivors of an atomic attack would have to face.105 When Vincent Schultz and F. Ward Whicker

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edited a text on radiation ecology for the AEC in 1972, they dedicated the volume to Wolfe, “the first ecologist of the Division of Biology and Medicine.”106 It took a quarter-century for the impact of environmental awareness and the emergence of an environmental movement to reach the intellectual stage of integrating ecology into the world of the atom, but in 1970 the first Earth Day was celebrated; it is no coincidence that in the fifteen years following “Man’s Role,” many of its participants had been publishing books, giving talks, and inspiring students, and the era of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), environmental legislation, and activism was at hand. A number of the major participants in the “Man’s Role” conference did significant work afterwards, particularly during the years leading up to and through this environmental revolution of the 1970s. Thomas went on to teach at the University of California, Riverside, as a colleague of renowned geographer and Carl Sauer–protégé Herman Aschmann. With J.E. Spencer, Thomas wrote a highly used and oft-revised textbook, Cultural Geography: An Evolutionary Introduction to our Humanized Earth (1969–1978). Conference participant Clarence Glacken later published a groundbreaking study in environmental history, still widely used in college courses, called Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Time to the End of the Eighteenth Century (1967). Carl Sauer published a number of texts in historical geography from 1954 through the 1970s, including an anthology of his writings, Land and Life (1963), and a sequel in the spirit of Glacken’s book, Sixteenth Century North America: The Land and People as Seen by the Europeans (1971). In a brief 1974 article, Sauer traced the evolution of geography in its “fourth dimension,” time – the time spans geographers study and the temporal history of the discipline itself. He concluded, “We now know [man] is not the master of an unlimited environment, but that his technologic intervention in the physical world and its life has become the crisis of his survival and that of its co-inhabitants.”107 Marston Bates gave great credit to Sauer in the popular nature texts he wrote after 1955. In The Forest and the Sea: A Look at the Economy of Nature and the Ecology of Man (1960), he called Sauer and Edgar Anderson “two extraordinary people,” and also viewed the printed “Man’s Role” as an essential text about “the effect of man on the biosphere.”108 In the final chapter of his book, “Man’s Place in Nature,” Bates explicitly connected human–nature interactions in the present with the nuclear threat. He related “anxiety about the future” to our doubt about “our ability to act

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rationally,” and put forward a concept: “We can foretell our doom but we can’t forestall it.” The great immediate threat, of course, is the misuse of nuclear power, the danger of catastrophic war. The long-term threat is the cancerous multiplication of the numbers of men: a new human population the size of the city of Detroit every month, year after year. The thought is dizzying. And then the thought of a nuclear blast capable of killing last month’s millions in a few seconds is hardly reassuring. It looks as though, as a part of nature, we have become a disease of nature – perhaps a fatal disease. And when the host dies, so does the pathogen.109

In response to this feeling, Bates called for a new ethics: “In the words of Aldo Leopold, we need to develop an ecological conscience.”110 Other participants entered public areas of debate with books during the next twenty years. Harrison Brown wrote Community of Fear (1960) and followed his edited collection, The Next Hundred Years (1957), with The Next Ninety Years (1967). The American Public Health Association published in 1961 John Bugher’s Health Perspectives of Our Radioactive World. Arthur Strahler (1918–2002) was one of the few participants to live to see the collapse of the Soviet Union and the theoretical end of the Cold War. Until his death, Strahler was a prolific author of geography textbooks, and in his later years, with Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy (1987–1999), a very controversial opponent of creationism. Paul Sears continued his scientifically based environmentalism, his influence represented by the reprinting of his classic text on desertification, Deserts on the March (1947, 1988). In The Living Landscape (1966) Sears wrote, “Many of humanity’s gravest problems are ecological in character and few, if any, lack an ecological component.”111 But “ecological understanding cannot be made available in the marketplace. It must be built, by general understanding, into the wisdom of the race.”112 In the same vein, Frank Fraser Darling, prolific British biologist who was a participant in “Man’s Role,” continued to urge a conservation ethic, increasingly writing about US nature as in his popular Pelican in the Wilderness: A Naturalist’s Odyssey in North America (1956) and, with Noel Eichhorn, Man and Nature in the National Parks: Reflections on Policy (1967), published by the Conservation Foundation. Paul Brooks, no mean nature writer himself, in his preface to Darling’s last work, Wilderness and Plenty (1970), compared him with George Perkins Marsh,

86  Fred Waage

writing of humans’ destructive power “before man’s power to control nature – and therefore power to destroy it – was so nearly absolute as it is today.”113 Darling pulled no punches in defining human destruction of ecosystems, especially the effects of industrialization: pollution and dereliction (“an ecosystem set back beyond its pioneer stage with little hope of return”).114 He devoted particular attention to radiation pollution. “Damage by radiation is cumulative and when it has occurred is, so far, irreparable.”115 Almost forty years ago, Darling characterized the greatest threat to the earth as the buildup of carbon dioxide, what we now call “global warming.”116 Darling was the chair of a conference on “Future Environments of North America,” held in 1965 and directly modelled on “Man’s Role.” A number of participants, including Darling, presented papers there, and, as in “Man’s Role,” the last word belonged to Lewis Mumford. Mumford, of course, with his Myth of the Machine series, his activism in opposition to destructive technology, his general brilliance as “professor of everything,” was gaining stature as one of the America’s great twentieth century thinkers. But the entire 1965 conference was a sign of the “Man’s Role” conference’s legacy, and was held after Silent Spring, after the Wilderness Act of 1964, after the Limited Test Ban Treaty, in a rising tide of environmental awareness. In his introduction to the published version of this conference, Darling evoked the precedent of “Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth.” “There can be no doubt of the rich resource of coordinated knowledge and quickened thinking the Wenner-Gren Conference generated” as the model for this later conference.117 Returning participants included Aldo Starker Leopold, Kenneth Boulding, Clarence Glacken, and Samuel Ordway. George Perkins Marsh biographer David Lowenthal attended as an observer. There was a sense in 1965 that ecology as a holistic discipline had received recognition on a world scale. Pierre Dansereau thought we should consider “the emergence of ecology” a great intellectual adventure “to be compared with the development of organic evolution and of nuclear physics.”118 Most of the participants considered that the work of ecology had just begun. In Mumford’s closing statement, he noted the purpose of this conference was not to “promote ecology” but “to insure the existence or the replenishment of a sufficiently varied environment to sustain all of life, including human life, and thus to widen the ground for man’s further conscious development.”119 We needed to challenge the notion that “there is something

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sacred in large-scale technological operations, whether they are for a new super highway, a new power station, or a new nuclear power plant.”120 The “Man’s Role” conference played no small part in the intellectual foundation of the new environmental movement. In 1970, the first year with Earth Day, Mumford celebrated a planet-wide awakening, a revolt based on “a well-justified fear: that the next step in technological progress may bring about the annihilation of man.”121 Unfortunately, in the words of Martin Walker, reviewing Jonathan Schell’s The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger and Richard Rhodes’s Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race, “the prospect of serial proliferation could be returning us to an era of nuclear dead, much like the years of the cold war.”122 Let us hope that with our increased use of technology and our greater knowledge about the environment, humankind will come to terms with our relationship to nature to ensure a long future on our planet Earth. But today the public’s fear of climate change is not unlike its fear of nuclearism during the Cold War, and just as governments then ignored many threatening issues associated with nuclear power despite warnings from scientists, today they are doing the same thing. NOTES 1 Young, The Environment and Science, 137; see also 131–4. 2 Ball, Justice Downwind, 43. 3 Wenner-Gren Foundation, “About.” 4 Watson and Kleindienst, “Review,” 89. 5 Emory, “Review,” 378. A 2005 “retrospective” review focused on “glaring” omissions, suggesting that the authors mostly adopted a voice “characteristic of detached, scholarly reflection.” This review acknowledged Lewis Mumford’s discussion of “the problems inherent in nuclear weaponry and power,” but considered it “little wonder that the book failed to have much impact beyond the academy.” These judgments were false. Wilson, “Retrospective Review.” 6 Williams, “Sauer and ‘Man’s Role,’” 219. 7 Ibid., 229. 8 Kingsland, Evolution of American Ecology, 173, 180. 9 Ibid., 183. 10 Young, Environment and Science, 133–4.

88  Fred Waage 11 Ungar, The Rise and Fall of Nuclearism, 29, 85. 12 Brown, Must Destruction Be Our Destiny?; Northrop, Ideological Differences, 11. 13 Bates, Prevalence, 248. 14 William Thomas to Marston Bates, 10 July 1951. All manuscript citations in this form are from the Marston Bates Collection in the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 15 Paul Fejos to Marston Bates, 14 December 1951. 16 Coulborn, “Survival of the Fittest,” 287. 17 Bates, Prevalence, 248. 18 Carl Sauer to William Thomas, 11 November 1953; 23 November 1953. 19 Mumford, The Brown Decades, 72. 20 Eugene Ayers has been characterized as “the most prominent energy forecaster of the period” and “one of the most prominent advocates of alternative energies, [who] … was focused on the eventual decline of fossil fuels as an opportunity to find new energy systems.” Barber, “Visualizing Renewable Resources,” 169. 21 Ibid., 307. 22 Eisenhower, “Address.” 23 Carl Sauer to Lewis Mumford, 13 January 1954. 24 Lewis Mumford to William Thomas, 11 February 1954. 25 William Thomas to Carl Sauer, 19 February 1954. 26 Carl Sauer to Lewis Mumford, 3 March 1954. 27 Clarfield and Wiecek, Nuclear America, 207. 28 Weart, Nuclear Fear, 183. 29 Carl Sauer to William Thomas, 8 April 1954. 30 Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light, 173. 31 William Thomas to Lewis Mumford, 15 April 1954. 32 USNRC, “Atomic Energy Act of 1954.” 33 White, “Talk of the Town.” 34 Schweitzer, “Nobel Lecture.” 35 Butcher, Origins of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, 7. 36 Divine, Blowing in the Wind, 43–5. 37 Caron, “Biology and ‘The Bomb.’” 38 Russell, “The Choice Is Ours,” 7. 39 William Thomas to Edgar Anderson, 16 March 1954. 40 Thomas, Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, v. 1, xxix. Hereafter, the references to this text will be abbreviated as MRCFE. 41 Gutkind, Our World from the Air, 400. 42 E.A. Gutkind, “The Agency of Man on the Earth,” in MRCFE, 11. 43 Ibid., 21.

Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth  89 44 Alexander Spoehr, “Cultural Differences in the Interpretation of Natural Resources,” in MRCFE, 99; Spoehr, Majuro, 7. 45 Karl Wittfogel, “The Hydraulic Civilization,” in MRCFE, 154. 46 Lewis Mumford, “The Natural History of Urbanization,” in MRCFE, 386. 47 Paul B. Sears, “The Processes of Environmental Change by Man,” in MRCFE, 473. 48 William A. Albrecht, “Physical, Chemical, and Biochemical Changes in the Soil Community,” in MRCFE, 649. 49 Ibid., 651. 50 Ibid., 656–7. 51 Hines, Proving Ground, 11. 52 Lear, Rachel Carson, 237–8. 53 Hines, Proving Ground, 102. 54 Ibid., 135–7. 55 Ibid., 154; Young, Environment and Science, 128. 56 Hines, Proving Ground, 155. 57 Ball, Justice Downwind, 205. 58 Fuller, The Day We Bombed Utah, 23, 37. 59 Ibid., 58. 60 Ball, Justice Downwind, 205. 61 Divine, Blowing in the Wind, 34. 62 “Atomic Tests Went On Despite Criticism.” 63 John C. Bugher, “Effects of Fission Material on Air, Soil, and Living Species,” in MRCFE, 831. 64 Ibid., 832. 65 Ibid., 838. 66 Ibid., 839. 67 Ibid., 840. 68 Ibid., 842. 69 Ibid., 846. 70 Ibid., 847. 71 Kingsland, Evolution of American Ecology, 162. 72 Ibid., 163. 73 Johanssen, “James C Malin.” 74 James C. Malin, “The Grassland of North America: Its Occupance and the Challenge of Continuous Reappraisals,” in MRCFE, 353. 75 Ibid., 362. 76 Mumford, “Urbanization,” in MRCFE, 391. 77 Richard Russell, “Environmental Changes through Forces Independent of Man,” in MRCFE, 461.

90  Fred Waage 78 Michael Graham, “Harvests of the Seas,” in MRCFE, 501; Washington Nuclear Museum and Educational Center (WANMEC) website, http:// www.toxipedia.org/display/wanmec/Plutonium+to+Operation+Wigwam+ off+the+coast+of+San+Diego. 79 Samuel H. Ordway, Jr, “Possible Limits of Raw-Material Consumption,” in MRCFE, 998. 80 Charles A. Scarlott, “Limitations to Energy Use,” in MRCFE, 1021. 81 Clarfield and Wiecek, Nuclear America, 194. 82 Harrison Brown, “Technological Denudation,” in MRCFE, 1030. 83 Ibid., 1031. 84 F.S.C. Northrup, “Man’s Relation to the Earth in Its Bearing on His Aesthetic, Ethical, and Legal Values,” in MRCFE, 1054. 85 Ibid., 1064. 86 Ibid. 87 “Symposium Discussion: Prospect,” in MRCFE, 1078. 88 Ibid., 1087. 89 Ibid., 1091. 90 Ibid., 1122. 91 Ibid., 1131. 92 Irving L. Janus, “Psychological Aspects of Vulnerability to Atomic Bomb Attacks,” Memorandum for RAND Corporation, Crisis and Disaster Study (15 January 1949), FAS. 93 “Symposium Discussion: Prospect,” 1134. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid., 1137. 96 Ibid., 1146. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid., 1147. 99 Ibid., 1148. 100 Rhodes, Dark Sun, 569–71. 101 “US and USSR Nuclear Stockpiles,” Wikimedia Commons, https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_and_USSR_nuclear_stockpiles. png. 102 Weart, Nuclear Fear, 291. 103 Wellock, Critical Masses, 31. 104 Rienow and Rienow, Our New Life, 35. 105 Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Biological and Environmental Effects of Nuclear War, 842. 106 Schultz and Whicker, Ecological Aspects, dedication page. 107 Sauer, “The Fourth Dimension of Geography,” 191.

Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth  91 1 08 Bates, The Forest and the Sea, 267, 264. 109 Ibid., 253. 110 Ibid., 257. 111 Sears, The Living Landscape, 175. 112 Ibid., 23. 113 Brooks, “Introduction,” viii. 114 Darling, Wilderness and Plenty, 21. 115 Ibid., 40. 116 Ibid., 46. 117 Darling and Milton, Future Environments, 2. 118 Ibid., 426. 119 Ibid., 722. 120 Ibid., 727. 121 Mumford, The Pentagon of Power, 372. 122 Walker, “Smoking Guns and Mushroom Clouds.”

REFERENCES “Atomic Tests Went On Despite Criticism.” Deseret Morning News. 15 February 2001. Ball, Edward. Justice Downwind: America’s Atomic Testing Program in the 1950s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Barber, Daniel A. “Visualizing Renewable Resources.” In Architecture and Energy: Performance and Style, edited by William W. Braham and Daniel Willis, 164–80. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. Bates, Marston. The Forest and the Sea: A Look at the Economy of Nature and the Ecology of Man. New York: Vintage, 1960. –  The Prevalence of People. New York: Scribner, 1955. Boyer, Paul. By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age. New York: Pantheon, 1985. Brooks, Paul. “Introduction.” In Wilderness and Plenty by F. Fraser Darling, vii– ix. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970. Brown, Harrison. Must Destruction Be Our Destiny? New York: Simon Schuster, 1946. Butcher, Sandra Ionno. The Origins of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. Pugwash History Series, No. 1. Washington, DC: Council of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, 2005. Caron, Jennifer. “Biology and ‘The Bomb.’” Engineering and Science 67, no. 2 (2004): 16–27.

92  Fred Waage Clarfield, Gerard H, and William M. Wiecek. Nuclear America: Military and Civilian Nuclear Power in the United States, 1940–1980. New York: Harper and Row, 1984. Coulborn, Rushton. “Survival of the Fittest in the Atomic Age.” Ethics 57, no. 4, Part I (July 1947). Darling, F. Fraser. Wilderness and Plenty. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970. Darling, F. Fraser, and John P. Milton, eds. Future Environments of North America. Garden City, KS: Natural History Press, 1966. Divine, Robert A. Blowing in the Wind: The Nuclear Test Ban Debate, 1954–1960. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Eisenhower, Dwight D. “Address before the General Assembly of the United Nations on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, New York City,” 8 December 1953. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9774. Emory, S.T. “Review of ‘Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth.’” Social Forces 35, no. 4 (1957): 377–8. Fuller, John G. The Day We Bombed Utah: America’s Most Lethal Secret. New York: New American Library, 1984. Gutkind, Erwin Anton. Our World from the Air: An International Survey of Man and His Environment. Garden City, KS: Doubleday, 1952. Hines, Neal O. Proving Ground: An Account of the Radiological Studies in the Pacific, 1946–1961. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962. Johanssen, Robert W. “James C. Malin: An Appreciation.” Kansas Historical Quarterly 38, no. 4 (1972): 457–66. Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. Biological and Environmental Effects of Nuclear War. Washington, DC: GPO, 1959. Kingsland, Sharon. The Evolution of American Ecology, 1890–2000. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. Lear, Linda. Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. New York: Holt, 1997. Marston Bates Collection. Bentley Historical Library. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Mumford, Lewis. The Brown Decades. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1931. –  The Pentagon of Power. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970. Northrop, F.S.C., ed. Ideological Differences and World Order: Studies in the Philosophy and Science of the World’s Cultures. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1949. Rhodes, Richard. Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. Rienow, Robert, and Leona Rienow. Our New Life with the Atom. New York: Crowell, 1959.

Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth  93 Russell, Bertrand. “The Choice Is Ours: Coexistence or No Existence.” The Nation. 18 June 1955. Sauer, Carl. “The Fourth Dimension of Geography.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 64, no. 2 (1974): 189–92. Schultz, Vincent F., and F. Ward Whicker, eds. Ecological Aspects of the Nuclear Age: Selected Readings in Radiation Ecology. Washington: USAEC Technical Information Center, 1972. Schweitzer, Albert. “Nobel Lecture.” The Nobel Peace Prize 1952. Nobelprize. org. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1952/ schweitzer-acceptance.html. Sears, Paul B. The Living Landscape. New York: Basic Books, 1966. Spoehr, Alexander. Majuro, a Village in the Marshall Islands. Chicago: Chicago Museum of Natural History, 1949. Thomas, William L., ed. Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956. Ungar, Sheldon. The Rise and Fall of Nuclearism: Fear and Faith as Determinants in the Arms Race. State College PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. USNRC. “Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended in NUREG-0980.” Accessed 4 February 2007. http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/governing-laws.html. Walker, Martin. “Smoking Guns and Mushroom Clouds.” New York Times Book Review, 25 August 2007. Watson, Patty Jo, and Maxine R. Kleindienst. Review of “Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth.” American Antiquity 23, no. 1 (1957): 88–9. Weart, Spencer. Nuclear Fear: A History of Images. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Wellock, Thomas R. Critical Masses: Opposition to Nuclear Power in California, 1958–78. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998. Wenner-Gren Foundation, The. “About.” Accessed 21 February 2007. http:// www.wennergren.org/about. White, E.B. “Talk of the Town,” The New Yorker, 15 January 1955. Williams, Michael. “Sauer and ‘Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth.’” Geographical Review 77, no. 2 (1987): 218–31. Wilson, Robert M. “Retrospective Review of William L. Thomas, Jr., ed. ‘Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth,’” Environmental History 10, no. 3 (2005): 564–6. Young, Christian. The Environment and Science: Social Impact and Interaction. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005.

3 Experts at Risk: Military Secrets and Italian Radioecology around the US Naval Nuclear Installation on La Maddalena d av i d e o r s i n i

This chapter offers a historical analysis of radioecology studies conducted by agencies of the Italian state in the Archipelago of La Maddalena, located off the northeastern shore of Sardinia, Italy.1 In September 1972, the US Navy installed a base for fast-attack nuclear submarines in La Maddalena with the mission to monitor Soviet activities in the Mediterranean Sea. While the content of the bilateral agreement remained secret, the attention of national newspapers and the heated parliamentary debates following the US Navy base’s installation transformed La Maddalena into a Cold War battlefield of national and international significance. After the US Navy contingent arrived, the Italian Communist Party (PCI; Partito Comunista Italiano) and various anti-nuclear organizations started a nationwide campaign denouncing the risks of environmental contamination due to routine operations of nuclear submarines and possible accidents. With the installation of the US Navy base, La Maddalena became a radioecological-surveyed site, included in the national network of radiometric stations managed by Italy’s National Committee of Nuclear Energy (CNEN) and other expert agencies. But this preliminary response did not assuage the public health concerns of some Italian scientists, environmentalist groups, and local anti-base activists. Only after two years of technopolitical debates among the scientific community and inside public institutions did the Ministry of Health commission a full environmental study of the site, involving the implementation of seasonal radioecological campaigns. In this chapter, I detail how Italian expert institutions adapted national radioecological surveillance protocols and practices to the unique political and ecological circumstances of the archipelago. In so

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doing, I argue that the regime of military secrecy surrounding the US Navy submarines’ reactors and their modes of operation impeded the acquisition of crucial technical information normally available to Italian radioecologists monitoring other nuclear sites and facilities. Radioecologists compensated for their lack of access to technical information about US Navy submarines by gathering extensive data concerning the environmental characteristics of the archipelago. In the short term, restricted access generated innovative data collection strategies, resulting in the assemblage of a distinctive radioecological surveillance system that remained in place for over thirty years. La Maddalena’s radioecological surveillance system was also a technopolitical arrangement that stemmed from a difficult compromise between military security and national safety protocols. The technical design and the concrete implementation of the radioecological surveillance network of monitoring stations were highly constrained by budgetary, institutional, and political factors closely tied to the US military presence. The choice of where to position the monitoring stations, for example, had to account for the prohibitions issued by the Italian military authorities and the US Navy against accessing the internal area of the US Navy pier (where the Navy tender and the submarines were docked) as a monitoring point. In other instances, the personnel of the local laboratory on La Maddalena had to request special permits from both Italian military authorities and the US Navy in order to access portions of the sea adjacent to the US Navy installation to perform monthly sampling operations. Such procedures, which were time consuming and involved extensive negotiations between scientists and local and military authorities, placed major budgetary strains on data collection that was normally classified as “routine” by radioecological protection systems operating elsewhere in Italy. The limitations placed on the organization and implementation of radioecological campaigns in La Maddalena were not only the result of military secrecy; more generally, they reflected the heterogeneity and poorly planned development of the Italian nuclear sector. Framed within a larger national historical context, the case of La Maddalena reveals some of the organizational and institutional complexities and contradictions that shaped the Italian nuclear program, which, at the beginning of the 1960s, was launched as one of the most ambitious in Western Europe. The halo of secrecy surrounding the US Navy base, coupled with the reticence of Italian political and military authorities (and, in some cases,

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top officers of expert institutions) to address nuclear risks associated with the base, illustrates the impact that political and military patronage had on science in Cold War Italy. Yet, it would be misleading to assume that discipline and cohesiveness prevailed within each group of actors. Even among CNEN experts, technical and political positions varied. A prominent CNEN scientist, Dr Arrigo Cigna, noted, “In the laboratory you could have people of all tendencies, from aggressive fascists to extreme leftist revolutionaries, and everybody looked at what the others were doing.”2 According to Cigna, the paradox produced by the diversity of political positions held by CNEN members was that “it forced all the personnel to act according to objective and professional standards because there was always the possibility of being accused of manufacturing evidence for personal or political purposes.” In order to examine the limitations of nuclear experts’ work in La Maddalena, this chapter begins by analysing how radioprotectionists and radioecologists dealt with the problem of military secrecy during their campaigns, and how these negotiations configured the US Navy base as an exception within the Italian radioecological surveillance program. Briefly, I summarize what radioecology is and how it developed as an interdisciplinary study of the ecological and biological consequences of radioactive contamination during the nuclear age. Second, I detail how Italian experts adapted their routine protocols to build a local network of radioecological surveillance on La Maddalena according to the program established in 1974 by the Ministry of Health. In the third part of the chapter, I analyse documentation of public interventions and internal communications by Italian experts involved in the scientific campaigns to demonstrate how military secrecy affected the program of radioecological studies in La Maddalena. While the presence of the US Navy imposed unusual obstacles on the radioecological system established in La Maddalena, the limitations of the system were also symptomatic, more generally, of the deep political and organizational contradictions within the Italian nuclear program. Under the Clouds: Nuclear Tests and Radioecology The inclusion of La Maddalena into the Italian network of marine radiometric surveillance stations happened immediately after the installation of the US Navy base in September 1972.3 Before then, the archipelago did not have a nuclear status, and its relevance from a radioecological point of view was negligible. Yet, like most of Sardinia

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and the rest of Italy, La Maddalena was subjected to the same processes of fallout deposition provoked by nuclear atmospheric tests performed by the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France from the late 1940s through the early 1960s. CNEN experts at the Study Centre of Ispra (near the city of Varese), for example, were able to detect the effects of the first atomic test conducted by France in the Sahara desert on 13 February 1960.4 In particular, Italian radiometric stations installed around experimental research centres had more or less systematically monitored the effects of atmospheric nuclear tests since the mid-1950s, including fallout deposition on the soil, rainwater, and seawater, and artificial radionuclide concentrations in edible products such as milk and meat. Specialized personnel elaborated analytical models for inferring the time and place of explosions, and extrapolating data about composition and provenance of the bombs through radiochemical treatments of rainwater samples.5 Several pioneers of radiodetection fallout conducted their first studies in the late 1940s. Their applications were small scale and artisanal, often performed with Geiger counters borrowed from labs and complemented with variable regulated high voltage supplies. Dr Arrigo Cigna, former director of CNEN radioactive contamination laboratories from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s and past president of the International Radiation Protection Association (IRPA), conducted his early radiometric experiments in Milan with a Geiger counter that he himself adapted by using an old military radio transmitter.6 By the early 1960s radiometric stations were scattered along the Italian peninsula and managed by different institutions. As in other countries, the growing concern about the long-term effects of radioactive fallout pushed Italian expert institutions to establish a national network of radiometric stations for the constant monitoring of contamination.7 In Italy, as in other European countries, and in the United States and the Soviet Union a decade earlier, radioecology emerged as an interdisciplinary field of studies concerned with the biological effects of radiation and the processes of dispersion and accumulation of radioactive contaminants in the environment. As the prominent ecologist Eugene Odum remarked: It is generally conceded that environmental contamination with its current dangers of genetic damages stands as the most important limiting factor in the large-scale use of atomic energy in the immediate future. This prospect is rapidly transforming ecology from a rather obscure and ill-defined

98  Davide Orsini member of the biological family into a more organized and coherent division which will be expected to provide the basic answers necessary for solving practical problems.8

Eugene Odum and his brother Howard began reshaping the field of ecology at the Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific, where in the early 1950s the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) provided them with the opportunity to study the effects of radiation on populations and entire ecological systems after thermonuclear tests. Radioecology was, in short, the study of ecology in the atomic age.9 The State of Radioprotection and Radioecology in Italy By the early 1960s radiobiologists had reached a better understanding of the processes of radionuclide accumulation in different biological organisms living in various environments.10 Their research led to important changes in radioprotection regulations, until then mostly shaped around the principle of the maximum admissible dose, the threshold of radiation exposure at which human beings would not be harmed. While the threshold principle continued to be monitored, the discovery of bioaccumulation processes revealed that bio-organisms and tissues did not all have the same propensity to capture and retain radionuclides dispersed in the environment and consequently affect human health through the local food chain and water sources. Thus, radioecological surveillance systems had to focus not only on accidental discharges and radioactive contamination emitted during routine operations but also on bioaccumulation phenomena over time.11 For this reason, from the 1960s, Italy’s CNEN, along with the Centre for the Study of Marine Environmental Contamination of Fiascherino (Lerici) and other institutions like the Centre for the Military Applications of Nuclear Energy (CAMEN), routinely conducted radioecological surveillance campaigns, using four fixed monitoring stations along Italy’s coastlines (La Spezia, Naples, Taranto, and Venice).12 Italian legislation required that the study of environments surrounding nuclear plants be one of the preliminary steps for their authorization. Radioecological campaigns were also prerequisites for the elaboration of any radioecological surveillance system and related external emergency plans.13 Experts from CNEN and the ISS (Instituto Superiore di Sanità; National Institute of Health) radiation laboratory conducted specific radioecological campaigns around civilian nuclear sites, including

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power plants, experimental facilities, uranium enrichment laboratories, experimental reactors, and so forth. In marine environments affected by the presence of nuclear installations (or simply exposed to the effects of fallout contamination due to atmospheric experiments), CNEN and ISS radioecologists and radioprotectionists, like their colleagues in other countries, collected samples of water, sediments, algae and plants, fish, nutrient particles, and other bioaccumulators in order to assess the levels of anthropogenic radioactivity present in a defined geographical area and disentangle it from the natural background. By the early 1970s, radioecology was an integrated interdisciplinary field studying bioaccumulation processes in species living in certain ecological systems, examining meteorological and ecological parameters influencing processes of dispersion, and surveying the interaction of local communities with the environment around nuclear installations.14 To this end, every radioecological campaign was focused on the study of “critical groups” – that is, a portion of the local population potentially more exposed to radioactive contamination, either by external contact, inhalation, or ingestion. For example, if the local economy around a nuclear site was primarily agricultural, then farmers would be targeted for study. Socioeconomic factors, such as land consumption and use, and dietary habits were important variables included in the inquiries. In Italy, radioecological programs followed standard protocols and were therefore similar in all nuclear installations, except that each ecosystem presented particular geomorphological and environmental characteristics that affected dispersion processes. Up until the end of the 1970s especially, during which time the security and radioprotection divisions of CNEN and ISS were working with limited personnel, frequently the same research teams conducted radioecological campaigns across the nation, acquiring vast experience at almost all sites.15 Italian legislation conferred on CNEN the power to certify and control radioecological surveillance systems organized by the licensees, although ISS, as the Ministry of Health’s technical consulting agency, had its share of responsibilities for the sanitary aspects of radioprotection, including food contamination, and work exposure. Radioecological campaigns were of two types: preparatory and confirmatory. Preparatory campaigns were those intended to study the ecological and meteorological characteristics of a site before the installation of a nuclear plant or facility. Their goal was to assess the “environmental receptivity,” that is, the congruence of the ecological and socioeconomic features of a given site with the presence of a

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nuclear installation. Thus, the operation of a nuclear plant was thought of as the integration and interaction of socioeconomic, ecological, and technological elements. Radioecologists had to assemble this complex information by gathering data, including the technical characteristics of the reactors and the type and amount of radioisotopes discharged by the installations during their routine activity. Before any nuclear site could be authorized, the state required the licensee to provide this information, explain it, and formally illustrate it in two documents: (1) a safety report, and (2) an environmental impact assessment along with the discharge formula (that is, the type and quantity of radionuclides released into the environment). In Italy a specialized group of experts within the security and protection department of CNEN (commonly known as the “Technical Committee”) was in charge of evaluating the validity and completeness of these documents and had the authority to deny license authorization and/or to interrupt the installation in case of incongruities.16 In addition to the preliminary assessment of a site’s receptivity, CNEN and ISS performed “confirmatory” radioecological campaigns to evaluate the environmental impact of nuclear plants’ controlled discharges over time and provide information for emergency plan updates. Divide and Research: Radioecology in La Maddalena Preparatory radioecological campaigns had the precise goal of providing a synthetic representation of the environmental characteristics of the site where a nuclear plant or facility operated. In scope they are assemblages of specialized knowledge: interdisciplinary projects that require the subdivision of the environment into separate elements and phenomena in order to analyse, amplify, and reassemble to provide an inclusive and detailed picture of a given ecosystem.17 As with other radioecological campaigns around civilian nuclear plants, dividing and reassembling environmental elements was the method that allowed radioecologists to form a coherent and integrated representation of La Maddalena, which was used to organize the radioecological surveillance system.18 In 1975, the first expedition of CNEN experts started in the summer. Dr Aldo Brondi, director of the Laboratory for the Study of Marine Environmental Contamination from 1975 to 1978, was responsible for the mineralogical and geological area of the research. A graduate of the University of Pisa with a specialization in petrography, he began his career inside CNEN in 1957 as a “uranium hunter” in the Italian Alps and later

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collaborated with the Italian oil and gas company ENI (Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi) at various similar projects in Australia. Beginning in the 1970s, he became interested in marine geology, working on the stratigraphic composition of Italian coastlines and focusing in particular on the processes of radioisotope absorption and diffusion in alluvial and marine sediments. During the 1970s, Brondi was part of a group of Italian geologists (mostly working at CNEN) who were actively shaping a new field of studies and looking at correlations between marine geomorphology, coastal morphology, sediment grain size, and the distribution of radionuclides in marine environments. They advocated a holistic approach, which they called the “global approach,” to the study of pollutant dispersion and sedimentation in marine systems. This line of inquiry presupposed a typological classification of coastlines, river basins, and marine environments according to their geomorphological and biotypical characteristics. In conjunction with an accurate knowledge of hydrological dynamics and radioisotope behaviour, typological classifications would have enhanced the capacity of CNEN (and other public authorities) to predict radioactive contaminant patterns of dispersion into the environment and to intervene with efficacy.19 This area of studies was particularly relevant for its immediate application in the field of radioprotection.20 The final goal of this long-term research project was to create an integrated geomorphological and biotypical map of Italy in order to predict and extrapolate models of contaminant dispersion into the environment on a national scale. Dr Brondi and his colleagues from CNEN’s Centre for Environmental Geology presented their preliminary data about La Maddalena on 12 November 1976 at a gathering of the Italian Geological Society. Maps of the mineralogical composition of the marine platform, its granulometry, and sediment dispersion illustrated the main characteristics of the archipelago. The scientists analysed these variables to assess the degree and directions of possible radioactive contaminant dispersion into the marine environment via the transportation of sediments. Between 1975 and 1977, teams of marine biologists, geologists, meteorologists, and mathematicians went to La Maddalena to explore in a totally new context within which they had to figure out sampling sites, marine fauna and flora, currents, climatic conditions, and the socioeconomic conditions of local residents. They tested their technical skills against the environmental elements of the unknown site and adapted to them with a certain degree of uncertainty, creativity, and informed speculation. In sum,

102  Davide Orsini Figure 3.1. ENEA Centre for the Study of Marine Environments personnel and Italian Navy divers collecting samples in front of the US Navy installation in a radioecological surveillance program conducted in the 1980s.

Source: Courtesy of the ENEA Centre for the Study of Marine Environments.

before making La Maddalena into a stabilized network of radiometric stations, radioecologists had to divide the archipelago into a grid of marked coordinates indicating meaningful points for data extraction, sometimes overlapping with local toponyms and knowledge of the place. In order to transform the local environment into readable and transportable information, CNEN radioecologists employed instruments and materials that made the invisible visible.21 Aerostatic balloons with anemometers, rhodamine B and fluorometers, current meters, microscopes, chemical separations, and spectrometric analysis: all amplified La Maddalena by transforming samples and measurements of invisible microorganisms and environmental elements into standardized ecological parameters.

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For its scope, depth, and length, Brondi’s study could be compared to a preparatory radioecological campaign, except that it was planned two years after the US Navy arrived in La Maddalena. The response of expert institutions came only after two years of technopolitical debates that involved political parties, scientific communities, and social movements opposed to the US base. Key aspects of this struggle led to the decision to organize the radioecological campaign. But the radioecological surveillance program had a difficult start because of the regime of military secrecy surrounding the operations of the US nuclear submarines and the organizational limitations this imposed on Italian expert institutions. A Difficult Start: Secrecy and State Expertise The Italian public did not find out that its government had permitted La Maddalena to be used as a refit base for US Navy nuclear submarines until national newspapers revealed the existence of a secret bilateral agreement. In October 1972, the little archipelago immediately became a Cold War battlefield of national and international significance. Both in parliament and through its official newspaper, L’Unita, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) mounted a massive campaign against the US Navy installation. The PCI pointed to the installation as proof of American imperialism and as an act of spineless capitulation by the Italian government (led by Christian Democrat Giulio Andreotti, then prime minister of a centre-right coalition) to its patron, the United States. Shortly thereafter, the political struggle over the US Navy presence in La Maddalena shifted to concerns about the possible effects of the nuclear submarines on the environment and public health.22 In 1974, Judge Gianfranco Amendola, a rising star in the environmental movement called Gruppo Ambiente (Environment Group), became the leader of a campaign that reignited alarm about the possible nuclear contamination of La Maddalena. In an article titled “Infected Bases” published in the national newspaper Il Messaggero on 22 March 1974, he reported the Japanese government’s request that US Navy submarines leave all ports in which they were stationed. According to Amendola, the Japanese authorities discovered that the data on radioactivity levels published by the Agency for Science and Technology had been falsified to cover up the fact that the analyses had not been conducted according to standardized protocol. Thus Amendola asked the alarming question: “Is not La Maddalena in the exact same situation as the Japanese ports

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that host US nuclear submarines?”23 For this reason, the article continued, those who had handed over the use of La Maddalena to the US Navy were exposing the local population to potential risks that could not be assessed without a thorough study of the environmental conditions of the area surrounding the base. Not surprisingly Amendola’s alarming campaign provoked disquiet among the local population and at the highest political levels. Under the pressure of anti-base environmental groups and with alarming headlines in local and national newspapers, during the spring of 1974 the Sardinian regional institutions and the Ministry of Health asked their expert agencies to draft guidelines for a series of radioecological campaigns to monitor the situation around the US Navy base. Two months later the Minister of Health, Christian Democrat Vittorino Colombo, sent a confidential document to CNEN and ISS asking them to collaborate on the implementation of “a program for environmental analyses” similar to those that Italian regulatory institutions prescribed for the authorization of civilian nuclear plants.24 In a few pages the document presented the guidelines composed by a technical commission of ISS and CNEN experts on the basis of national and international standard regulatory procedures. These consisted of two complementary research activities. The first called for a study of the general ecological, meteorological, and environmental characteristics of La Maddalena, which under normal conditions would be conducted to assess the environmental receptivity of the site. The second focused on two further actions: (1) the implementation of a system of radioecological surveillance for the evaluation of the long-term impact of the US Navy’s routine activity in the archipelago, and (2) the establishment of a network of radiometric stations to carry out continuous monitoring. The stations would detect any immediate alteration in the levels of radioactivity following hypothetical accidents and allow specialized personnel to sound the alarm to activate an emergency plan. National political institutions addressed the “problem of La Maddalena” slowly, in part because they were reacting to the alarming campaign organized by the anti-base front. They also took the necessary step of regulating this “particular” situation, given that the US Navy could not be compared to other nuclear plant licensees. In 1974, Italy was still lacking formal regulation of radioprotection for nuclear ports and military nuclear sites. For this reason Italian experts (CNEN and ISS) treated the US Navy base as analogous to a civilian nuclear plant.25 Immediately after the arrival of the US naval units in September 1972, CNEN radioprotection experts included La Maddalena as a special

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case within the larger national radioprotection program. But the base continued to be an anomaly because the US Navy installed it without any preliminary study of the environmental receptivity of the site. Even more problematic was the fact that, unlike other nuclear plants, ISS and CNEN personnel did not have any precise information about the technical characteristics of the nuclear reactors propelling the submarines. This information was a military secret to which only the Italian Ministry of Defence and CAMEN could have access.26 Concerning this aspect, the Ministry of Health released a document that concluded with a reassuring statement: “On this occasion this Ministry informs you [ISS and CNEN scientists] that a request has been forwarded to the Ministry of Defence in order to acquire all the data and useful information that it possesses or will collect about the technical characteristics of the submarines’ reactors and their modalities of operation.”27 The transmission of technical data never officially happened. The halo of secrecy surrounding this contentious point would be a constant obstacle around which the Italian radioecologists had to navigate during their research activities. According to Dr Eugenio Tabet, one of the first ISS experts involved in the initial stages of the radioecological surveillance program: At the beginning we faced a situation that recalled Ionesco’s theatrical work. We asked CAMEN to give us the technical details of the US submarines’ reactors, but their response was never direct and clear. In order to get started we had to hypothesize that the reactors propelling the submarines were pressurized water reactors with a power of 70 MW or so. CAMEN’s answer was that we were probably not too far from the truth.28

When designing the radioecological surveillance program for La Maddalena, Italian experts had to make assumptions about crucial aspects of the US Navy submarine operations. Based on the hypothesis that the reactors propelling the submarines were pressurized water reactors (PWR) of a certain power, they identified some typical radionuclides that in cases of routine discharge and under anomalous circumstances, such as accidents, would be dispersed into the surrounding environment. By correlating what would happen with a typical PWR plant like the one installed at Trino Vercellese in 1964 (in Piedmont, northwest Italy), the Italian experts were able to divide the radioactive elements they needed to identify into fission products, namely iodine-131 and cesium-137, and activation products, in particular cobalt-60 and ­manganese-54.29 The main goal of the radioecological surveillance

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program, thus, was to detect the presence of those elements in order to assess the environmental and sanitary impacts of the US Navy presence and operations in the archipelago. But the task was not easy. Because of the lack of any radioecological information prior to the US Navy installation, Italian experts were not able to calculate and synthesize any information about the possible patterns of radioactive contaminant dispersion into the environment. Direction, strength, and intensity of the winds and marine currents, levels of natural background radioactivity, the presence of particular bioaccumulators, and socioeconomic characteristics of the site were all blank variables. For these reasons the radioecological surveillance system momentarily put in place was overdimensioned (with many sampling points) and did not have a baseline for the levels of environmental radioactivity (that is, the natural and anthropogenic radioactivity present in the environment before the US Navy base started to operate) to compare with later measurements. According to the technical report that ISS experts sent to the Minister of Health upon his request, “[the lack of basic information] makes the radioecological study particularly urgent in order to assess the environmental and sanitary impact of the installation as soon as possible.”30 Beginning in October 1972, CNEN included La Maddalena among the other monitoring stations that formed the national network of marine radiometric surveillance. Thanks to this zealous initiative, the Continental Contamination Laboratory of Casaccia (one of the most important CNEN facilities, located near Rome) started to measure the radioactivity levels of various samples after November 1972. From that date onward, central institutions (CNEN, ISS, and CAMEN) repeated the analyses every six months and compared them to make sure that the use of different instruments and sampling methods did not result in biased outcomes.31 Although this monitoring system guaranteed at least a minimum threshold of radioecological surveillance, in 1975 the situation was still problematic and the program far from complete. During his presentation at the first national conference on “US Nuclear Bases, Local Populations, and the Environment: The Case of La Maddalena,” organized by Gruppo Ambiente in September 1975, Dr Eugenio Tabet from the ISS radiation laboratory denounced the serious deficiencies in the implementation of the radioecological surveillance program.32 Not only had the lack of basic technical information regarding the US reactors forced ISS and CNEN to design a very large network of sampling stations, but the scarcity of radioecological expertise in Sardinia made necessary the direct intervention of the central radioprotection

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institutions, whose personnel provided technical equipment and methodological assistance, and conducted radiometric measurements in Rome. This method of procedure meant that specimens collected in La Maddalena were sent to Rome, prepared and treated in the ISS and CNEN laboratories, and finally examined. The entire process required months, and the scarce expert personnel at the central institutions could not continue the service ad infinitum, as they clearly stated in the initial guidelines prepared for the Minister of Health in 1974.33 Also, the time between collecting the samples and the final radiometric analyses was too long for the data to be significant in the case of an accidental event. This level of analysis, called “second level network,” was in fact intended to trace the processes of radionuclide accumulation in the environment over an extended period of time; it was not designed to identify and respond in real time to an accidental discharge. For this reason, ISS and CNEN technicians designed a “first level network” to immediately detect any accidental or abnormal radioactive discharge. This system would allow twenty-four hour monitoring of radiometric measurements through five automatic water and air pumps located around the US Navy base and in the urban centre of La Maddalena. The pumps would filter radioactive particles and transmit the data to a network of monitors that would be located inside a local laboratory to be built in La Maddalena. In case of anomalies, and depending on the magnitude of the detected contamination, local personnel would first alert local and regional authorities and, if required, start the emergency procedure. Complementary to this approach, qualified personnel would conduct monthly radiometric measurements through gamma spectrometry on specimens collected and analysed in the local laboratory. According to the initial project, technical personnel in Sardinia should have administered this part of the radioecological surveillance system, but at that time the lack of local expertise and the bureaucratic obstacles at the regional and provincial levels delayed its full implementation for about fourteen years.34 Following Dr Tabet’s presentation, Mario Mittempergher, then director of the CNEN radiation department, lamented the state of uncertainty in which radioecologists and radioprotectionists had to work in La Maddalena. They had to adapt to the unusual situation by individuating a large number of sampling sites and using a remote point situated on the northwestern corner of the major island as a control case; the “point zero” (point 10 on Figure 3.2) was where the US submarines supposedly would not travel, and no currents coming from the bay where the Navy base was installed (points 2 and 9) could transport radionuclides.

108  Davide Orsini Figure 3.2. CNEN and ISS radiometric surveillance system in La Maddalena, second level network – sampling stations. Since July 1974, point 10, the “point zero,” was added to the network.

Source: Carlo Papucci, “Long-Term Radiometric Analyses,” paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Italian Society for Radioprotection, La Maddalena, 13 April 1991.

Tabet and Mittempergher made clear the contradictions and obstacles that ISS and CNEN experts encountered in La Maddalena because of the special conditions of the site. While Italian expert institutions attempted

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to preserve their independence in varying ways, they could not avoid the obvious political and technical implications that military secrecy had for their work. Concerned with their primary objective and their institutional role, ISS and CNEN designed and implemented the radioecological surveillance system around the US Navy installation incorporating the elements of uncertainty into their research strategy. The end result was inefficient, not only because the entire system was based on a fragile compromise between security needs (embodied by the military secrecy of the US Navy) and safety protocols, but also because the scale and technical requirements of the radioecological campaign in La Maddalena exceeded the immediate capacity of expert institutions to respond in a timely manner. During his presentation at the national Gruppo Ambiente conference, Carlo Papucci, one of the CNEN experts working in La Maddalena, called the audience’s attention to various organizational problems that were delaying the radioecological surveillance program. As a radioecologist – and also a member and active representative of CGIL Ricerca, the leftist union of workers and specialized cadres employed in research institutions – Papucci offered an insider’s perspective with firsthand experience of the material and scientific limitations undermining CNEN as an organization. As Papucci summarized: The first aspect concerns the current lack of expertise on physical oceanography, which we should try to acquire by involving other research centres … The second problem regards the concrete possibility to implement this ambitious radioecological program within a reasonable amount of time. Some of our structures cannot respond adequately to such a tight schedule considering that we lack means and materials in key sectors.35

Originally planned as a year-long cycle of seasonal campaigns (four in total) starting in May 1975, the radioecological study of La Maddalena was delayed for months. As Carlo Papucci pointed out, the scientific program planned by Italian expert institutions at the request of the Ministry of Health required coordination between various research institutions and equipment that the CNEN Centre for the Study of Marine Environmental Contamination alone could not provide. For this reason, in May 1976 CNEN signed a collaboration agreement with the Oceanography Research Centre of the National Research Committee (CNR).36 The joint venture with the CNR not only complemented the skills of CNEN personnel; it also contributed to the program new, and desperately needed, resources and means. Documents concerning the preparatory activity

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for the radioecological campaign in the summer of 1976 show that the scale of the program was extraordinarily complex and vast compared to the operations routinely performed by the two research centres. Current meters were scarce, so they had to be rented or borrowed from other institutions. The fishing boat Odalisca, which CNEN personnel adapted into an efficient floating lab, needed an external licensed crew, who were finally recruited after several attempts and lost months.37 After two years of uncertainties and tense political debates about the radioecological surveillance programs in La Maddalena, Carlo Papucci and his colleagues were still struggling with bureaucratic and organizational obstacles that limited their capacity to do their jobs. At stake was not only their dignity as scientists but also the credibility of the entire program of radioecological surveillance, already undermined by the secrecy that the US Navy and various sectors of the Italian government imposed on La Maddalena. The organizational limitations of the Italian nuclear program also affected radioecological studies at other sites. Placed within a broader historical context, the limitations of the La Maddalena radioecological campaigns represent more generally the limitations – on a national scale – of the Italian nuclear program. Radioecology with Missing Data One of the arguments raised by leftist parties and environmental groups opposed to the US Navy base was that the lack of a radioecological study prior to its installation prevented radioecologists from assessing whether the presence of nuclear submarines had caused an increase in the levels of radioactivity as compared to a natural pre-installation background. For them, this deficiency made the case of La Maddalena an anomaly, if not an outlier situation, in comparison to other Italian nuclear sites. However, La Maddalena was not such an exception in this regard. Official radioecological reports about other sites frequently decried the lack of preliminary environmental studies and enumerated the difficulties in arriving at a precise determination of radioactive contaminant diffusion models. For example, the final report of the campaign conducted by CNEN personnel around the nuclear plant at Latina (along the coastline of Lazio, several kilometres south of Rome) in April 1979 argued: During the programming phase of the sampling design, the scarcity of meteorological data did not allow the precise individuation of the prevalent directions of winds in the area, and for this reason a “dense

Military Secrets and Italian Radioecology on La Maddalena  111 geometric” criterion for the choice of the sampling sites has been followed for a radium of 2 kilometres around the nuclear plant, privileging points nearby farms, rural houses, and small urban centres.38

CNEN radioecologists adopted the “geometric method” when the lack of precise ecological data (such as geomorphological, sedimentological, meteorological, biotypical, and hydrological characteristics) did not allow them to create models predicting the processes of radionuclide dispersion into the environment and thereby achieve a more focused individuation of radiometric sampling sites. The geometric method consisted of subdividing the radioecological campaign area into a homogeneous grid of coordinates whose intensity could be magnified or decreased according to the research needs.39 How was it possible that by the end of the 1970s CNEN radioecologists did not have complete ecological data for a site that had been operating since the early 1960s? Answering this question requires taking into account the general characteristics of the Italian nuclear program. Latina, in fact, was not an isolated case of negligence, nor was dealing with uncertainty and scarcity of environmental data a novelty for CNEN radioecologists. It was, in part, a consequence of the piecemeal development of the Italian nuclear sector. Dr Carlo Polvani, head of CNEN’s radioprotection department, pointed to this problem during a symposium on nuclear plant siting in 1972: The Italian legislation … reflects the status quo of the 1960s, when siting requests were extremely sporadic. The law leaves to the entrepreneur the initiative to propose a site for the construction of a nuclear plant and requests that public authorities evaluate its appropriateness. But this procedure does not allow choosing the best sites from an environmental point of view … What is worse is that siting choices are made independently from one another without a global view of the problem, on the basis of short-sighted evaluations.40

Speaking out against the lack of a national siting policy, Polvani criticized what came to be accepted praxis in the Italian nuclear program: the construction of plants and facilities in places selected on the basis of political considerations rather than after detailed pre-classificatory ecological campaigns.41 As a result, the location of nuclear plants and facilities happened without complete preliminary studies of the environmental receptivity of the sites.

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In a February 2012 interview, Dr Arrigo Cigna confirmed the documented evidence that showed preparatory campaigns had not been performed on all Italian nuclear sites because of the political nature of the siting choices. He commented: Yes, you are right. This does not mean that radioecological surveillance programs were not efficient or were absent. To the contrary, once the installations were ready to start, all the systems were up and running with, I want to say, great accuracy. But if you ask me whether the choice of the sites was based on previous studies of ecological receptivity, the answer is that only a couple of them were performed before the construction: one case that I remember well is Montalto di Castro, which, as you may know, was never activated due to strong local opposition and by virtue of the referendum of 1987 after the Chernobyl accident.42

The paradox of Montalto di Castro, the only nuclear site fully studied according to the principle of ecological receptivity and yet never activated, exemplifies the history of the Italian nuclear program and its limitations. Conclusion The case of La Maddalena reveals important aspects of radioecology in Cold War Italy. Enhanced by the challenges and opportunities posed by nuclear contamination in the atomic era, bioecological studies developed internationally into an integrated, interdisciplinary field of studies applied to human safety and ecosystem preservation. In Italy, radioecology followed disciplinary protocols and practices developed especially in the United States and the Soviet Union. By the end of the 1950s a network of radiometric stations was able to monitor the fluxes of radioactive fallout from atomic tests. While the Cold War enhanced the work of radioecologists globally, in La Maddalena the presence of a US Navy installation for nuclear submarines transformed the little archipelago into a radioecological-surveyed site. There, the expertise of Italian radioecologists confronted severe technical limitations. This time the military secrecy imposed by the US Navy and secured by Italian authorities thwarted the aspirations of the local population and reduced the efficiency of the scientific protocols routinely adopted by the Italian experts running the national radioecological surveillance system. Nuclear scientists involved in the radioecological campaigns of

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La Maddalena voiced these contradictions while adapting their established practices to the unusual circumstances of the site. From their analyses of the situation, it emerges that military secrecy was not the only factor negatively impacting their work. As CNEN documentation and its experts’ personal experiences make clear, the case of La Maddalena and the limitations of its radioecological surveillance system reflect more generally the disjointed organization of the Italian nuclear program and, in particular, of the radioecological campaigns performed around nuclear installations. The case of La Maddalena reveals a complicated relationship between military secrecy and science in Italy during the Cold War, and illustrates how the scarcity of material resources and lack of planning limited the concrete application of scientific programs prescribed by national radioecological surveillance protocols. The interaction of these two circumstances distinctively shaped how Italian nuclear experts performed their studies in La Maddalena and helps explain why, in the following years, the local residents of the archipelago began to question the efficiency and trustworthiness of the radioecological surveillance system around the US Navy base. NOTES 1 All translations from the Italian in this chapter are those of the author. 2 Dr Arrigo Cigna, personal interview with the author, 28 February 2012. 3 It was only because of the initiative of the president of CNEN and at the explicit request of Professor Carlo Polvani, the father of radioprotection in Italy and the leader of the CNEN radioprotection units, that on October 1972 La Maddalena was included within the stable monitoring sites of the national network of radioecological surveillance established in the 1950s. For example, see: AA.VV., “Misure di radioattivita”; D’Amato, “Rapporto annual”; Boeri and Giorcelli, “Le reti nazionali.” 4 Cigna, Domenici, Malvicini, and Vido, “Radioattivita.’” 5 For example, see Cigna and Malvicini, “Determinazione della data dell’esplosione”; Malvicini, “Le ricadute radioattive.” 6 Dr Arrigo Cigna described how he constructed his adapted Geiger counter in one of his first published articles on rainwater radiometric experiments in the early 1950s. See Arrigo Cigna, “Ripercussioni anche in Italia”; Santomauro and Cigna, “Prime misure sulla radioattivita’ delle precipitazioni atmosferiche.”

114  Davide Orsini 7 See, for example, Walker, Permissible Dose; Higuchi, “Tipping the Scale of Justice.” 8 Odum, “Ecology and the Atomic Age.” 9 Hagen, An Entangled Bank. See especially chapter six, “Ecology and the Atomic Age.” 10 During the 1960s, one of the emergent analytical parameters in radioecology became the “concentration factor.” It was developed by Ukrainian marine radioecologist Gennady G. Polikarpov in his 1964 doctoral dissertation Radioekologiya Mosrkikh Organizmov by Atomizdat, translated into English in 1966. Polikarpov defined the concentration factor as “the capacity of an organism to accumulate radioactive substances … expressed by the ratio of its radioactivity to that of the aqueous medium or the preceding food link to which the radionuclide was concentrated.” (27). Polikarpov’s scholarship has attained international recognition since the early 1960s when bioaccumulation factors in marine and terrestrial radioecology also became closely studied processes in the United States. In September 1961 the first National Symposium on Radioecology took place at the University of Colorado, Fort Collins, under the auspices of the American Institute of Biological Sciences and sponsored by the divisions of Biology and Medicine of the US Atomic Energy Commission. See Schultz and Klement, Radioecology. 11 Dr Arrigo Cigna graciously clarified this aspect during an interview in February 2012. 12 One of the first reports on the activity of the Italian marine radiometric surveillance network is Argiero, Del Corso, Manfredini, and Palmas, “Controllo sistematico della radioattivita’ lungo le coste italiane.” 13 The first complete legislation regulating the pacific employment of nuclear energy in Italy was the Decree of the President of the Republic (D.P.R. n. 185, 1964), followed by subsequent modifications and updates in 1971 and 1977. Despite the fact that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regulations prescribed specific exposure limits and safety protocols, at the beginning of the 1970s regulatory regimes concerning nuclear plant siting varied nationally. For a comparative analysis from an Italian perspective, see Amaldi et al., “Criteri di scelta dell’ubicazione delle installazioni nucleari.” 14 The process of multidisciplinary integration into the field of marine and continental radioecology became the benchmark of this (now established) scientific sector also in Italy. This is evident from the reports of the First National Symposium on Radioecology held at the University of Parma in 1970. AA.VV., Atti del primo convegno sullo stato di avanzamento della radioecologia in Italia.

Military Secrets and Italian Radioecology on La Maddalena  115 15 In 1974 the divisions of security and radioprotection became an independent department inside CNEN called DISP (Dipartimento Sicurezza e Protezione). DISP had its own budget, and its director was directly responsible to the Ministry of Industry, rather than to the director of CNEN. (The peculiarity of this institutional arrangement allowed DISP to play its role as independent licensing agency and to develop, through its Technical Commission, all the emergency plan guidelines for all the nuclear installations present in Italy. The independence of DISP was key in order to ensure that the agency promoting the research and development of nuclear power in Italy was not also the controller of the licensing process and the radioprotection programs. Although its formal institutional house was inside CNEN, DISP had the same function as the NRC in the United States.) By the end of the 1980s, DISP personnel surpassed 500, including engineers, physicists, technicians, and employees. I am grateful to Engineer Giovanni Naschi, former director of DISP from 1974 until its dissolution in 1994, for his detailed explanation (Personal interview, Rome, May 2013). 16 A detailed description of the siting regulations in Italy compared with other countries in the context of the 1970s can be found in Amaldi et al., “Criteri di scelta dell’ubicazione delle installazioni nucleari.” 17 Here I use Bruno Latour’s analytical insights on “circulating reference.” He suggests that the conservation of specimens is not simply the way in which scientists guarantee evidence for the truth of a statement, but “rather it is our way of keeping something constant through a series of transformations.” Specimens and inscriptions stored in a laboratory are “traces that establish a reversible route that makes possible to retrace one’s footsteps as needed;” they are “references” of the reversible processes of transformation that scientists perform in order to reduce and amplify on manageable scales the characteristics of the phenomena they study. Latour, Pandora’s Hope, 58, 61. 18 I could reconstruct the process through which Italian radioecologists performed environmental studies in La Maddalena thanks to the documentation made available by the ENEA Centre for the Study of Marine Environments in Lerici, La Spezia (previously named CNEN Centre for the Study of Marine Environmental Contamination). I want to thank Dr Roberta Delfanti, director of the centre, and especially Carlo Papucci, for granting me access to the archival material and for their kind assistance and explanations during several research visits. I also would like to remember Dr Aldo Brondi, who graciously helped me at the beginning of my research in the summer of 2010.

116  Davide Orsini 19 For a synthetic illustration of the “global approach” promoted by CNEN/ ENEA geologists, see A. Brondi and O. Ferretti, “Efficacia ed applicazione di concetti mesotipologici come elementi.” For a more technical explanation of concepts and methods applied in the “global approach,” see Anselmi et al., Studi sui parametri geologici. 20 As most nuclear plants are installed near sources of water (usually lakes, rivers, and along marine coastlines), knowing the geological and hydrological variables impacting the processes of radionuclide dispersion has clear implications for siting policies, control of routine discharge operations, and radioecological sampling and surveillance. 21 Latour, The Pasteurization of France; Murphy, Sick Building Syndrome. 22 Even conservative newspapers like the Corriere della Sera reported the concerns of part of the population of La Maddalena about the possible problems of radioactivity. Corriere della Sera, 22 September 1976. 23 Amendola, “Basi Infette.” 24 “Tutela sanitaria della popolazione contro i pericoli derivanti dalle radiazioni ionizzanti e controllo sulla radioattivita’ ambientale dell’isola de ‘La Maddalena,’” Ministry of Health, Doc. 400.5 / A 5/1/75, 10 June 1974 (Municipal Archives, La Maddalena). 25 Italian regulation for the peaceful use of nuclear energy was organically introduced in DPR 185, 1964. The legislation about nuclear ports was drafted only in 1979, after La Maddalena. Before then, the presence and movement of nuclear naval units, both civilian and military, in Italian harbours was evaluated on a case-by-case basis, with protocols tailored to the characteristics of the naval units, and an emergency plan was crafted on each occasion. 26 This debate was already at the centre of a technopolitical polemic raised not only by the Communist Party but also by qualified scientific organizations and divisions inside ISS and CNEN. See the “Declaration of the Personnel of the Division Security and Control and the Division of Protection and Security of CNEN, Rome, 20 November, 1972” (Private Archive, Carlo Papucci, Lerici). 27 Ibid. 28 Eugenio Tabet, personal interview, Rome, 12 January 2012. 29 The first type (fission products) are elements created by the reactions inside the core of the reactor, while the second (activation products) are formed by the irradiation of the materials containing the reactor and those of the primary cooling circuit. 30 AA.VV., “Indagine Ambientale nell’intorno della base nucleare navale situate nell’isola de La Maddalena,” Appendix 1, internal document,

Military Secrets and Italian Radioecology on La Maddalena  117 ISS, probably Summer/Fall 1974 (Private Archive, Salvatore Sanna, La Maddalena). 31 Boeri and Giorcelli, “Le reti nazionali,” 29–31. The role of CAMEN in the radioecological surveillance system of La Maddalena was somehow independent of the coordinated strategy implemented by ISS and CNEN, although CAMEN participated with the other two institutions in the systematic data intercomparisons and shared its analyses with them. It is not possible to establish with certainty to what extent CAMEN had direct supervision over the annual radiometric reports that the US Navy was issuing in La Maddalena, as it did in any other facility both in the United States and overseas (for example in Japan, among other countries). The US Navy published its data in official bulletins and shared them with other US institutions as part of a larger network of radiometric and radioecological monitoring stations across the country. 32 The conference took place in Rome on 24–25 September 1975. 33 See note 30. 34 Interviews with the personnel of the local laboratory and with CNEN technicians and archival documentation from the province of Sassari and the municipality of La Maddalena confirm that the monthly radiometric measurements began only in 1980, while the installation of the first level network of continuous monitoring stations was completed in 1986. For example, see “Rete di rilevamento sulla radioattività ambientale di La Maddalena: Completamento lavori di installazione,” Provincia di Sassari, Prot. n. 5619, 18 February1986; Municipal Archives of La Maddalena, Prot. n. 2748, 24 February1986. 35 Carlo Papucci, “Intervention of Carlo Papucci / C.G.I.L.-Ricerca,” Private Archive, Carlo Papucci, Lerici. 36 Letter to the President of CNEN, Prof. Ezio Clementel, by CNR Oceanography Centre of St Terenzo (Lerici), on 10 May 1976 (Doc. CNEN Prot. n. 3887 M-C-1, 10/5/76 [non-catalogued], Archive ENEA Centre for the Study of Marine Environments [formerly CNEN Centre for the Study of Marine Contamination], Lerici, Italy). 37 A letter handwritten by Papucci in May 1976, probably addressed to other union members or to a newspaper, makes evident the stalled situation for CNEN personnel. “The laboratory is ready to carry out the campaign planned for this spring but supposedly bureaucratic obstacles impede its actual implementation. The CNEN boat is appropriate and equipped to go [to La Maddalena] but at this time it is not operative because there is no crew governing it. The decision to recruit an external crew needs to be taken by the executive offices. The most urgent risk is that the planned

118  Davide Orsini spring campaign will be delayed until next year with the consequent postponement of the entire scientific program. The problem must be solved now, in a very short time.” Handwritten document, Private Archive, Carlo Papucci, Lerici. 38 AA.VV., Relazione sulla campagna radioecologica, 72. 39 This is evident in confirmatory campaign reports regarding the nuclear plants in Latina and Garigliano. 40 Polvani, “L’ubicazione degli impianti nucleari e la protezione della popolazione.” 41 For a discussion of the conflicting political and economic interests that shaped the scattered structure of the Italian nuclear program, see Curli, Il Progetto Nucleare Italiano; Paoloni, “Gli Esordi del Nucleare in Italia”; Paoloni, Energia, Ambiente, Innovazione; Silvestri, Il Costo della Menzogna. 42 Dr Arrigo Cigna, personal interview with the author, 28 February 2012.

REFERENCES AA.VV. Atti del primo convegno sullo stato di avanzamento della radioecologia in Italia, organizzato dall’Istituto di Zoologia dell’Universita’ degli Studi di Parma e dall’Associazione Italiana di Fisica Sanitaria e Protezione contro le Radiazioni, 5–6 Novembre, 1970. Parma: University of Parma Press, 1971. – “Misure di radioattività ambientale presso l’isola della Maddalena eseguite dal Laboratorio per la Radioattivita’ Ambientale del CNEN.” Notiziario CNEN 20, no. 5 (1974): 87–90. – Relazione sulla campagna radioecologica attorno al sito della centrale elettronucleare di Latina, Aprile 1979. CNEN – RT/DISP 81, 9 (1981). Comitato Nazionale per l’Energia Nucleare, Rome. Amaldi, U., G. Campos Venuti, S. Frullani, L. Maiani, and E. Tabet. “Criteri di scelta dell’ubicazione delle installazioni nucleari.” Annali dell’Istituto Superiore di Sanità 7 (1971): 626–46. Amendola, Gianfranco. “Basi Infette.” Il Messaggero, 22 March 1974, 3. Anselmi, B., et al. Studi sui parametri geologici rilevanti ai fini della determinazione della contaminazione del territorio nazionale. CNEN RT/PROT 79, 14 (1979). Rapporto Tecnico: Comitato Nazionale Energia Nucleare, Rome. Argiero, L., G. Del Corso, S. Manfredini, and G. Palmas. “Controllo sistematico della radioattività lungo le coste italiane. Organizzazione delle reti di prelievo di campioni d’acqua e fauna marina. Techniche e dati di misure. Programma di studi e ricerche.” Minerva Nucleare 7, no. 7 (1963): 261–7.

Military Secrets and Italian Radioecology on La Maddalena  119 Boeri, G.C., and F. Giorcelli. “Le reti nazionali per il rilevamento della radioattività ambientale in Italia.” CNEN-RT/DISP 81(1981): 28–35. Brondi, A., and O. Ferretti. “Efficacia ed applicazione di concetti mesotipologici come elementi per un approccio globale ai problem ambientali.” Acqua-Aria 5 (1986): 451–9. Cigna, Arrigo. “Ripercussioni anche in Italia degli scoppi atomici di Las Vegas?” Incontri 5 (May 1951): 84–7. Cigna, A., G. Domenici, A. Malvicini, and L. Vido. “Radioattività dei prodotti di fissione nel fallout raccolto dopo l’esplosione nucleare francese nel Sahara.” Minerva Nucleare 5, no. 4 (1961): 73–8. Cigna, A., and A. Malvicini. “Determinazione della data dell’esplosione di una bomba nucleare mediante analisi del decadimento radioattivo dei prodotti di fissione raccolti su filtro.” Minerva Nucleare 4, no. 6 (1960): 162–9. Curli, Barbara. Il Progetto Nucleare Italiano 1952–1964: Conversazioni con Felice Ippolito. Soveria Mannelli: Rubettino, 2000. D’Amato, S., ed. “Rapporto annuale sulla radioattività ambientale in Italia.” vol. 2 “Reti Locali” (1976), 313–22. Hagen, Joel B. An Entangled Bank: The Origins of Ecosystem Ecology. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992. Higuchi, Toshihiro. “Tipping the Scale of Justice: The Fallout Suit of 1958 and the Environmental Legal Dimension of Nuclear Pacifism.” Peace & Change 38, no. 1 (2013): 33–55. Latour, Bruno. Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. –  The Pasteurization of France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Malvicini, A. “Le ricadute radioattive nella zona di Ispra dovute alle esplosioni nucleari durante il quinquennio 1958–1962.” Minerva Nucleare 7, no. 7 (1963): 267–76. Murphy, Michelle. Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Odum, Eugene P. “Ecology and the Atomic Age.” ASB Bulletin 4, no. 2 (1957): 27–9. Paoloni, Giovanni. Energia, Ambiente, Innovazione: Dal CNRN all’ENEA. Bari, IT: Laterza, 1992. –  “Gli Esordi del Nucleare in Italia.” In Storia dell’Industria Elettrica in Italia Vol. 4: Dal Dopoguerra alla Nazionalizzazione 1945–62, edited by Valerio Castronovo, 383–408. Bari, IT: Laterza, 1994. Polvani, Carlo. “L’ubicazione degli impianti nucleari e la protezione della popolazione.” In La Scelta dei siti per gli impianti nucleari: Atti del Convegno

120  Davide Orsini organizzato al Centro Ricerche Nucleari della Trisaia nei giorni 15–16 Settembre da CNEN, Regione Basilicata, Associazione Italiana di Fisica Sanitaria. Rome: CNEN, 1973. Santomauro, L., and A. Cigna. “Prime misure sulla radioattività delle precipitazioni atmosferiche.” Communication presented at the national meeting of the Italian Geophysics Association, Rome, 17–18 June 1953. Schultz, V., and A.W. Klement, Jr., eds. Radioecology: Proceeding of the First National Symposium on Radioecology held at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, September 10–15, 1961. New York and Washington, DC: Reinhold Publishing Corporation and The American Institute of Biological Sciences, 1963. Silvestri, Mario. Il Costo della Menzogna: Italia Nucleare 1945–68. Torino, IT: Einaudi, 1968. Walker, Samuel. Permissible Dose: A History of Radiation Protection in the Twentieth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

4 The Calvert Cliffs Campaign, 1967–1971: Protecting the Public’s Right to Knowledge andrew ramey

Introduction The landmark court case Calvert Cliffs Coordinating Committee v US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) transformed nuclear regulation and environmental protection in the United States. According to one historian, it was “the single most important decision in the history of the atomic energy program.” Variously described as “a crushing defeat for the AEC”; “nuclear opponents’ biggest court victory”; and “the opinion which had the most far-reaching and detrimental effect on the development of nuclear power,” scholars agree that the Calvert Cliffs case fundamentally reshaped the nuclear energy industry in the United States. The DC Circuit Court’s ruling forced the AEC to consider the environmental effects of nuclear power at every stage of the licensing process; it resulted in a de facto seventeen-month moratorium on nuclear power plant construction while the AEC completed required environmental impact statements; and it contributed significantly to the AEC’s loss of authority and ultimate demise.1 The court ruling was also historic for environmentalists. Its legal precedent “gave teeth to the National Environmental Policy Act” (NEPA), and by forcing the AEC to consider the environmental effects of nuclear power, the court decision reinforced NEPA’s claim to make environmental protection a responsibility of every federal agency. The decision’s implications went far beyond nuclear power, as “Calvert Cliffs set the procedural bar for NEPA compliance,” and the precedent it set “protect[ed] the integrity of NEPA’s goals.” A thorough evaluation of the legacy of NEPA is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, the Calvert Cliffs case, and especially the sentiment behind it, retains the potential to reinvigorate NEPA after decades of what Lindstrom and

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Smith describe as “judicial misconstruction, legislative indifference, and executive neglect,”2 because, while histories of the case describe its effects on environmental policy and nuclear regulation, they miss the larger and longer Calvert Cliffs campaign, which was an important part of the story. This chapter broadens and deepens the narrative of Calvert Cliffs to show how one of the stiffest challenges to atomic energy and most formative decisions for US environmental policy arose from a local protest movement in the late 1960s, merged with national policy decisions, and created a new regulatory landscape for nuclear power and environmental protection.3 An expanded narrative of the Calvert Cliffs campaign reveals new origins and actors, and most importantly, it enhances our understanding of how the Calvert Cliffs case made it to court and what was at stake for the people who challenged Baltimore Gas & Electric’s (BGE) decision to build a nuclear power plant at Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, along the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. A closer look at the origins and evolution of the Calvert Cliffs campaign reveals that the heart of the matter for many of the participants was not, as is commonly assumed, preventing the construction of the plant, but rather the right of citizens to know how such a major project would affect their environment before it began. The expanded narrative also adds to our understanding of the plaintiff in the case, the Calvert Cliffs Coordinating Committee (QuadC). Quad-C was actually a by-product of activities by a local environmental organization, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF).4 CBF’s involvement with the Calvert Cliffs plant began in 1967, well before Congress passed NEPA and before most narratives of the case begin. Fourteen men from upper class backgrounds in the Baltimore region came together under the leadership of Arthur Sherwood, a Baltimore attorney, to found CBF in 1966. During the Calvert Cliffs campaign, it was essentially a one-man organization under the direction of Jess W. Malcolm, a biologist hired by Sherwood and CBF’s Board of Trustees in the summer of 1967. As CBF’s executive director, Malcolm played a crucial role by galvanizing local opposition to BGE and creating QuadC. He became Quad-C’s chairman after organizing over a dozen local and national organizations into a coalition to obtain an environmental review of the plant, and is the person most responsible for the eventual Calvert Cliffs decision. This expanded narrative shows that what started out as a local protest led by CBF evolved into a lengthy battle among environmentalists, the local power utility, and the AEC that changed the history of US nuclear power and environmental policy.5

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Three unique features of the US anti-nuclear movement help explain why a small, local protest could eventually change national policy. First, NEPA is essential to this story, because it created an opening for citizen groups to challenge the legitimacy of nuclear power. In most other countries, this was not the case. For instance, “the French licensing system proved virtually impenetrable to anti-nuclear groups … [and] no hearing, presentation of expert evidence, or adversarial forms of oral evidence was admitted.”6 Second, Malcolm made frequent and successful appeals to the “public interest” to bolster his case. This option was not always available elsewhere, as in West Germany, where “only individuals in defense of personal interests, not groups or organizations on behalf of the public interest, were allowed to participate in licensing hearings and subsequent court litigation.”7 Finally, CBF was part of the robust American environmental movement, which not only provided the foundation with a strong environmental critique of the plant, but the social and political legitimacy to make such a critique. Again France is a useful contrast. The nation’s “relatively inexperienced greens gladly accepted the participation of ‘veteran’ dissenters from various strands of the radical or anarchist left,” but anti-nuclear activists “found their movement increasingly hijacked by an extremist minority who were all too ready to engage in violence,” which discredited the movement in the eyes of the French public.8 Although Malcolm had key advantages, the Calvert Cliffs case was hardly an inevitable victory. In order to understand how Calvert Cliffs transformed the US nuclear industry and strengthened the environmental movement in 1971, we must move beyond the narrow scope of the courtroom and the broad gaze of national policy, and go back to 1967 when the recently formed Chesapeake Bay Foundation first launched its campaign to make the Baltimore Gas & Electric Company accountable for the environmental threats nuclear power posed to the Chesapeake Bay. CBF’s Initial Opposition to Calvert Cliffs On 29 May 1967, Baltimore Gas & Electric announced its plans to build a nuclear power plant at Calvert Cliffs, a site on the Chesapeake Bay 40 miles southeast of Washington, DC. At the time, Arthur Sherwood and a few other CBF founders were in the midst of a search for the foundation’s first executive director. On 27 July, they hired Jess W. Malcolm, a fisheries biologist from the Delaware River Basin Commission. Malcolm was the man who put the nuclear plant on the foundation’s

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agenda. According to a CBF trustee who knew Malcolm well, “he came from it with the feeling that the Bay needed to be pure” and that “we ought to get rid of nuclear and not even put it in”; however, CBF’s board opted for a more moderate stance that nuclear power was acceptable as long as it did not pose a threat to the health of the Chesapeake. Malcolm’s antipathy towards nuclear power fueled the Calvert Cliffs campaign in its early years; his scientific training shaped the nature of CBF’s opposition, and his position as executive director enabled him to keep the issue central to CBF’s operations.9 Jess Malcolm was undoubtedly a key figure in the Calvert Cliffs case, but until now historians have overlooked his crucial role in narratives of the case. Malcolm was born in 1926 in Rivesville, West Virginia, a small mining town about 80 miles south of Pittsburgh. At age eighteen, Malcolm joined the US Merchant Marine, where he served for the remainder of World War II. After the war, Malcolm earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in fisheries and wildlife management from West Virginia University and Penn State University, respectively. Before working at the Delaware River Basin Commission, Malcolm spent a decade as a supervisory fishery biologist for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. His primary task was “to investigate and prepare reports … on water resource development projects proposed by federal construction agencies.” This background differed significantly from CBF’s founders, who had no formal scientific training, and made Malcolm ideally suited to initiate and lead the challenge to BGE’s proposal through the labyrinthine layers of state and federal bureaucracies.10 Malcolm also brought a moral force to the campaign that at times gave it a crusading tenor. A 1968 article described Malcolm as “a crewcut, pipe-smoking … West Virginian who thinks of himself as a biological philosopher.” His “biological philosophy” for the Chesapeake was “to preserve the environmental integrity of the bay,” which meant a concern for the bay as an entire ecosystem, not one part Maryland, one part Virginia. Furthermore, Malcolm saw an assault on any part of the bay as a threat to the whole, which at times led him to take uncompromising stances. For example, as he said before the Maryland House of Delegates, “Neither I nor anyone I know would want cheaper electricity at the expense of any portion of Chesapeake Bay.” Malcolm also framed the battle against BGE in the language of “rights,” often insisting “that the public has a right to know – now – whether or not plants of this type will affect the Bay adversely, and if so, to what extent any adverse effect is justified.” Malcolm’s scientific training, work experience,

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and personal beliefs made him a particularly potent advocate for the Chesapeake.11 Malcolm’s concerns about the biological integrity of the bay and citizens’ rights to know the risks to their environment coalesced around the issue of thermal pollution. Environmentalists across the country made thermal pollution a hot topic in the late 1960s. Although the widespread use of cooling towers or ponds by 1971 eventually obviated the problem of thermal pollution in most locations, the location of the plant and the Chesapeake Bay’s mixture of salt and fresh water made cooling options impractical or impossible. Like conventional fossil fuel–driven power plants, nuclear power requires cooling water, but because nuclear plants use steam heat less efficiently, they need more cooling water than conventional power plants. For instance, in Maryland, the Calvert Cliffs plant is the largest user of water in the state (it uses thirteen times as much water per day as the City of Baltimore), and in 2010 the plant used more water than all other power plants in Maryland combined. The issue of thermal pollution was not new or novel in the Chesapeake; the fact that environmentalists across the country were concerned about thermal pollution lent support to CBF’s critique of BGE and enabled the Calvert Cliffs campaign to have national implications for the nuclear regulatory landscape.12 Two aspects of the proposed Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant made it appear that the plant could do great harm to the Chesapeake’s ecosystem. First, as mentioned above, was the sheer volume of water the plant needed to operate. Engineers designed the plant with a oncethrough cooling system that called for water from the Chesapeake Bay to initially pass through a 40 by 325 foot intake channel at a rate of nearly 5,500 cubic feet per second. While some people expressed concerns about the potential harm to biota being sucked into the pipes, the main concern was about what effects such a large volume of heated water would have on the bay. Unlike plants proposed for inland waterways, the bay’s brackish waters ensured that cooling towers were not an option to reduce thermal pollution, because they would deposit hundreds of tons of salt on the surrounding farmland. In total, BGE’s proposal called for the Calvert Cliffs facility to discharge up to 3.5 billion gallons of water a day into the Chesapeake at temperatures anywhere from 10 to 23 degrees Fahrenheit higher than when it entered the plant, depending on the time of the year.13 The second alarming aspect of BGE’s plan was the location of the plant itself at Calvert Cliffs, near the centre of the Chesapeake Bay. At maximum

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capacity, the Calvert Cliffs plant could discharge nearly as much water into the bay as the James River, the Chesapeake’s third largest tributary. The unknown effects of a large “river” of heated water entering the bay were cause enough for concern by CBF, but in addition, that “river” of water was located at the heart of the bay. The Calvert Cliffs site was not only near the middle of the bay, but at a spot where the estuary narrows to a mere 6 miles across. According to Dr Eugene Cronin, the renowned director of the University of Maryland’s Chesapeake Biological Laboratory,14 the plant’s location was at an especially ecologically sensitive area because it was at “the most constricted bottleneck of the Chesapeake, so that crabs and all of the fish species which are obligated to migrate between low salinity and high salinity areas must successfully pass this site, usually at least twice during their life history.” Aquatic organisms are extremely sensitive to slight changes in temperature, and under the right wind and tidal conditions, the nuclear plant’s thermal discharge could create a dangerously warm region at a location that would maximize the plant’s impact on the bay’s ecosystem.15 The Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s opposition to the Calvert Cliffs plant began in the winter of 1967–68 when Sherwood and Malcolm met with representatives from BGE to discuss jointly funding independent studies of the plant’s potential environmental effects. It is worth noting that CBF never officially opposed the construction of the plant outright; instead, the organization maintained a position from the start that it wanted an objective analysis of the plant. If that analysis revealed serious threats to the bay, then CBF would move towards opposition of the facility in its entirety. Initially, CBF hoped to work with BGE to find independent, third-party consultants on behalf of the public to ensure BGE built a safe and environmentally sound plant, possibly at a different location. Sherwood drafted a contract in December 1967 that offered to create an independent “scientific review board” to study the Calvert Cliffs power plant and certify to the public that the plant would not seriously harm the bay’s ecosystem. BGE was not interested in CBF’s proposal, and in January 1968, BGE executives informed CBF “that private consultants had been retained and that additional studies would not be required.” Despite the rejection, Sherwood persistently tried to persuade BGE officials that it was in the best interest of the public and their company to have independent studies to evaluate the plant’s environmental effect. These efforts continued until a May 1968 meeting when, “quite incredibly,” the company’s president and vicepresident told Sherwood that “if CBF really had the public’s interest at

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heart, it would be doing its utmost to support and disseminate official [BGE] statements.” This incident marked the end of CBF’s attempts to cooperate with the utility.16 CBF shifted its strategy from trying to work with BGE to demanding that the state of Maryland conduct a review of the plant. The organization’s next step was to adopt a policy position to guide its campaign. During the negotiations with BGE, CBF had not taken an official public stance regarding the nuclear plant, but on 25 July 1968, CBF formally adopted the position that “the proposed Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant constituted a potential problem of great magnitude and that it would be improper for the State of Maryland not to conduct independent studies of the proposal in the public interest.” Two aspects of this position must be noted. First, CBF described the plant as a “potential problem.” This modest stance highlights the uncertainty about the plant that was the centrepiece of CBF’s opposition to it, not the facility as such. Second, CBF demanded independent studies in the public interest, not any specific ecological values. CBF wanted citizens to have more control, oversight, and involvement in the implementation of uncertain new nuclear technology. Since CBF was the first environmental group to oppose the plant, it had great influence in shaping the terms of the debate. By framing the campaign around scientific studies in the public interest, and not, say, the aesthetics of the plant or reactor safety, CBF outlined the contours of the debate so that the issue would be especially suitable to testing under NEPA three years later.17 CBF hoped that if they brought a specific and reasonable request to the state government, they could obtain their sought-after review of the plant, but the unfortunate reality of the situation for CBF was that it faced too much institutional opposition from state and federal ­governments – a classic iron triangle of political science, or what Balogh called “the reactor bandwagon of the mid-1960s” – to expect them to closely scrutinize the nuclear plant’s environmental effects. An example of a problem in the regulatory process is that BGE obtained a permit for preliminary construction from the US Army Corps of Engineers on 4 April 1968, more than a year before it obtained an AEC permit and two years before the state of Maryland authorized the utility to use bay waters for industrial purposes. Even without official permits from the AEC or Maryland’s state regulatory agencies, BGE was able to begin preliminary construction and site preparation in the full expectation it would be granted all the necessary licensing from the relevant state and federal agencies after the fact.18

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With little expected opposition from the federal government or the state of Maryland, BGE proceeded at full speed. On 11 December 1968, Malcolm vented some frustration with this situation in a letter to Maryland State Senator Paul J. Bailey. Malcolm protested that because of the government’s failure to act on behalf of the public, the nuclear plant “will be built and operated at the proposed location irrespective of the effect it might have on Chesapeake Bay.” Malcolm’s letter was a keen description of the systemic flaws opposing environmental protection in the nuclear regulatory system that applied well beyond the shores of the Chesapeake: As matters now stand, plant construction is continuing and the public is being asked to approve … a series of environmental tradeoffs throughout the period of construction. As the power company’s investment in the project increases, it will become increasingly more difficult to change the plant location or modify its operational regime, even if it were later determined that the project would result in serious damages to the Bay.

CBF’s problem epitomized those of environmentalists nationwide who feared that avoidable environmental harm might only be uncovered after it was too late to prevent it. Faced with little help from government and BGE’s continued construction, Jess Malcolm and CBF turned to the media to defend the public interest and the bay.19 Nuclear Power in the News, 1969 In early 1969 CBF went on a media blitz that made the issue of nuclear power prominent in the public eye for the first time. Jess Malcolm styled himself and CBF as “an unofficial ombudsman, always ready and professionally able to investigate complaints and help resolve problems in the public’s interest.” He defined the “public’s interest” loosely, as “distinct from the interests of individual users and developers, government agencies, and corporations.” Although CBF had a scientific argument for why the plant might pose a potential problem to the bay’s environment, Malcolm framed that argument as at its root an issue of protecting the rights of citizens in a democratic society. By making the core issue about the basic duties of the government to its citizens, Malcolm helped make the Calvert Cliffs campaign about more than just a local environmental concern.20 Beginning on 17 February 1969, CBF sent out press releases, and Malcolm talked to reporters at regional newspapers such as the Annapolis

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Evening Capital and The Baltimore Sun, which resulted in a series of articles critiquing BGE and its nuclear plant proposal. The main theme of these articles was CBF denouncing BGE for failing to look after the public interest. One of the primary accomplishments of the media campaign was to cast doubt on the adequacy of BGE’s own studies of the nuclear plant. Malcolm noted, for example, that “one purpose of the utility’s research is to placate the public into believing that good scientific thinking has gone into the project, and that everything is well in hand.” Further, he pointed out that the studies BGE had commissioned were designed “primarily to aid the company in designing [the plant] and cannot be considered a substitute for public research.” CBF did not just criticize BGE’s studies; it offered a concrete alternative plan. Specifically, CBF argued that the Natural Resources Institute of the University of Maryland should conduct an independent review funded by the state of Maryland, while in the meantime the state should impose a construction moratorium to ensure there would be time to fix any potential problems with the power plant.21 Initially, BGE responded clumsily to the media pressure from CBF. On 22 February 1969, Austin E. Penn, the utility’s chairman of the board, defended his company’s nuclear plant by arguing that BGE had hired seven “entirely competent” consultants to make sure their plant would be safe and environmentally sound. Penn also confirmed some of CBF’s greatest fears by arguing that it was “too late” to conduct a study of the plant because the utility was too far along in the process to change locations or the plant’s design. Penn revealed more than he might have liked, however, when he said that BGE “started out early with the conclusion that we could build this plant without having an adverse effect on the Bay.” His words made it seem like BGE had already decided that their plant would not be an environmental hazard. Penn’s quick dismissal of external studies as being “too late” especially frustrated citizens who wanted to know more about how the nuclear power plant might affect their bay.22 As much as Penn’s words aroused public ire, they were not unusual for proponents of nuclear power. In fact, Penn echoed widespread beliefs within the nuclear industry that plants were safe, environmentally benign, and the future of US electricity production. As Walker has shown, in contrast to smoke-spewing coal-fired power plants, “industry voices emphasized the environmental benefits of nuclear generation,” and “officials of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) actively promoted the idea that nuclear power provided the answer

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to both the environmental crisis and the energy crisis.” Penn’s faith in nuclear power put him in good company; AEC Chairman Glenn T. Seaborg himself said in 1968 that “there can be no doubt that nuclear power comes out looking like Mr. Clean.” The assumption that nuclear power was inherently more environmentally friendly than other forms of energy production was a major plank of the AEC and the nuclear industry, but it was precisely this assumption that CBF wanted to test with independent, scientific analyses of the plant’s potential effects on the specific context of the Chesapeake environment.23 Malcolm’s rejoinder to Penn’s claim that it was too late to study the plant came on 25 February 1969, when he argued that “the public has a right to know, in advance, how the resources of the Bay are to be utilized, and whether or not they will be asked to make sacrifices in the interest of special uses.” Malcolm’s public denunciations of BGE and Penn’s ineffective defence managed to convince the editorial board of the Annapolis Evening Capital that CBF’s position had merit. On 28 February, it published a cutting editorial under the headline “The Public Be Damned” that attacked BGE in general and Penn specifically. The editorial likened Penn’s callous indifference to the public to that of the gilded age robber baron William H. Vanderbilt and called him “a century out of date.” The editorial observed that there was a growing concern among Marylanders that the nuclear plant might threaten the bay, and “the livelihood of too many Marylanders depends on the Chesapeake Bay and the life within it to cavalierly dismiss requests for further study.” It went on to rub salt in BGE’s wounds by praising CBF’s plan to have the Natural Resources Institute study the nuclear plant as “the most constructive suggestion to emerge from all the controversy” about the Calvert Cliffs project.24 CBF’s efforts to raise awareness about potential problems with the nuclear plant brought it into contact with many potential allies – from national groups like the Sierra Club to local organizations like the Maryland Conservation Council – who joined CBF’s criticism of BGE. By April, the campaign became all-consuming for Malcolm, who reported that “a majority of the month was devoted to meetings … in preparation for an independent study of the proposed Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant.” Opposition to nuclear power became “the principle rallying point” for conservationists across the region. Awareness of the issue spread beyond the area as well; for instance, a person involved in the Citizens Committee to Save Cayuga Lake wrote to Malcolm shortly after CBF’s media campaign began to offer advice and encouragement.

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This person drew a connection between Cayuga Lake and the Chesapeake, noting that “the reactions of board chairman Austin E. Penn pretty well match the executive reactions of the NYSE&G Company.” By mid-1969, CBF had succeeded in making developments in the Calvert Cliffs campaign headline news.25 While the upsurge of popular concern about nuclear power benefitted CBF on the whole, it was initially uncoordinated and at times counterproductive. An example of how another environmental group protesting the nuclear plant could confuse the issue and blunt the force of CBF’s argument was the Chesapeake Environmental Protection Association (CEPA). This organization comprised a group of citizens from Anne Arundel County, who were led by an Annapolis insurance salesman, E. Churchill Murray. They had formed CEPA in February 1969, with some help from CBF, because they were upset about BGE’s plans to build power lines through their property. Although CEPA’s interests eventually broadened to include problems of thermal pollution and radiation from the nuclear plant, according to its charter, CEPA’s top priority was “to seek less objectionable placing of power lines.” CEPA and CBF became allies, but CEPA initially clouded the debate about the ecological threats from the nuclear plant. Indeed, Malcolm feared that opposition to BGE could grow out of control, “become frustrated,” and spiral into a “noisy, destructive protest” unless “communication channels … [are] kept open to those who want to become actively involved.”26 A special report appearing in the Annapolis Evening Capital on 10 April 1969 confirmed Malcolm’s fears that the myriad groups opposing BGE might drown out CBF’s argument in a confusing cacophony of voices. The report described the issue as “two-fold,” with people fearing that “high voltage wires leading from the plant would mar the countryside” and that “hot, possibly radioactive discharge would damage the bay.” The article de-emphasized concerns about thermal pollution and gave concerns about radiation and high voltage wires priority, while saying nothing about citizens’ rights to information about the plant. Most problematically, the article misrepresented the chronology of the opposition to BGE’s plant. It explained, in a chastising way, that “the Maryland battle was not really joined until construction of the plant began. Then, nothing really got underway until it became known that high voltage lines from the plant would cut a swath through some scenic and historic Anne Arundel County countryside.” As shown, CBF had been working on the issue since 1967, but the inaccurate chronology

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made it seem as if aesthetic concerns were the primary motivating factor for conservationists. This flawed account offers insight into Malcolm’s motives to organize opposition to BGE under the banner of the Calvert Cliffs Coordinating Committee.27 Despite increased scrutiny of the plant, the growing opposition movement suffered a major setback on 30 June 1969, when the AEC granted BGE a provisional permit to begin constructing the plant’s nuclear reactors. It is worth repeating that BGE had already begun construction on the plant a year before, making the AEC’s permit seem like little more than an elaborate rubber stamp. The AEC made its decision based on its findings that “there is reasonable assurance that the proposed facilities can be constructed and operated at the proposed site without undue risk to the health and safety of the public.” The AEC did not consider any potential environmental damage the plant could cause because it was not part of its mission to oversee environmental protection. As Walker explained, “The AEC did not address the questions about thermal pollution because at that point it still considered them to be outside its statutory jurisdiction.” Consequently, in the AEC’s eyes, the “major contested issue involve[d] the discharge of radioactive materials from the plant, particularly the liquid waste discharge containing tritium,” not billions of gallons of hot water. The AEC was referring to the water contained within the nuclear reactor, which periodically had to be replaced; however, this “major contested issue” was but a subset of the larger arguments against the plant. The AEC was only legally obliged to consider health and safety. Thus, even if Malcolm and CBF could have definitively proven to the AEC that thermal pollution from the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant would cause irreparable harm to the bay’s ecology, BGE would still have gotten their permit – so long as the plant did not directly threaten “the health and safety of the public.”28 The Formation of the Calvert Cliffs Coordinating Committee The Atomic Energy Commission’s decision was a setback for CBF, but the AEC hearings had a silver lining: they became a catalyst for coordinating increased opposition to the plant. Malcolm reported to CBF’s board that the hearings had become a “focal point” of activity. Two days before the hearings were set to begin, CBF hosted a workshop to prepare for the hearing, which roughly thirty people attended. Following that workshop, Malcolm continued to meet with scientists and environmentalists to share information and to informally coordinate

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their plans in advance of the hearing. Afterwards, Malcolm worked with Sherwood to continue and expand CBF’s 1969 media campaign throughout the summer to include television and radio appearances, a brief documentary on the bay, and numerous public speaking engagements; as well they arranged private meetings with other environmental groups and government officials. Many of these activities resulted from the connections Malcolm made in preparation for the AEC hearings. In a sense, the AEC hearings can be thought of as the cradle of the Calvert Cliffs Coordinating Committee (Quad-C).29 CBF took a leadership role in Quad-C in large part because of Jess Malcolm’s efforts. While Malcolm scurried around the region meeting with opponents of the plant, he also wrote a booklet, A Treatise on the Proposed Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant. In addition to synthesizing complex technical and regulatory information into a highly readable format, Malcolm also used the Treatise to argue that “the proposed independent study of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant is essential to protect the public interest.” The Treatise helped to re-centre the debate on the obligations of the government to the people. As Malcolm put it, “In our view, the private citizen should demand to know how this proposed plant will affect him economically, and what sacrifices, if any, he will be asked to make.” Malcolm’s tireless networking and the Treatise combined to cement CBF’s position as the leader of the opposition movement and as an authority on the Chesapeake. Malcolm’s emphasis that “the public … has the right to be assured that the private use of Chesapeake Bay … will not affect it in a manner that would deprive the individual’s right of utilizing and enjoying it” appealed to people across the nation. CBF received requests for information, advice, and copies of Malcolm’s Treatise from citizens concerned about proposed nuclear power plants in other parts of the United States, such as New York and Connecticut, and as far away as California. One man even offered to pay CBF to print and ship 2,000 copies of the Treatise to his hometown in Massachusetts so he could give one to every household.30 As he corresponded with concerned citizens from across the country, Malcolm realized that the campaign over the Calvert Cliffs plant had the potential to transcend a merely local struggle and became a national issue. On 11 August, he wrote to an engineer involved in the anti-nuclear movement in Madison, Wisconsin, that “it has occurred to me that this particular plant might offer the best opportunity to stimulate a national review of the Nation’s nuclear power plant policy.” Malcolm’s next step towards building a coalition to “stimulate” such

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a review occurred on 25 September 1969, when he invited about sixty people, including “research scientists, political leaders, heads of major conservation organizations and other influential group leaders and concerned citizens” to “formulate a unified approach to the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant controversy.” CBF funded the initial meeting and planning with the goal of building a large framework so that as many of the interested parties as possible could participate in the campaign, without duplicating efforts or sending mixed messages. The strategy paid off as Malcolm met with E. Churchill Murray of CEPA, Ruth Mathes of the Baltimore chapter of the Sierra Club, and a few others on 19 November “to enable an ad hoc committee to work out the organizational procedures for the new group.” Those efforts culminated in another full Quad-C meeting on 10 December 1969 with the official election of an executive committee and creation of eight standing committees to set the agenda for the collective effort.31 The concept of unifying under one umbrella group proved to be tremendously effective. Quad-C not only united local groups like CEPA, the Potomac River Association, and the Conservation Council of Maryland with CBF. It also brought major national environmental organizations and their local chapters into the fold, such as the Izaak Walton League, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Sierra Club. Although composed of over a dozen groups, as well as prominent individuals like biologist Dr Eugene Cronin, whose stature as the director of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, one of the top bay-related research institutions, lent additional credibility to the cause, CBF was the prominent force in the organization that linked the local and national groups together. Not only did Jess Malcolm organize the group and lead QuadC as its chairman, but the group’s mission statement reflected CBF’s influence on the coalition: It shall be the position of Quad-C to seek a cessation of all construction activity now underway at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant site, until such time as a thorough objective evaluation of the project has been completed by a team of competent researchers and all of the facts relevant to the nuclear plant operation, specifically the threats posed to the biological community, are made public.32

Like CBF, Quad-C did not oppose BGE’s nuclear plant in principle, but demanded an independent study of the project on behalf of the public. Fortunately for Quad-C, its goals dovetailed perfectly with

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the newly promulgated National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). As Ray Clark noted, “In 1970, the agencies, the public, and the federal courts had nothing but the very eloquent but general language of NEPA itself and its ambiguous legislative history upon which to act.”33 Congress passed NEPA in response to the emerging US environmental movement, which was gaining strength in the late 1960s. Ecological disasters in 1969, such as the Santa Barbara oil spill, which occurred in January, and the Cuyahoga River fire later that summer in June, drew national media attention and kept pressure on Congress to take action. Support was so widespread for a national environmental policy that NEPA passed the Senate unanimously. Despite the popular and political support for NEPA, the strength of the recently promulgated act had yet to be tested in practice, and it was unclear how federal agencies and the courts would implement and interpret Congress’s mandate. The Calvert Cliffs Case and Its Consequences Heading into 1970, there were three venues where Quad-C could halt BGE’s construction activities in time to obtain a meaningful review: the Maryland Department of Water Resources (DWR); the Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC); and NEPA. BGE needed a permit from the DWR to use the Chesapeake Bay’s water as a coolant, and it needed to obtain a certificate of public convenience and necessity from the PSC. Finally, Quad-C could test the provisions of the newly enacted National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 to force BGE and the Atomic Energy Commission to conduct an environmental assessment of the Calvert Cliffs plant. Of these three, NEPA was certainly the wildcard. By the end of 1970, Quad-C had varying degrees of success with the first two options, but it was through NEPA that Quad-C fundamentally reshaped the US nuclear regulatory landscape and realized NEPA’s potential for environmentalists nationwide. Maryland’s DWR offered Quad-C the most direct way to challenge BGE on environmental grounds. If Quad-C could show that the plant could degrade the bay’s waters, the DWR would deny BGE a permit and require it to modify the plant’s design. Unfortunately for Quad-C, the deck seemed to be stacked against it. Paul McKee, the DWR’s director, made a public statement on 8 December 1969 that “he saw no reason why the state would not approve the permit.” McKee’s statement is revealing of the institutional opposition Quad-C had to overcome, but in this case it may have helped the group. Maryland’s governor,

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Marvin Mandel, swiftly and strongly reprimanded McKee the next day for making that statement before a public hearing could be held, and removed McKee from the committee that would decide whether or not to issue BGE a permit. Mandel’s reaction to McKee’s comments indicated Quad-C’s newfound clout in the political arena. At the least, Mandel’s response showed the ability of CBF and Quad-C to pressure his administration to ensure the citizenry’s right to a fair review of the plant, if not to generate a favourable decision.34 As McKee’s ill-advised comment hinted, on 28 May 1970 the DWR did eventually grant BGE a permit. Although Quad-C increased scrutiny of the plant, they were not able to convince DWR officials that thermal pollution was a serious problem. Instead, the lingering issue of radioactive discharges – charges to which BGE had a sound defence – dominated the discussion. Under intense public scrutiny to do something to protect the bay, the DWR mandated that BGE limit radiation emanating from the plant to 1 per cent of the AEC’s acceptable standards. This was a partial success for Quad-C, especially because the DWR required BGE to increase monitoring of the plant’s discharges, but the group failed to convince the DWR that thermal pollution merited a delay in the permit process for a full review of the nuclear plant.35 Quad-C also failed to stop BGE’s construction through the Maryland PSC. The PSC initially refused to even have a hearing about the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant, ruling on 31 July 1969 that the commission had no jurisdiction over the construction of the plant. Quad-C spent most of the spring and summer of 1970 fighting in court just to force the PSC to have a hearing about the Calvert Cliffs plant. On 23 October 1970, the Maryland Court of Appeals finally ordered PSC to schedule a hearing, which occurred on 19 January 1971. This hearing was more or less perfunctory, as PSC granted BGE a permit without requiring any studies or changes in the plant’s design.36 Increasingly frustrated by a system of decision making that suggested “de facto approval of the facility at every step of the way,” Quad-C’s last resort was to petition the AEC to conduct an environmental assessment of the Calvert Cliffs plant under the recently passed National Environmental Policy Act.37 Since its creation in 1947, the AEC was only charged with ensuring that civilian nuclear reactors posed no threat to public health, safety, and domestic security. The AEC made little effort to assess the environmental effects of a nuclear plant, nor was it legally required to do so – until 1971. When President Nixon signed NEPA, it required that the federal government evaluate every action “which

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significantly affect[s] the quality of the human environment.” Malcolm saw NEPA as the opportunity to initiate a national review of nuclear power plant policy, specifically by setting a precedent that NEPA required the AEC to conduct environmental impact statements. In a 24 March 1970 letter to a fellow environmentalist who was engaged in the Cayuga Lake nuclear power plant controversy, Malcolm revealed that it was Quad-C’s intention “to continue pressing the issues that have arisen at Calvert Cliffs for as long and to the extent necessary to make this a test case.” The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) agreed, stating that the case “is a classic example of a national issue. With no legal restraints on siting, the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company unilaterally chose a site, received an AEC construction permit based solely on health, safety and national security criteria and plunged into construction.” The NWF went on to say that BGE and other utilities planning to build or building nuclear power plants could disregard environmental concerns because of “the Atomic Energy Commission’s consistent claim of immunity from considering the environmental impact of activities under its jurisdiction.”38 Quad-C’s initial petition to the Atomic Energy Commission on 29 June 1970 had four specific requests. It wanted the AEC to order BGE to submit an environmental assessment; it also wanted the AEC to begin its own environmental studies, and in the meantime issue an order to BGE to show just cause why construction should not be suspended until the aforementioned assessments were completed. Finally, and most critically, Quad-C demanded that the AEC “promulgate rules and regulations for applying NEPA to all nuclear power plants for which construction permits … have been issued and which have not yet received operating licenses.” With their fourth request, Quad-C dramatically changed the terms of the conflict. No longer was Quad-C fighting an isolated local battle to review a nuclear plant; it was waging war on the entire structure of the nuclear regulatory industry.39 Both sides realized that the Calvert Cliffs campaign was in its final stages and that its outcome would set the standard for future action regarding nuclear power. Malcolm called the petition a “turning point” in the battle over nuclear regulation, one whose “importance cannot be underestimated.” If the AEC did not conduct an environmental review or force BGE to submit an environmental assessment, then prospects for forcing other utilities to do the same would be bleak. Conversely, if the AEC acceded to Quad-C’s demands, it would have to acknowledge NEPA’s expansion of the AEC’s mission to include environmental

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protection and review all nuclear plants. Facing such a critical juncture, the AEC did what bureaucracies do best: it delayed, then it stalled, and then in a dramatic move, it postponed making a decision. Irritated by the AEC’s recalcitrance, Quad-C issued an ultimatum on 12 November 1970 giving the AEC ten days to make a decision or face Quad-C in court. Maintaining that it was still “considering new regulations” under NEPA, the AEC refused to act. Finally on 25 November 1970, QuadC, along with the Sierra Club and National Wildlife Federation as co-­ petitioners, filed a Petition for Review with the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. They charged that “the continued failure of the Atomic Energy Commission to take action on the original requests of petitioners was tantamount to a denial of those requests.” Furthermore, the AEC’s intransigence meant that “the public was being locked into the Calvert Cliffs plant as presently planned without any hope of feasible and environmentally more desirable alternatives being accepted.” This petition, of course, became Calvert Cliffs Coordinating Committee, Inc. v AEC. The final showdown between the two combatants occurred on 16 April 1971, when they argued their case before DC Circuit Judge J. Skelly Wright.40 Quad-C’s position was straightforward. BGE and AEC were in violation of the law, and according to NEPA, they had to complete an environmental impact statement before proceeding with construction of the nuclear plant. The AEC argued that although NEPA required environmental impact statements, if the commission had to weigh environmental concerns along with safety and security concerns, it would result in expensive and lengthy delays in licensing atomic energy plants. Moreover, it was the AEC’s official position that nuclear power was environmentally benign, unlike coal and natural gas plants that released many types of harmful pollutants into the environment. To the AEC, “meeting the demand for electricity was a more important and immediate problem than carrying out” the environmental impact statements mandated by federal law. Judge Wright vehemently disagreed with the AEC’s position. In “a blistering denunciation of the AEC’s interpretation of NEPA,” Wright wrote that “the Commission’s crabbed interpretation of NEPA makes a mockery of the Act.” Furthermore, Wright ruled that the AEC must “take the initiative of considering environmental values at every distinctive and comprehensive stage of the process.” Wright’s decision was an impressive victory for environmentalists that forced the AEC to delay issuing new licenses and permits for seventeen months while it made fundamental changes to

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its atomic licensing process by balancing the environmental effects of a power plant along with its safety, security, and economic feasibility.41 The Calvert Cliffs decision not only fundamentally reshaped the AEC’s mission, but it reinforced NEPA’s applicability to all federal agencies. Observers have called Wright’s decision “one of the most inclusive, holistic court readings of NEPA” that “was a wake-up call to federal agencies that were not routinely implementing NEPA.” In explaining his decision, Judge Wright set an important precedent by arguing that based on NEPA’s legislative history, Congress intended to make “environmental protection part of the mandate of every federal agency.” Therefore, Wright’s precedent that “environmental protection is as much a part of their responsibility as is protection and promotion of the industries they regulate” reverberated throughout all corners of the federal government. The effects of Wright’s decision in the Calvert Cliffs case were immediate and far-reaching. CBF and its Quad-C allies obtained their environmental impact statement after four years of petitions and protests; while this delayed the plant’s construction so that it came online in 1975 instead of 1973 as originally planned, the most dramatic effects of the case were on the Atomic Energy Commission. Following the decision, the AEC added experts trained in environmental fields to its regulatory staff and licensing boards. The AEC’s new obligations also resulted in a de facto seventeen-month moratorium where no plant received an operating license or construction permit while the commission completed its environmental assessments. Thus, in one fell swoop, the Calvert Cliffs case brought the entire nuclear industry to a screeching halt for nearly a year and a half and helped to ensure environmental protection in the Chesapeake and across the country.42 Epilogue In the half-century since BGE announced its plans to build the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant, the position of nuclear power in the United States’ energy landscape has grown increasingly precarious. The Calvert Cliffs power plant is again illustrative. In 2007, Constellation Energy and Électricité de France (EDF) announced a joint venture to build a third nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs. Constellation backed out of the project in 2010 after failing to secure funding, leaving EDF as the sole owner of Calvert Cliffs and ineligible to build a reactor under US law, which prohibits foreign companies from building nuclear power plants. By 2013 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had twice denied

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EDF a construction permit because of the ownership requirement, and plans for a third reactor had yet to come to fruition. EDF has since found a partner, Exelon Generation, creating a marriage between the largest operators of nuclear power plants in the United States and the world. They will operate the Calvert Cliffs plant through a subsidiary, Constellation Energy Nuclear Group (CENG), and meet the legal requirements by virtue of Exelon’s 50.01 per cent ownership of CENG. Despite the combined might of Exelon and EDF, a third reactor at Calvert Cliffs is far from assured. Two unplanned reactor shutdowns in two weeks during May 2013 reignited safety concerns, while one study recently questioned the viability of the entire Calvert Cliffs plant, calling it at risk for early retirement and describing it as on “the economic razor’s edge” due to competition from shale gas.43 As the second decade of the twenty-first century unfolds, the fate of a third reactor at Calvert Cliffs, like the US nuclear industry, remains undetermined. One thing is certain, however: any future nuclear reactor will only be built after a thorough analysis of its potential environmental impacts and alternatives. In 1967, BGE’s announcement that it planned to build a nuclear power plant on the Chesapeake Bay went largely unnoticed. In 1968, the utility began construction without permission from the AEC or the state of Maryland because it knew that the favourable federal regulatory stance towards the industry meant that there was little chance of stopping the construction of a nuclear plant. But by 1971, every development in the battle to stop that nuclear plant was headline news, and the Calvert Cliffs case forced AEC to halt all construction for almost a year and a half. That swift and dramatic reversal resulted from a combination of local and national actors led by Jess Malcolm and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. It was Malcolm’s belief, enshrined by NEPA and the Calvert Cliffs case into federal law, that “the citizens of the region have the right to know how this highly complex and controversial new technology might affect their lives and their Chesapeake Bay.” For people across the United States, uncertainty about the future of nuclear power remains, but their right to know how power plants could affect their lives and the environments they live, work, and play in is without doubt.44 Through a confluence of local and national events, an upstart environmental organization challenged the entire institutional apparatus of the nuclear industry, and succeeded. Judge Wright’s decision in Calvert Cliffs completely inverted the federal government’s policy towards the environmental in nuclear regulation. Thus, the Calvert Cliffs case has

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deservingly received its share of scholarly attention. The larger Calvert Cliffs campaign, however, shows a deeper and more complex history of how the Chesapeake Bay Foundation helped defend the public’s right to know about the environmental effects of nuclear power. The history also shows that knowledge alone is not enough. As people across the United States and around the world move forward towards an uncertain energy future, we would do well to remember one final insight from the Calvert Cliffs campaign: “Your right to know, however, also carries with it the responsibility to act.” We must not abdicate our responsibility to decide what role nuclear power will play in our future.45 NOTES 1 Duffy, Nuclear Politics, 88; Walker, Containing the Atom, 382; Jasper, Nuclear Politics, 205; Cook, Nuclear Power and Legal Advocacy, 73. For the complete institutional history of the AEC, see Mazuzan and Walker, Controlling the Atom; Walker, Permissible Dose; Walker, Three Mile Island. For more on nuclear policy history, see Balogh, Chain Reaction; Joppke, Mobilizing Against Nuclear Energy. 2 Lindstrom and Smith, The National Environmental Policy Act. 3 Dawson, Nuclear Power, 199; Lindstrom and Smith, The National Environmental Policy Act, 116. For more on NEPA, see Andrews, Managing the Environment; Clark and Canter, Environmental Policy and NEPA. 4 The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is now the region’s largest environmental group. With over 200,000 members, more than 150 staff, and an annual budget that tops 20 million dollars, it is a potent force in the region’s environmental politics. For more, see http://www.cbf.org/about-cbf/ history. 5 For other case studies of nuclear power and the environment, see Wellock, Critical Masses; Stacy, “Roads to Ruin”; Wills, Conservation Fallout; Nelkin, Nuclear Power. One of the greatest challenges for histories of environmentalism and environmental policy is to connect grassroots movements and local events to important national developments. As James Longhurst pointed out in Citizen Environmentalists, “[H]istorians have failed to probe below the national-level events, large organizations, and federal policies in explaining the causes and consequences of this movement” (xii). For more on the history of environmentalism and environmental policy, see Petulla, American Environmentalism; Fox, The American Conservation Movement; Hays, Beauty, Health and Permanence;

142  Andrew Ramey Cohen, History of the Sierra Club; Shabecoff, A Fierce Green Fire; Rothman, Saving the Planet; Weyler, Greenpeace; Blum, Love Canal Revisited; Hurley, Environmental Inequalities; Schrepfer, Fight to Save the Redwoods; Summers, Consuming Nature. 6 Rüdig, Anti-Nuclear Movements, 309. 7 Joppke, Mobilizing Against Nuclear Energy, 39 8 Bess, The Light-Green Society, 101. See also Hecht, The Radiance of France. 9 “Chronology of Decision Making Involved in the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant Project,” undated, Chesapeake Bay Foundation archives, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries (hereafter CBF archives), Series 2, Box 1, Folder 6; Rolfe Pottberg to CBF Board, 2 August 1967, CBF archives, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 8; M. Lee Marston, interview with author, Annapolis, Maryland, 2012. 10 Jess W. Malcolm, “Employment Resume,” 1967, CBF archives, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 5. 11 G. Howard Gillelan, “Ombudsman for the Bay,” Baltimore Magazine, 1968, CBF archives, Series 3, Box 1, Folder 2; Jess Malcolm, Statement before the Maryland House of Delegates, Committee on Environmental Matters, 13 March 1969, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 2, Folder 4. 12 Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Power Plant Research Program, Maryland Power Plants and the Environment, DNR Publication No. 12-1242012-546 (Annapolis, MD: Maryland Department of Natural Resources, January 2012), 92–4. For more on thermal pollution, see Walker, “Nuclear Power and the Environment.” 13 L. Eugene Cronin and Joseph A. Mihursky, “Comments on Proposal by Baltimore Gas and Electric Company for Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant,” University of Maryland Natural Resources Institute, 25 February 1970, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 2, Folder 2; Carleton Ray, Statement before the Dep’t. of Water Resources, State of Maryland, 10 March 1970, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 2, Folder 2; Malcolm, Statement before the Maryland House of Delegates, 13 March 1969. 14 Cronin was a highly respected figure in the Chesapeake region and a frequent advisor to the state government of Maryland on matters of environmental policy. He conducted pioneering research on the blue crab and at the time was one of, if not the preeminent biologist studying the Chesapeake. 15 Cronin and Mihursky, “Comments on Proposal by Baltimore Gas and Electric Company for Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant,” 5; Earl Shelsby, “Outdoor Living,” The Baltimore Sun, 25 February 1969, CBF archives, Series 3, Box 1, Folder 3.

The Calvert Cliffs Campaign, 1967–1971  143 16 “Agreement between the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Incorporated,” 11 December 1967, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 1, Folder 13; Jess W. Malcolm, “Status of the Bay Report,” 26 February 1969, CBF archives, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 2, 10; Sherwood to Tydings, letter, 10 May 1968, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 1, Folder 7. 17 Malcolm to Trustees, letter, 29 August 1968, CBF archives, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 3. 18 Balogh, Chain Reaction, 306; “Chronology of Decision Making Involved in the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant Project,” undated, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 1, Folder 6. 19 Jess Malcolm to Paul Bailey, letter, 11 December 1968, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 1, Folder 7. 20 “The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Inc.,” June 1968, CBF archives, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 3. 21 Associated Press, “Nuclear Plant May Hurt Bay; Study Sought,” The Washington Evening Star, 17 February 1969; William Jabine, “Conservation Leader Calls for Nuclear Plant Research,” Annapolis Evening Capital, 21 February 1969, CBF archives, Series 3, Box 1, Folder 3. 22 William Jabine and Tom Wason, “Utility Official Rules Out Study of Power Plant,” Annapolis Evening Capital, 22 February 1969, CBF archives, Series 3, Box 1, Folder 3. 23 Walker, “Nuclear Power and the Environment,” 966–7; Glenn T. Seaborg, quoted in Walker, “Nuclear Power and the Environment,” 968. 24 Earl Shelsby, “Outdoor Living”; Editorial, “‘The Public Be Damned’ – circa 1969,” Annapolis Evening Capital, 28 February 1969, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 1, Folder 8. 25 Jess Malcolm to Trustees, letter, 26 May 1969, CBF archives, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 4; Jess Malcolm, 1969 Annual Report, 9, 31 December 1969, CBF internal records, Philip Merrill Environmental Center, Annapolis, MD; J.R. Van Arsdale to Jess Malcolm, letter, 22 February 1969, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 1, Folder 8. 26 Chesapeake Environmental Protection Association, untitled, 10 February 1969, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 2, Folder 1, 1; Malcolm, 1969 Annual Report, 2. 27 William Jabine, “The Battle to Save a Bit of Green and a Bit of Blue,” Annapolis Evening Capital, 10 April 1969, CBF archives, Series 3, Box 1, Folder 4. 28 United States of America, Atomic Energy Commission, Docket Nos. 50317, 50-318, 8 July 1969, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 2, Folder 8, 2, 9; Walker, Containing the Atom, 377.

144  Andrew Ramey 29 Malcolm to Trustees, letter, 18 June 1969, CBF archives, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 4. See file “Monthly Reports” in CBF archives, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 4 for all of CBF’s activities pertaining to Calvert Cliffs during this time. 30 Jess Malcolm, A Treatise on the Proposed Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, Annapolis: Chesapeake Bay Foundation, 27 June 1969, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 1, Folder 12, 4–5; Van Arsdale to Malcolm, letter, 22 February 1969; Shurcliff to Malcolm, letter, 11 July 1969, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 1, Folder 9; May Wilt to Malcolm, letter, 14 January 1970, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 1, Folder 11. The number of requests for information and speaking engagements is too numerous to list here; however, the records of CBF’s requests for information during the summer of 1969 can be found in CBF archives, Series 2, Box 1, Folder 9. 31 Malcolm to Adolph Ackerman, letter, 11 August 1969, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 1, Folder 9; Malcolm to Trustees, letter, 30 October 1969, CBF archives, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 4; Malcolm to Trustees, letter, 21 November 1969, CBF archives, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 4; Malcolm to Trustees, letter, 13 January 1970, CBF archives, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 4. 32 Tom Wason, “Dozen Groups Organize to Fight Bay A-Plant,” Annapolis Evening Capital, 14 December 1969, CBF archives, Series 3, Box 1, Folder 6; Malcolm to Trustees, 13 January 1970. 33 Clark, “NEPA: The Rational Approach to Change,” 18, in Clark and Canter, Environmental Policy and NEPA. 34 “Chronology of Decision Making Involved in the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant Project,” undated; “Summary of December Activities,” undated, CBF archives, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 4, 5. 35 Statement of J. Millard Tawes before the Senate Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations, Annapolis, MD, 4 February 1970, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 3, Folder 1, 5. BGE would ship nuclear waste to South Carolina for reprocessing. Jess Malcolm, “Quad C Newsletter,” 25 August 1970, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 2, Folder 2. 36 Public Service Commission of Maryland, “In the matter of the application of Baltimore Gas and Electric Company for a certificate of public convenience and necessity for the construction of a nuclear plant near Lusby, Calvert County, Maryland,” Case No. 6394, 19 January 1971, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 2, Folder 5. 37 For reasons that are unclear, the Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation, which were members of Quad-C, were co-petitioners in the lawsuit against the Atomic Energy Commission unlike the other Quad-C

The Calvert Cliffs Campaign, 1967–1971  145 members. It may have had something to do with how the litigation was being funded, or naming the two member organizations might have given the petition more weight. 38 Statement of Jess Malcolm before the Senate Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations, Annapolis, MD, 3 March 1970, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 3, Folder 1, 3; Anthony Z. Roisman, Petition and Supporting Memorandum, Calvert Cliffs Coordinating Committee, Inc., 29 June 1970, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 2, Folder 7, 3; Malcolm to Eipper, letter, 24 March 1970, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 1, Folder 11; National Wildlife Federation, untitled report, 29 June 1970, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 2, Folder 7, 3–4; For Cayuga Lake, see Balogh, Chain Reaction, 262–4; Nelkin, Nuclear Power. 39 Roisman, Petition and Supporting Memorandum, 1. 40 Malcolm, “Quad C Newsletter”; Associated Press, “Law Suit Possible Over Nuclear Plant,” Annapolis Evening Capital, 23 November 1970, CBF archives, Series 3, Box 1, Folder 8; Anthony Z. Roisman, Petition for Review, Calvert Cliffs Coordinating Committee, Inc., 25 November 1970, CBF archives, Series 2, Box 2, Folder 7, 3; Calvert Cliffs Coordinating Committee v. AEC, 449 F2d 1109 (D.C. Cir. 1971), accessed online at http://openjurist. org/449/f2d/1109/calvert-cliffs-coordinating-committee-inc-v-unitedstates-atomic-energy-commission. 41 Walker, Containing the Atom, 371; Dawson, Nuclear Power, 199; Skelly Wright, quoted in Duffy, Nuclear Politics, 91. 42 Lindstrom and Smith, The National Environmental Policy Act, 117; Skelly Wright, quoted in Duffy, Nuclear Politics, 89–90. 43 Hopkins, “Nuclear Regulators Uphold Ruling”; Exelon Generation, “Constellation Energy Nuclear Group”; Wheeler, “Calvert Cliffs”; Mark Cooper, quoted in Goins, “Calvert Cliffs.” 44 Malcolm, Treatise on the Proposed Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, 15. 45 Ibid.

REFERENCES Archival and Primary Sources Chesapeake Bay Foundation Archives, Series 1–3. Hornbake Library. University of Maryland, College Park, MD. Marston, M. Lee., Interview with author, 27 September 2012, Annapolis, MD.

146  Andrew Ramey Other Sources Andrews, Richard N.L. Managing the Environment, Managing Ourselves: A History of American Environmental Policy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Balogh, Brian. Chain Reaction: Expert Debate and Public Participation in American Commercial Nuclear Power, 1945–1975. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Bess, Michael. The Light-Green Society: Ecology and Technological Modernity in France, 1960–2000. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Blum, Elizabeth D. Love Canal Revisited: Race, Class, and Gender in Environmental Activism. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008. Calvert Cliffs Coordinating Committee v AEC, 449 F2d 1109 (D.C. Cir. 1971). Clark, Ray, and Larry Canter. Environmental Policy and NEPA: Past, Present, and Future. Boca Raton, FL: St Lucie Press, 1997. Cohen, Michael P. The History of the Sierra Club, 1892–1976. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988. Cook, Constance Ewing. Nuclear Power and Legal Advocacy: the Environmentalists and the Courts. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1981. Dawson, Frank G. Nuclear Power: The Development and Management of a Technology. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976. Duffy, Robert J. Nuclear Politics in America: A History and Theory of Government Regulation. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997. Exelon Generation. “Constellation Energy Nuclear Group to Be Integrated into Exelon Nuclear Fleet.” Press Release, 30 July 2013. http:// www.exeloncorp.com/newsroom/Pages/pr_20130730_EXGEN_ CENGConsolidation.aspx. Hecht, Gabrielle. The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998. Hopkins, Jamie Smith. “Nuclear Regulators Uphold Ruling on Calvert Cliffs Reactor Project.” The Baltimore Sun, 11 March 2013. http://www. baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-calvert-cliffs-unistar-decision-20130311story.html. Hurley, Andrew. Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race, and Industrial Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945–1980. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Fox, Stephen R. The American Conservation Movement: John Muir and His Legacy. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1981. Goins, Christopher. “Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Plant at Risk for ‘Early Retirement,’ Report Says.” MarylandReporter.com. 21 July 2013.

The Calvert Cliffs Campaign, 1967–1971  147 http://marylandreporter.com/2013/07/21/calvert-cliffs-nuclear-plant-atrisk-for-early-retirement-report-says/. Hays, Samuel P. Beauty, Health and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955–1985. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Jasper, James M. Nuclear Politics: Energy and the State in the United States, Sweden and France. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990. Joppke, Christian. Mobilizing Against Nuclear Energy: A Comparison of Germany and the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Lindstrom, Matthew, and Zachary Smith. The National Environmental Policy Act: Judicial Misconstruction, Legislative Indifference, and Executive Neglect. College Station, TX: A&M University Press, 2001. Longhurst, James. Citizen Environmentalists. Medford, MA: Tufts University Press, 2010. Malcolm, Jess W. A Treatise on the Proposed Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant. Annapolis, MD: Chesapeake Bay Foundation, 1969. Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Power Plant Research Program. Maryland Power Plants and the Environment. Annapolis, MD: Maryland Department of Natural Resources, 2012. Mazuzan, George T., and J. Samuel Walker. Controlling the Atom: The Beginnings of Nuclear Regulation 1946–1962. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Nelkin, Dorothy. Nuclear Power and Its Critics: The Cayuga Lake Controversy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971. Petulla, Joseph M. American Environmentalism: Values, Tactics, Priorities. College Station, TX: A&M University Press, 1980. Rothman, Hal K. Saving the Planet: The American Response to the Environment in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000. Rüdig, Wolfgang. Anti-Nuclear Movements: A World Survey of Opposition to Nuclear Energy. Essex, UK: Longman Current Affairs, 1990. Schrepfer, Susan. Fight to Save the Redwoods: A History of Environmental Reform, 1917–1978. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983. Shabecoff, Philip. A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement. rev. ed. Washington: Island Press, 2003. Stacy, Ian. “Roads to Ruin on the Atomic Frontier: Environmental Decision Making at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, 1942–1952.” Environmental History 15, no. 3 (2010): 415–48. Summers, Gregory. Consuming Nature: Environmentalism in the Fox River Valley, 1850–1950. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006. Walker, J. Samuel. Containing the Atom: Nuclear Regulation in a Changing Environment, 1963–1971. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

148  Andrew Ramey –  “Nuclear Power and the Environment: The Atomic Energy Commission and Thermal Pollution, 1965–1971.” Technology and Culture 30, no. 4 (1989): 964–92. –  Permissible Dose: A History of Radiation Protection in the Twentieth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. –  Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Wellock, Thomas. Critical Masses: Opposition to Nuclear Power in California, 1958–1978. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1998. Weyler, Rex. Greenpeace: How a Group of Journalists, Ecologists, and Visionaries Changed the World. New York: Rodale, 2004. Wheeler, Timothy B. “Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Unit Restarts.” The Baltimore Sun, 23 May 2013. http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-gr-calvert-cliffsrestart-20130523-story.html. Wills, John. Conservation Fallout: Nuclear Protest at Diablo Canyon. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2006.

5 From Pripyat to Paris, from Grassroots Memories to Globalized Knowledge Production: The Politics of Chernobyl Fallout susanne bauer, karena kalmbach, a n d   tat i a n a k a s p e r s k i

Introduction On the night of 26 April 1986, an accident at reactor unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, located about 100 kilometres north of Kiev, led to a massive explosion. The Chernobyl station, built during the 1970s and 1980s, consisted of four RBMK-type reactors with a total production capacity of 4,000 megawatts and two additional reactor units under construction.1 Together with the nearby city of Pripyat, which was founded to house the workers at the plant, this industrial complex was the embodiment of technological progress in the Soviet Union. On 26 April 1986, a nuclear meltdown occurred during a performance test, resulting in a series of explosions that destroyed the reactor building and released vast quantities of radioactive material into the environment. Radioactive dust, aerosols, and gases were projected high into the air. These airborne materials dispersed radioactive elements mostly over the territories of the Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia situated near the Chernobyl plant, but also over Europe and throughout the northern hemisphere. The concentration of radionuclides deposited in any given area depended on local weather patterns and geographical factors. To this day, the effects of this fallout, especially the health effects, are a topic of intense debate. However, the main foci and the importance of the conflicts over Chernobyl-related issues vary significantly depending on the countries, contexts, and actors involved. In order to understand the politics of Chernobyl fallout, we need to approach these debates on different levels. Therefore, this chapter reflects on the following questions: In what ways has Chernobyl

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materialized for different people with different experiences? What role do individual and collective memories play in people’s understanding and coming to terms with the after-effects of the accident? What are the strategies applied to overcome these effects, and how are the different issues interlinked? There are manifold geographical areas we can identify in the Chernobyl debates, which take place in various local, national, and transnational arenas. At the same time, we discern different levels of vicinity, for instance, the daily life of people living in a contaminated area and evaluations undertaken by a regulatory institution. In order to examine how these dimensions interact and play out, this chapter portrays Chernobyl across these different scales. It brings together in various geographic and political settings the memorialization of the Chernobyl accident with its transnational knowledge production on nuclear risk. The fallout and the evacuations had an impact in the first place on the communities living in the vicinity of the plant, that is, the people of Belarus, Ukraine, and the Russian Federation. But it was not only the radioactive particles that transcended borders and caused hot spots thousands of kilometres away. The accident also deeply influenced the global discourse on the risks of nuclear power. For this reason, we approach the topic of Chernobyl not only from different geographical and social levels, but also from diverse political and regulatory angles, as well as along separate disciplinary lines. The chapter portrays Chernobyl’s history as complex and entangled; it offers multilayered access to the effects of the nuclear accident in the politics of memory and knowledge, as it combines perspectives from political history, science studies, and studies of memorialization. The chapter consists of three parts. The first part approaches Chernobyl from a local perspective, analysing how the dominant interpretations of the disaster have changed during the more than two decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the two former republics most affected by the radioactive fallout: Belarus and Ukraine. It explores why the national Chernobyl memories were progressively emptied of content and significance, and how this process was related to the policies promoting the return to “normal” life of the inhabitants in those radioactively contaminated areas. The second part deals with Chernobyl in a wider geographical context and asks how the accident influenced nuclear debates in France and Britain. It sheds light on different reactions, assessments, and risk projections after the accident. Furthermore, it contextualizes these

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reactions in national (nuclear) decision-making systems, expert cultures, and nuclear politics. This perspective shows that the national context rather than fallout intensity shaped the perception of the accident and the debate about its impact. The third part examines international assessments of the local health impact of Chernobyl fallout, especially the ways in which Chernobyl has become a site of research into the biological effects of radiation. This section contextualizes Chernobyl science in a broader history of knowledge and against the backdrop of radiation risk assessment and nuclear regulation during and after the Cold War. Here, we investigate the scientific infrastructures that shape the meanings, memories, and politics of nuclear issues. The concluding part points out the interconnections among these different analyses. Drawing on Gabrielle Hecht’s considerations of “nuclear ontologies,” we argue that the political attempts undertaken on different levels to frame and reframe Chernobyl-related issues in everyday lives as non-nuclear form a pattern that enhances assertions of already “normalized” living conditions in the most affected areas and the attribution of responsibilities to the individual.2 Local Memories and Experiences of the Nuclear Disaster: Chernobyl’s Consequences in Belarus and in Ukraine Belarus, Ukraine, and the European part of Russia received the greatest amount of radioactivity so that today several million people live in highly contaminated regions of these countries. The long-term economic and political consequences of the disaster, as well as the health effects and environmental impact of the radioactive fallout, were particularly harsh for two now former Soviet republics on which we will focus here: Belarus and Ukraine. Approximately 22 per cent and 7 per cent respectively of the countries’ surfaces were contaminated by radioactive cesium-137 above 37 kilobecquerels per square metre.3 Since 1989, when information about the true extent of the accident’s impact was revealed to the public, the disaster has been commemorated as a national trauma. At the same time, state authorities in both countries, although most clearly in Belarus, have been working since the late 1990s to overcome this trauma and hasten the “normalization” of life in contaminated areas. The way public narratives describe the Chernobyl disaster in both countries is closely related to the historical and political events of the

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late 1980s and 1990s. Dominant public interpretations of the disaster formed in the context of the development of strong nationalist movements, the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, and nation- and state-building policies of the 1990s. Thus the nation and its sufferings became the major frame for interpreting the disaster, even though the definitions of what are Belarus, Ukraine, and their pasts have been changing since the 1990s. During the months following the explosion of the nuclear reactor at the fourth unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Soviet authorities tried to conceal information about the true extent of the radioactive fallout and its danger to the people and the environment. This secrecy resulted in insufficient and inadequate measures of protection for the nearby population, the emergency workers sent to do the cleanup of the accident site, and the villages in its vicinity. Local people received only partial and often false information about the radiation levels and measures for self-protection. The inhabitants of the localities situated in the direct vicinity of the plant were evacuated very late: the evacuation of 50,000 people from the town of Pripyat situated 3 kilometres away from the accident site began only thirty-six hours after the explosion. The hundreds of thousands of cleanup, social, and medical workers who came from different parts of the Soviet Union to mitigate the accident’s aftermath had inadequate or no protective equipment, were often exposed to significant radiation doses without any tracking, and were not sufficiently informed about the risks related to their activities.4 By the end of 1988, it became increasingly difficult for Soviet federal and republican authorities to conceal information on both the disaster’s impact and its mismanagement by the Soviet state. This situation related not only to the extreme gravity of the radioactive contamination but also to the progressive liberalization of the Soviet political regime. The latter started with the political reforms launched by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 and led to freer circulation of information, weakening of censorship and the Communist Party’s control over society, more possibilities for public expression of political and social discontent, and the pluralizing of political life. Ultimately, the initial almost three-year-long cover-up of the impact and the extent of the Chernobyl accident’s radioactive fallout ended with the explosion of popular protests in both the Soviet republics as well as in Russia beginning in 1989. Between 1989 and 1991, dozens of rallies erupted in Minsk, Kiev, and Moscow, and in some localities in the most contaminated regions; the first maps of the radioactive contamination were published, and many

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critical articles on the handling of the disaster by the Soviet authorities appeared.5 A number of the representatives of the Chernobyl victims were elected in the first partially free and competitive legislative elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in 1989 and to the Supreme Soviets of Belarus and Ukraine in 1990. These were political representatives who voiced claims for emergency protection measures, extensive relocations, and compensation payments on behalf of those who lived in territories affected by Chernobyl radioactive fallout.6 The Belarusian and Ukrainian nationalist movements, represented respectively by the Belarusian Popular Front (BPF) and the Popular Movement of Ukraine (Rukh), became in 1989 to 1991 leading actors in the Chernobyl protest movement. Together with nationalist movements in other republics, they contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. These movements were strongly connected to developing green and anti-nuclear protests orchestrated by organizations such as Zelenyi Svit in Ukraine and the Belarusian Social-Ecological Union “Chernobyl.” They also sought to involve the inhabitants of the most contaminated regions, those who had been involved in the cleanup operations (nicknamed “liquidators”), and relocated people in their protests. Finally, they collaborated with dissident scientists in the republican academies of sciences who protested against the norms of radiological protection imposed by Moscow official experts. One of the fiercest controversies concerned the “35 rem concept,” a threshold that corresponded to a dose of radiation that an individual living in a particularly radioactively contaminated area would presumably absorb during a lifetime of seventy years. The official experts assumed that people residing in areas of contamination below this threshold, which could only be attained in the most heavily contaminated territories, could continue living without any restrictions or rights to protective measures or relocation. Belarusian and Ukrainian scientists denounced this threshold as unacceptable: while it allowed the state and industry to save a lot of money, it criminally jeopardized the health and life of the Chernobyl victims. The pre-eminence of nationalist movements in the Chernobyl protests led to the nationalization of public memory of the Chernobyl disaster.7 The accident appeared in public discourse first of all as a crime of colonial communist authorities against the Belarusian and Ukrainian nations, or even as a radioactive genocide of its people. The full-blown political, economic, and cultural independence of the nations was considered the only possibility both for a national renaissance and to save people from Chernobyl.8

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This anti-Soviet interpretation lost some of its importance in the public arena after the two republics became independent nations. In Ukraine, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant came to be seen less as the site of colonial domination of the Ukrainian people by Russia, and instead as an important source of electricity production that contributed to the nation’s economic survival and independence. The hard bargaining by the Ukrainian authorities with European countries and organizations over the closure of the Chernobyl plant in the late 1990s to the early 2000s indicates how important its continued operation was for the country. In Belarus, after President Alexander Lukashenko came to power, the Soviet past became an important aspect of official nationbuilding strategies. The Chernobyl disaster was no longer the fault of the communist authorities. Instead, state officials insisted on drawing a parallel between the disaster and World War II, and built on a cult of the victory over the fascist invader that was the pillar of Belarusian identity during the Soviet era. The parallel between Chernobyl and World War II reinforced the interpretation of the disaster as a quasi-external enemy involving abstract ideas of national fate, tragedy, and losses. In Ukraine, too, the national frame remained the prevailing one in public narratives about the disaster throughout the 1990s and into the early twenty-first century, even though the dominant definition of the nation had changed. However, this public memory of Chernobyl in the two countries has been progressively emptied of its substance and increasingly dissociated from individual and group concrete memories and experiences. In the beginning of the 1990s, the national frame of the disaster coexisted with the memories of those who experienced its consequences most directly. These group memories were brought into the public domain through the activity of numerous associations of the Chernobyl victims representing relocated people, liquidators, and parents of the children from the affected territories (Mama-86 in Ukraine, Children of Chernobyl and For the Children of Chernobyl in Belarus, Soyuz-Chernobyl Ukraine, Pereselents in Minsk). However, starting from the late 1990s and the early 2000s, the collective memories of the groups that directly experienced Chernobyl started to lose their importance and even disappeared from the public arena for both economic and political reasons. For many victims, harsh socioeconomic conditions made survival a greater priority; the severe lack of state funds necessary to implement the measures of relocation and victims’ compensation allocated between 1989 and 1991 made it harder for the victims to obtain help from the state. In Ukraine, Chernobyl victims, and

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most importantly the liquidators, continued their struggle most often individually to obtain compensation from a state that had disengaged itself significantly from the social sphere and healthcare with the collapse of the Soviet Union.9 As for the people living in the radioactively contaminated areas of the country, they were mostly forgotten by the authorities. In Belarus, in addition to economic reasons, the collective mobilization of the Chernobyl victims became almost impossible with the gradual return to authoritarian government after the 1994 election of Alexander Lukashenko as president. The latter instituted important restrictions on the activities of the independent non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and violated the freedom of the media and the right to public protest. The focus on the nation’s suffering in public discourse and commemorative events relating to Chernobyl in Ukraine and Belarus shifted attention away from the concrete causes of the accident and its continuing impact on public health. Moreover, Belarusian and Ukrainian authorities began to promote the return of contaminated lands to “normal” life, although less openly and consistently in the Ukrainian case. While in Ukraine a few international projects were realized to help rehabilitate the affected territories, this rehabilitation never became a foundation of state policy as in Belarus.10 Indeed, from 1996, Belarusian authorities started promoting the “new approach” to managing the Chernobyl disaster, which consisted of progressive socioeconomic development of the contaminated territories, their repopulation, and the limitation or abolishment of the already limited compensation payments by the state to certain categories of victims. At the level of state discourse this new approach was also framed in national terms, where “national revival” promoted by the Belarusian nationalist movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s was replaced by the “revival of the Chernobyl lands.”11 These “normalization” efforts in both countries included involvement of such international actors as UN agencies, the World Bank, the European Union, foreign NGOs, development agencies, and experts. They signaled the progressive shifting of focus from extraordinary measures, such as relocation of the population from contaminated areas and payment of compensation to those who continued to live there, to the long-term improvement of living conditions in the radioactive environment.12 The new approach consisted of efforts to teach the population to deal with radioactivity as an integral and “normal” part of everyday life and to reduce its impact on individual health. It aimed to transform

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people living in contaminated territories from passive victims of the disaster into proactive individuals, capable of coping autonomously with radioactive risks on a daily basis and of being responsible for their own health. This “Chernobyl empowerment,” as Sezin Topçu has noted, corresponded with the introduction of neo-­liberal governance of the health risks in affected areas.13 The international ETHOS project and the CORE program, which took place from 1996 to 2001 and from 2003 to 2008 respectively in some heavily contaminated territories of Belarus, played an essential role in the development of those new strategies after the accident. They included programs for radioactive risk management and the improvement of living conditions in the contaminated territories.14 They also had an important impact at the international level, because the promoters of these projects insisted, with some success, that the outcomes of these new experiences could be used as the foundation for the development of strategies for technological disaster preparedness and postaccidental management in other countries, for instance, in Western Europe.15 The ETHOS project and the CORE program aimed to remediate the problem of the high level of stress among local inhabitants dealing with new, unknown, and invisible radioactive hazards daily, and their mistrust of the authorities and experts. The projects’ teams insisted that the new approach should take into account the impossibility of moving people from the contaminated territories or allowing them to live as before the accident. They considered it necessary to define an acceptable level of protection sustainable in the long term that would improve living conditions considerably, and would allow individuals to cope with radioactive risks without having to rely constantly on scientific and political authorities.16 The teams of foreign experts and representatives of international and foreign NGOs worked closely with local Belarusian authorities, teaching and medical staff, and the inhabitants of the radioactively contaminated towns and villages to develop and learn the “practical radiological culture,” which became one of the main pillars of the projects.17 This radiological culture consisted of a series of practices and rules dealing with aspects of daily life that were most threatened by the radioactive contamination, such as food consumption, safety at home, leisure time outside, production from individual gardens and private herds, practices that ostensibly reduced health risks for all family members. Local inhabitants, for example, learned how to measure and to interpret ambient levels of radioactivity in their homes and gardens, and in

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different parts of the village. They could determine the level of radioactivity in various foodstuffs from the village, from their own gardens, and from farm animals. These measures and some basic knowledge about properties of radioactive elements would help them make their own informed decisions about their daily diet to reduce levels of internal exposure to the radiation, especially among children, and about relatively safe places for leisure time, animal husbandry, and gardening. They would learn how to deal with highly radioactive ashes from wood stoves and fireplaces. Mothers and school children were among the most actively involved in the projects. While these projects certainly helped reduce levels of individual exposure to the radiation, they also had an important and quite ambiguous political impact on the post-accident government. Reflecting on the paradoxical meaning of the “practical radiological culture,” philosopher Jean-Pierre Dupuis argues that every culture is intended to become a habit and is based on forgetting its own genesis as a culture. He wonders what exactly would be forgotten were this “practical radiological culture” really possible. He concludes, “Quite simply, the inhumanity of human adaptation to the inhuman conditions.”18 Moreover, in trying to transform people living in a radioactively contaminated environment from passive dependent victims into active and well-informed individuals coping with everyday risks on their own, these projects contributed to lessening the state’s responsibility for the disaster’s health impact and the depoliticization of post-accident problems. The introduction of the participatory model in the context of an authoritarian regime made the collective mobilization of the victims appear improbable and less legitimate. While the authorities claimed they were taking measures to improve the situation, at the same time issues related to the disaster’s health impact ceased to be problems they could or would solve politically. These problems became mainly matters of individual choice with regard to what to eat, where to spend leisure time, and how to grow vegetables or raise pigs. While aiming to empower local communities, arguably the international projects led to the more pronounced disempowerment of Chernobyl victims. The focus on psychological problems and the Chernobyl victims’ psychological rehabilitation was another prominent feature of postaccident management locally in Belarus and Ukraine that contributed to the individualization and depoliticization of radioactive contamination–related problems. During the first months after the accident, Soviet authorities, official experts, and state-controlled media used

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psychological arguments to disqualify people’s claims about the seriousness of the accident and to justify the lack of the protective measures. Soviet officials referred to these claims as manifestations of “radiophobia” or “radiation phobia,” an irrational fear of radioactivity.19 This psychological disorder, they assumed, was the main negative health impact of the Chernobyl accident on the population. After revelations in 1988–1989 about the extent and seriousness of the radioactive fallout, participants in Chernobyl protest movements, scientists, doctors, and activists from affected Soviet republics as well as from Western countries denounced the use of the term “radiophobia” as an integral part of the Soviet authorities’ attempt to understate the disaster’s consequences. However, even if the term “radiophobia” is no longer used in the Belarusian, Ukrainian, and international reports on the consequences of Chernobyl, these documents still present the psychological problems as one of the main health issues when assessing the impact of the disaster on the local population. The reports explain that people in the contaminated territories or those relocated suffer from stress, anxiety, “paralyzing fatalism,” a feeling of insecurity and lack of control over their lives, and a lack of trust in the scientific, medical, and political authorities, which result in the disruption of social ties. These problems, the experts suggest, are attributable to the presence of new radioactivity-related risks that are invisible and incomprehensible for lay persons, the lack of adequate information on the radiological consequences of the Chernobyl accident, abundant misinterpretations, and also the rapid and often radiologically unjustified relocation of people.20 To cope with these mental health issues, a number of state bodies in Belarus and Ukraine in cooperation with international organizations and NGOs adopted measures and implemented projects of psychological rehabilitation. The creation of nine community centres for psychological rehabilitation in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia within the framework of the Chernobyl UNESCO program in 1995 was just one of many examples of this effort.21 The psychological rehabilitation dimension was also important for the promoters of the ETHOS project and the CORE program. This emphasis on the psychological consequences of the disaster suggests that the problem resides not in the long-term radioactive contamination of the environment, but in the lack of people’s adaptation to it, or even in the lack of people’s will or desire to adapt to it. This interpretation of the Chernobyl disaster leaves little space for public debates about political and economic circumstances, and about policy decisions

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that inevitably forced several million people to deal with radioactive risks on a daily basis. It also avoids controversies over the real costs of the peaceful uses of the nuclear energy and the opportunities and dangers related to the development of national nuclear programs. In Belarus and Ukraine, where such interpretations of the Chernobyl accident’s impact are rarely contested, the memory of the disaster has progressively lost most of its political, social, and cultural significance. Chernobyl's Impact on Western Europe – The Examples of France and Britain Chernobyl is not only an important topic for people in Eastern Europe’s most contaminated countries, Ukraine and Belarus. It also has deeply influenced debates about the use of nuclear energy in Western Europe. This section sheds light on debates about Chernobyl in France and Britain. The comparison of these two cases reveals that it is not so much the intensity of radioactive fallout but rather perceptions of the power dynamics within each country’s nuclear “techno-political regime” (Gabrielle Hecht’s phrase) that has shaped these debates.22 It might seem likely that the debates about Chernobyl and its ramifications would have been similar in France and Britain. Each country was affected by a comparable degree of fallout in late April and early May 1986, and each had a highly developed nuclear sector. Both countries had an active anti-nuclear movement and had previously experienced accidents in their own national nuclear plants. Members of each government proclaimed that fallout from Chernobyl would have no relevant impact on their national territory, and both were proven wrong. The French and British governments, radiation protection agencies, and various actors in the nuclear industry argued that an accident such as the one in Chernobyl could not occur in their own country. Later, in both countries, local doctors – in the French case on Corsica and in the British case on Benbecula – suggested a possible connection between the increased cancer rates they observed in their daily work and a possible health impact from the fallout. Finally, in both countries, single actors – Jean-Michel Jacquemin in France and Christopher Busby in Britain – picked up on this topic and dedicated a great deal of time to the search for national Chernobyl victims. Despite these many similarities, the relative impact of the Chernobyl debates in France and Britain could not have been more different. In France, Chernobyl became a national reference point for criticizing the

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central government and the country’s elitist political and scientific system. Conversely, in Britain, the Chernobyl solidarity movement worried about maintaining support for its work as public memory about the accident faded.23 In France, Chernobyl became a contemporary representation of threats to everyday life, while in Britain, it was relegated to the past – it was considered an accident that had happened far away and a long time ago.24 Few people remember the extensive restrictions that were placed on British sheep farms in the aftermath of Chernobyl because the animals were too radioactive to be sent to market. Why did these two countries interpret the Chernobyl accident so differently? Why did Chernobyl become a lieu de mémoire in France, whereas in Britain this common point of reference does not exist?25 The answer to this question lies in a deeper understanding of the differing and distinct historical and political contexts in which the Chernobyl debates took place, how Chernobyl was perceived and discussed, and how these differences imbued “Chernobyl” with two alternate frames of meaning. Here the narratives on Chernobyl that both French and British actors have published have been analysed and put in the context of the differing national nuclear technopolitical regimes.26 These narratives or statements consist of various elements. The elements central to this analysis are self-affectedness, radiophobia and apocalypse, and anti– Eastern European (or anti-Soviet) stereotypes.27 We refer to the ways in which these contested statements and narratives relate to the Chernobyl debate. The term “Chernobyl debate” thus specifies the variety of interrelated statements, interpretations, and narratives on Chernobyl that have circulated in public discourse over time. The Chernobyl debate is a discursive field in which elements from other debates have been imported, making it possible to assign meaning to Chernobyl. Thus Chernobyl has been interpreted using wider reference frames, the most prominent of which are national nuclear politics, general debates on the health impact of low-level radiation, and the Cold War setting. These discursive frames are mirrored in the main narrative elements detailed above: self-affectedness (→ national nuclear politics), radiophobia and apocalypse (→ general debates on the health impact of low-level radiation), and anti–Eastern European (or anti-Soviet) stereotypes (→ the Cold War setting). The national Chernobyl debates must be located in their relative national contexts. The most important thematic aspects of these national contexts are as follows: the formation, role, and status of nuclear experts and counter-experts; the changes to the national

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nuclear politics, policies, and polities as well as their pro-nuclear versus anti-nuclear orientation; the shape, political role, and protest culture of the anti-nuclear movement; (the problematic issues of) the national fleet of nuclear power plants; and the importance of charities. In the following pages, the French and British Chernobyl debates will be analysed against the backdrop of these different national contexts. The very early responses of the French and British authorities to news reports about an accident at the Ukrainian nuclear power plant show that in both countries state officials focused on dismissing rumours that fallout from Chernobyl could have any negative consequences for their respective country. In addition, radiation protection experts and representatives of the nuclear industry in both countries stressed that the only lessons to be learned from this accident were new scientific models on the transport of radionuclides in air, water, and soil, as well as lessons about how to allocate less responsibility to plant operators. However, in the second week of May 1986, the very same French authorities were confronted in the media with the public accusation that they had purposely held back the real data on radioactive fallout in France in order to protect the agricultural sector and the French nuclear enterprise from negative publicity. These accusations were brought forward by antinuclear activists and alarmed journalists who had closely observed the protective measures taken in other Western European countries, particularly in West Germany and Switzerland. These critical voices were puzzled about the disparity between the measures taken abroad and the lack of official concern in France, and therefore called into question the statement that France had not been touched by any serious fallout. This dispute came to be commonly referred to as the affaire Tchernobyl. The counter side expressed their criticism, which included strong antistate arguments, of the official French response to Chernobyl and the behaviour of the state experts adopting the “traditional” French antinuclear strategy.28 From this perspective, the nucléocratie and the internal logic of the French nuclear technopolitical regime as a whole were blamed for the “lies” and “cover-ups” surrounding the Chernobyl accident.29 In this way, the French Chernobyl debate very quickly reached national proportions and focused on the role of French state experts. It was precisely this role – the role these nuclear experts played within the power structures of the French state – that was called into question in the affaire Tchernobyl.30 British discussions in the immediate aftermath of Chernobyl were quite different, although it was soon revealed that the public authorities

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had completely misjudged the impact of the fallout in the United Kingdom. In June 1986, upland sheep farmers were informed that they could not continue to handle their animals as usual since over the previous weeks the grazing sheep had ingested too many radionuclides. Restrictions on the sale, movement, and slaughter of highland sheep and a compensation scheme for the farmers were implemented over the summer. Later, it turned out that these restrictions would not last for a mere couple of weeks, as was initially predicted by British radiation protection authorities. Instead, some farmers would have to live with these restrictions for many years.31 However, even these openly observable miscalculations of state experts did not in any way lead to something like a “British Chernobyl affair.” No state official was publicly accused of having purposely held back the “truth” about the fallout in Britain. Rather, it seemed as if the British public trusted their experts more than their politicians. This trust, at least in the case of Chernobyl, does not seem to have been challenged. In France, however, the critical voices trusted neither the state experts nor the politicians; they were seen as one entity within the French nuclear technopolitical regime. This difference may owe something to the fact that after 1971 “in the UK, the power of the nuclear technocracy has declined since the split-up of the UKAEA [UK Atomic Energy Authority].”32 In addition, the successful campaign of British anti-nuclear power activists in the late 1970s against the government’s plans to build a series of pressurized water reactors (PWR) succeeded in weakening British nuclear technocracy.33 Last but not least, the privatization of the British civil nuclear program in the 1990s had denied the industry subsidies. These shifts in British civil nuclear policies may have led to a public perception of the nuclear sector as politically less influential than in the French case and to a consideration of nuclear authorities as more independent from the nuclear sector. In addition, the sheep farmers, the one group of people who could potentially have turned the sheep restrictions into a “British Chernobyl affair,” did not connect their assumptions about national nuclear politics in the first place to Chernobyl. Rather, the sheep farmers in the Lake District, for example, thought of the fallout in local terms and related the restrictions to the Sellafield-Windscale complex.34 They considered the restrictions on sheep farms to be a measure to cover up the regional impact of the Sellafield plant and the continuing impact of the 1957 Windscale fire on the area.35 Compared to the threat represented by Sellafield, the Chernobyl fallout was considered negligible. From this

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perspective, even after Chernobyl, Sellafield continued to be perceived as the primary incarnation of nuclear risk.36 For this reason, anti-nuclear power protest in Britain has focused on Sellafield and never on Chernobyl. Finally, the debate about the health impact of low-level radiation has never played as prominent a role among British anti-nuclear power activists compared to their French counterparts. Thus, the Chernobyl fallout was not seen as a major threat to public health, and therefore was not considered a British nuclear issue to be dealt with. Rather, British activists focused on the economic argument in their campaigns. This British response provides a distinct contrast to the French case, where the affaire Tchernobyl became the reference point for anti-nuclear protest. Furthermore, in France, it set the precedent for the institutionalization of nuclear “counter-expertise,” namely the foundation of the Commission de recherche et d’information indépendantes sur la radioactivité (CRIIRAD) and the Association pour le contrôle de la radioactivité dans l’ouest (ACRO).37 In Britain, however, such strong and publicly visible counter-expertise on the impact of radiation from the civil nuclear enterprise does not exist. This might be due to a less centrally organized political system as well as the important role of committees and hearings in decision-making processes that allows the public a “say” in the identification of new zoning for nuclear plants. It means that the personal histories of anti-nuclear power activists in Britain have not been particularly closely linked to Chernobyl, whereas in France, Michèle Rivasi, the founder of CRIIRAD, became one of the most wellknown anti-nuclear activists and politicians of the Green Party. Few journalists in Britain personally engaged in unveiling the “truth” about Chernobyl’s impact. From the early 1990s onwards, the topic of restrictions on sheep farms almost completely disappeared from newspapers despite their continued enforcement. In France, on the other hand, several journalists felt personally betrayed by the information policies of the public authorities.38 Therefore, they took over a prominent role in the creation of the affaire Tchernobyl and kept its memory alive for years, especially on 26 April each year.39 This driving force to spur public commemoration of Chernobyl does not exist in Britain. Another contextual difference must be considered: in France, there is a very strong anti-nuclear power movement, while British antinuclear protest has been traditionally concerned with nuclear weapons.40 The anti-nuclear power campaigners in France successfully integrated Chernobyl into their arguments. The memory of the affaire Tchernobyl continued to invoke strong criticism of the existing power

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dynamics within the French nuclear technopolitical regime, and thus the memory of the Chernobyl accident conformed well to the general perspective of anti-nuclear protest. The same is true for the debate on Chernobyl’s impact on health in France. Therefore, French anti-nuclear campaigners have shared a strong interest in preserving the memory of Chernobyl. In Britain, however, where the anti-nuclear discourse was dominated by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), it was not really possible to integrate the accident into an anti-nuclear weapons argument.41 Furthermore, public attention to the concerns of the anti-weapons movement diminished considerably once the Cold War came to an end. At the same time, in the mid-1990s the British government decided, in the context of the privatization of the electricity market, not to finance any new nuclear power plants. Thus the number of people engaged in the British anti-nuclear power discourse – including those interested in keeping the memory of Chernobyl alive from an anti-nuclear perspective – shrank further. This commemorative gap in Britain was, from the mid-1990s onwards, filled by the charity organizations of the Chernobyl solidarity movement.42 However, these humanitarian groups often do not have a specific position on nuclear energy – or they do not openly communicate their position in an effort to garner support from the broadest possible group of potential donors during their fundraising campaigns. Therefore, in Britain, Chernobyl became associated solely with the destiny of a group of suffering children living in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. Moreover, often no further differentiation was made between Chernobyl and the Soviet system, which was responsible for their tragic situation. Recently, when British newspapers raised the topic of Chernobyl on the accident’s anniversary, the articles focused mainly on the activities of these charity groups.43 Today in Britain, Chernobyl stands for the thousands of children who have spent recreational holidays in the United Kingdom, and not for sheep farm restrictions. In summary, different perceptions of the power dynamics within the two national nuclear technopolitical regimes lay at the source of the different trajectories that the Chernobyl debates in France and Britain took. In France, from the outset Chernobyl was framed as a French debate, and it was placed in the context of the nucléocratie. In Britain, such an interpretative framework did not exist for the civil nuclear program since the predominant criticism against the nuclear enterprise had always been directed against the military complex and was more focused on aspects of international relations than on the national nuclear energy complex.

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In Britain, Chernobyl was considered from a global perspective, whereas in France the focus was placed on the accident’s impact at home.44 However, with the end of the Cold War and the British government’s decision in the mid-1990s to no longer finance new nuclear power plants, antinuclear positions as such lost their impetus. Thus, few people in Britain were interested in transforming the debate on the health impact of Chernobyl into a proxy war in the fight over the legitimacy of the civil nuclear enterprise, as was happening in France. Leaving this discursive and commemorative gap to be filled by the solidarity movement, Chernobyl did not become a lieu de mémoire of the British anti-nuclear movement, but instead became associated primarily with charity activities for disabled or unprivileged children from Eastern Europe. Although it has been in the first place framed in national contexts, Chernobyl is simultaneously a transnational reference point for proand anti-nuclear campaigners. On the pro-nuclear and neutral side, we find the nuclear industry, the international nuclear expert groups like the International Chernobyl Project or the Chernobyl Forum, as well as many intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) such as IAEA, WHO, UNSCEAR, and others. These actors have produced a wide range of reports and recommendations on how to deal with Chernobyl that have mainly stressed the narrative element of “radiophobia”: the problem with Chernobyl is not the radioactivity but people’s exaggerated fears of this radioactivity.45 From their point of view, remembering Chernobyl is counterproductive. From the perspective of international anti-nuclear activists such as Greenpeace and many other NGOs and networks, however, remembering Chernobyl through apocalyptic narratives has become central to their campaigning. The yearly organized commemorative events and rallies on International Chernobyl Day are the most visible outcome.46 As a result of the climate change debate and the nuclear industry’s proclamation of a “nuclear renaissance” as well as the shift of some former prominent anti-nuclear campaigners to the pro-nuclear side, the apocalyptic dimension of Chernobyl has been stressed in recent years in order to raise awareness of the anti-nuclear cause. But the various groups that form the Chernobyl solidarity movement also have an active interest in promoting the memory of Chernobyl to be able to continue their work. Thus, remembering Chernobyl in a transnational perspective means at least two different perspectives: Chernobyl as a lieu de mémoire of the anti-nuclear energy movement and Chernobyl as an occasion to provide humanitarian aid to children in Eastern Europe.

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These two transnational dimensions of Chernobyl commemoration are, at the same time, confronted with very different Chernobyl memories in the national contexts. Therefore, we cannot talk about one global memory of Chernobyl. Instead we find a variety of Chernobyl memories, and in each of these cases, Chernobyl has a different meaning with regard to questions about the future of nuclear energy. Chernobyl Science, Risk Assessment, and Transnational Knowledge Production Not only are there a variety of national memorializations, there are also more than one scientific account of Chernobyl. Moving on to the conceptual frameworks, black boxes, and scientific knowledge production, we now examine the ways in which Chernobyl is rendered into an object of radiation risk research. What Chernobyl means in this context is controversial and has changed over time. The history of radiation risk knowledge cannot be traced only at the discursive level, but must also be looked at as a matter of research infrastructures, databases, and standardizations of practice that have shaped the ways in which scientific assessments of radiation accidents are made. In contrast to radiation biology and epidemiological risk estimation, local stakeholders in the affected areas were concerned about the reorganization of everyday life after resettlement, the safety of food products, the right to medical treatment, and state compensation through a system of benefits to people evacuated from Pripyat and the 30 kilometre zone. In Ukraine, people from the affected areas became known as “Chernobyltsy” who, depending on their recognized radiation doses, were entitled to a system of benefits (lgoty) that worked in ways similar to the concessions for veterans in the Soviet Union.47 This system included state-sanctioned discounts for public transportation, electricity, gas, and other expenses. As described earlier in this paper for the case of Belarus, international agencies promoted individualized risk management and contributed to shifting responsibility away from the authorities to the people living in the affected areas.48 In what ways were these shifts linked to the scientific assessments and methods themselves, and how did the standard approaches and calculative devices of risk science co-produce this redistribution of responsibility? How did assessments of Western researchers and international agencies relate to existing Soviet and post-Soviet research into radiation risk? Where and why did they clash?

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Numerous local scientific and applied conferences took place in the affected regions, and were dedicated to the documentation of medical consequences of the fallout. When international agencies were called in to support risk management, Western scientists and their approaches and standards were added to knowledge production on Chernobyl.49 They joined Soviet (and then post-Soviet) officials in risk management, an emerging environmental movement, and independent scientists and physicians in the affected areas. International assessments during the first years after the accident focused on immediate safety measures, as well as on technical and medical aid to the region. In addition to radionuclide monitoring of soil, scientists carried out agricultural experiments to test cesium-binding agents in livestock at collective farms in the area surrounding Pripyat. UN experts acknowledged from a “scientific point of view” the need to evaluate and understand the technical causes and effects of the accident and from a “human point of view” the “obligation to provide an objective analysis of the health consequences of the accident for the people involved.”50 Yet the “human point of view” was increasingly conceptualized as a scientific agenda too, with controversies centring on scientific evidence of health effects in which Western scientific agendas rather than community issues became predominant. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the establishment in the 1990s of international research programs, Chernobyl has become a site of research into the biological effects of radiation. A 1996 Nature editorial stated that “the Chernobyl accident has at least provided researchers with a unique scientific and medical experiment.”51 While biomedical scientists have strongly disagreed about the scope of biological effects, the appropriate methods to investigate health effects, and the implications for the nuclear industry, most of them share some core approaches and standards, such as the population-level quantification of radiation risk. In order to understand the role of international agendas in Chernobyl, we need to open the “black-boxed” processes of standardization in scientific risk assessment. The specific research practices of an international scientific community of radiation specialists are deeply entrenched in the Cold War configuration and the large-scale biomedical research that emerged after World War II. Today’s radiation effects knowledge, the methods of risk assessment, and, in particular, the field of radiation epidemiology – the study of radiation effects on human populations – were directly shaped by the history of the atomic bomb and by Cold War controversies.52 They were mainly derived from the

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study of atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on which the guidelines and exposure limits in current recommendations for radiation protection are based, supplemented by studies of occupational and medical radiation exposures. As Declan Butler put it in Nature in 2011, “[T]he lifetime cohort study set up in Japan after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs … remains the gold standard for studies on the impact of radiation in people.”53 Also Chernobyl research and, more recently, Fukushima scientific assessments have been drawing on core features and formats that evolved from this history. The Life Span Study was conducted by the US Atomic Bomb Casualties Commission (ABCC) and, since the 1970s, the successor organization, US-Japanese Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF). Life Span was the largest single epidemiological study at the time, and its results played a key role in the synthesis reports by the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR).54 UNSCEAR’s reports drew their numbers from the latest publications of follow-up studies on atomic bomb survivors as well as from studies of medical and occupational radiation exposures worldwide.55 Their synthesis consisted mainly of summaries, tables, and extrapolations of lifetime risks at a certain exposure for different age groups. The calculations use “excess relative risk” (ERR) and “excess attributable risk” (EAR) as measures through which the studies are transformed into standardized dose-response formats.56 For different types of exposure, systems of weighting factors were developed to account for radiation quality (alpha, beta, and gamma radiation; neutrons; and the different respective effects on tissue) and radionuclide-dependent organ dose distributions. These weighting factors themselves were subject to debate with new empirical studies becoming available. In this context, the institutionalized activities of UNSCEAR synthesis reports worked as an epidemiological platform through which these interlinked standardizations were continually updated and risk estimates stabilized.57 Subsequently, these risk figures travel to further supranational committees such as the International Committee for Radiation Protection (ICRP) for review and update of recommendations, and from there to policymaking, for instance, by the European Commission, and down the regulatory chain to national debates and legislation on exposure limits for nuclear workers and the general population. International scientists brought these standards to Chernobyl as part of their expertise to sort through the effects of radiation exposure on human populations. Classic radiation risk assessment implied, as a first

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step, a prediction of expected health effects based on existing radiation knowledge.58 While there were substantial uncertainties on the extrapolation to lower dose ranges, epidemiologists began their assessments in Chernobyl by calculating expected effects based on existing risk estimates per unit dose (such as the ERR given in UNSCEAR reports) and applying them to the preliminary dose estimates for the Chernobyl fallout. When using these numbers to predict the numbers of additional cancer cases to be expected at this dose, most radiation epidemiologists were aware that the results would need to be adapted and corrected as the exposure data became more precise. In their view, dose estimation would be a long-term process due to internal exposures, a process even more complex than the retrospective reconstruction of radiation doses in the study of atomic bomb survivors. Radiation epidemiologists have therefore continued to suggest long-term comprehensive studies with ongoing validation of scientific exposure and health records.59 In view of the local expectations and needs of the affected population, however, this approach brings about its own agendas, objectives, and time scales for knowledge generation. Long-term epidemiological follow-up of radiation exposures, in addition to registering cancer cases and other radiation associated diseases as they are diagnosed, implies the collection and analysis of cause-of-death data over decades. This methodological approach strives for a “bird’s-eye view” of disease experience at the population level, including long-term demographic and mortality studies of exposed groups in comparison with the general population. The rationale is a potential future benefit through validation of radiation protection guidelines and exposure limits, yet it lacks direct benefits for the affected population in the present, except possibly for some better diagnostics through epidemiological research infrastructures. Hence, the frameworks and temporalities of the research itself in the study of Chernobyl as an epidemiological “quasi-experiment” bring about diverging goals and concerns from the points of view of researchers and those researched.60 At the core of these concerns are the modes of proof and regimes of perceptibility in epidemiological risk assessment.61 Those become visible when we historicize the infrastructural framework of radiation epidemiology and examine more closely the politics of methodology. Issues of methods in particular have come up repeatedly in recent debates over radiation risk in the context of the Fukushima accident. In this context arguments frequently revolve around the proper scientific methods, alleged misquotations, or even purposeful manipulation, for instance when

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scientists took opposing stances about nuclear futures in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster.62 In line with the internationally recognized state-of-the-art risk assessment, the main agenda of the International Chernobyl Project was to improve infrastructures for analytical epidemiology. In addition to individual dose reconstruction, the agenda included the collection of medical diagnoses for defined population groups, requiring the complete registration of people living in the affected areas. Such exposure registries were also established by local governments with state compensation programs, for example in Ukraine. Epidemiological data is closely linked to administrative registries and census records that are then data-mined for specific studies.63 In order to comply with the study designs of analytical epidemiology, international research activities on Chernobyl soon focused on developing a dosimetry system to calculate individual dose estimates.64 The calculation of radiation doses at the individual level is a complex undertaking, given the heterogeneity of fallout, the range of radionuclides, their half-lives, types of radiation, as well as the pathways and accumulation patterns in the food chain and the radionuclide metabolism in the human body. Moreover, there are competing methods and techniques to calculate dosimetric estimates, and the results of different techniques were often in disagreement; in particular the physical and the biological dosimetry techniques gave inconsistent pictures.65 Inconsistent results in biological markers of radiation exposure were interpreted in several diverging ways: as variability within group estimates, as due to differences in individual radiosensitivity, or as proof that exposure was lower than assumed by fallout deposition modeling or radionuclide measurements in soil samples.66 In the context of exposure registration, multiple dose estimates might circulate for different purposes. As for Chernobyl, they might differ by countries, given different technical guidelines on how to calculate the population dose and different compensation policies. Often, there is a distinction made between an “official” and a “scientific” dose estimate, one being used for compensation and the latter for scientific epidemiological studies. To epidemiologists, the prerequisite for validated external and internal dose estimates was individual information on the whereabouts of each person during fallout and on dietary habits. In order to approximate doses, the fallout-related exposure sources of everyday life were reconstructed. Radiation ecologists tracked pathways of main radionuclides after fallout deposition and their migration

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characteristics in soil and water, plants, and the food chain. With the sheer complexity of such a task, this tracking turned into a research direction of its own in which Chernobyl also became an opportunity to establish empirical transfer factors that quantified radionuclide mobility between the environmental media (water and soil) as well as to gain data on radionuclide accumulation in agriculture. Interestingly, modern ecology as a discipline developed during the atomic age.67 ­Cyclotron-produced radioisotopes became more readily available and were used as markers to track biochemical processes. In late twentieth century life sciences, radionuclides were used as tracers to make ecological mechanisms visible and measurable. In Chernobyl, these tracers were right there, and could be measured along their passage through the ecosystem. To radiation ecologists, the Chernobyl area with the presence of its radionuclides became an outdoor laboratory that enabled the study of mutations and the testing of indicator systems for long-term biomonitoring.68 Individual dosimetry data together with the case records for the population study formed the basis for health risk assessment. Specific analytical study designs were used to formally conduct statistical tests for association between exposure and disease, and to assess doseresponse relationships. The main international agenda of radiation epidemiology moved Chernobyl science from more immediate needs and compensation claims to another scale. Epidemiologists formalized the Chernobyl accidents as a research resource and a quasi-experiment in order to validate the risk estimates for radiation effects based on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this context, Chernobyl data became a test constellation, a set of “unique opportunities” with which researchers could “learn” from radiation-exposed populations. As a Nature report put it, the power of a potential long-term Chernobyl study would be “offering more than ten times as many people as the lifetime cohort study set up in Japan.”69 At their post-Soviet research sites, Western researchers also encountered various layers of Soviet scientific assessments as well as information compiled by environmental groups.70 A few years after the Chernobyl accident, scientists and physicians mostly from Belarus and Ukraine published data showing substantial increases in certain diseases treated in hospitals in the areas affected by fallout, with the most prominent being childhood thyroid cancer.71 Western epidemiologists initially questioned the validity of the first presentations of data on health effects by medical scientists from the post-Soviet countries due to the descriptive nature of the techniques

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and study designs that had been used. Controversies over “screening effects” in the obtained results, that is an artifact in the data rather than a real effect, centred on potential sources of bias and how to control sources of bias in these studies. One of the debates concerned whether substantially increased numbers of diagnoses were related to the higher degree of medical monitoring, heightened attention, and improved medical diagnostics after the accident; other controversies were about “appropriate baselines” in terms of “background rates” before the accident that these data could be compared to. For thyroid cancer in children born between 1979 and 1986, the locally reported increases in rates in the adjacent areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and the Russian Federation were confirmed in collaborative publications a few years later.72 However, for effects other than thyroid cancer, the scientific accounts have remained controversial. The International Chernobyl Project promoted analytical epidemiology in order to critically validate existing studies on other health effects. Many of these controversies had to do with the different traditions and approaches of local Soviet and Western epidemiological practice. Soviet, post-Soviet, and Western ways of doing research and documentation differed in their standards and protocols. In Soviet radiation epidemiology, mostly ecological (area comparisons) were used, while international protocols insisted on certain study designs, statistical tests for significance, specific baseline data, and dose-response relationship as criteria for proof of radiation effects. The different approaches and disagreements are often presented as a contrast between Western and local science. Yet international radiation research communities were also divided over the politics of methodologies and epistemologies. In addition, this division concerned the regimes of accountability, which were different for clinically oriented healthcare practitioners than for biostatistically trained epidemiologists. Moreover, radiation research is not a single discipline, and in different research trajectories each subdiscipline has its own agenda, its specific methodological ambitions, and agreed-upon standards of practice. Regarding Chernobyl, the debate over methodological standards gained prominence with the publication in English of the Yablokov Report in 2009 – a series of articles published in English and Russian that laid out a different picture than, for instance, the 2008 UN summary reports on the impact of the Chernobyl disaster in and beyond the three most affected states of Ukraine, Belarus, and the Russian Federation.73 The Yablokov Report indicated more severe consequences of the

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local fallout effects – with substantially higher future risks to the population – estimating a total of over 900,000 excess deaths versus the 5,000 suggested by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The report collated data from local scientists and physicians that had been mostly dismissed by international agencies for not following Western scientific protocols. It was written in response to the assessments compiled and published by IAEA, WHO, and UNSCEAR. The debates over methods in this controversy were symptomatic of the different modes of health research and conflicts over design issues in epidemiological research. Those methodological arguments were also adopted by some scientists from the Russian Federation in recent debates over the impact of Fukushima on nuclear industries in general.74 A recent publication by the director of the St Petersburg Institute of Radiation Hygiene titled “On Protecting the Inexperienced Reader from Chernobyl Myths” shows that this division over what should be regarded as proof is not only a Western/non-Western controversy.75 In it, Balanov stresses the Western epidemiological concept of “ecological fallacy” to counter the argument of the Yablokov Report for the scientific value of such ecological studies (area comparisons). Concerning his methods argument, Balanov’s paper is in line with international agencies that insist on methodological hierarchies, as they are considered standard and state-of-the-art in Western epidemiology. In these evidence hierarchies, the randomized clinical trial (RCT) ranks at the top. In environmental epidemiology, which is based on observational rather than experimental approaches, methodological superiority is attributed to “quasi-experimental designs,” that is, cohort studies, followed by case-control studies. In this system, ecological studies are seen as of minor value and just descriptive, and not more than “hypothesisgenerating.”76 Its principles derive from contemporary evidence hierarchies of medical knowledge generation, with RCTs rated at the top.77 In this system, the study designs mostly used by Soviet researchers (ecological or area comparisons) count only as descriptive and hypothesisgenerating. However, the fact that an epidemiological study did not detect an effect does not mean that there is no effect, and, as researchers stress, this mode of proof requires large-scale population studies with analytical design. In view of remaining uncertainties, epidemiologists stated that it might, in the end, be “virtually impossible to assess the ultimate death toll” of the Chernobyl accident.78 Scientific practice embedded in heterogeneous contexts implies different stakes, but also takes place within different, and at times clashing,

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regimes of accountability. The regimes of proof accepted by scientists working for international agencies or state authorities and their accountability are different from those of independent medical physicians providing patient care in the exposed areas, or of oppositional groups. The capacities and “modes of making visible” such hazards and infrastructural differences in resources are not the same for people dealing with healthcare and agriculture in the affected areas and the transnational, technocratic apparatus of international risk assessors.79 The core procedures of statistical hypothesis testing in analytical epidemiology foster an approach of doubt of the true effects, in which the critical tool of statistics is of key importance in deciding whether an effect is considered “real.” While uncertainties and open questions are debated within scientific laboratories, it is in health policy and outside science that these figures gain the status of truth claims and become perceived as factual or objective if not universal numbers. In the exposed areas, technocratic risk assessment relied on and promoted by international agencies contributed to a culture of skepticism with regard to any radiation effect. Western analytical epidemiology privileges a risk factor approach that works through individual profiling and optimization of one’s radiological risk status. International research projects worked in favour of the “normalization” that became national policy. It was also in this context that the concerns of people living in affected areas were often reduced to psychological problems, if not to “radiophobia.” While this term was used by post-Soviet officials, it also resonates with UNESCO’s focus on the psychosocial aspects.80 This mode of individualizing and depoliticizing counteracts the attempts and strategies in affected areas to secure compensation that Petryna, in her analysis of post-Chernobyl compensation practices in Ukraine, termed “biological citizenship.” With this term Petryna described the ways in which people in affected areas mobilized their “injured biology” to demand social welfare from the state.81 At stake are the conditions of apprehension and the politics of burden of proof that societies define for individual or collective compensation. The individualized risk management approach is also part of the technocratic minimization of costs and contributes to the routinization of Chernobyl issues in international organizations. Given the continued disputes over the degree of exposure and health effects, it may be helpful to reframe accounts of Chernobyl less as controversies over “matters of fact” and more as “matters of concern” that nuclear legacies will continue to pose.82 In addition to assembling

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scientific data, reframing involves challenging the regimes of proof, calculative devices, and the connections or disconnections and nuclear ontologies that the current scientific apparatus brings about. Conclusion By following several different trajectories in the fallout debates, we have traced Chernobyl across scales – from local to transnational, from the everyday concerns of living with nuclear legacies to the negotiation of national regulation and universalized risk assessments. More than memories, Chernobyl has blended many issues, including post– Cold War nation building, the politics of energy, and public health, and has created unequal arenas for struggles over uncertainties in various nuclear communities. There are many Chernobyl-related issues that this chapter could not cover, for instance the complex ecologies of fallout, including effects on plants and animals, or the role of Chernobyl in the nuclear economy and reactor design. However, our different perspectives on the politics of memorialization and knowledge production shed light on the interrelation of different scales in the Chernobyl debate and of different politics of Chernobyl fallout. Our most important findings are as follows. First, specific features of national political and technopolitical regimes have shaped the dominant narratives of the Chernobyl disaster and affect the debates about its impact in different political and geographical settings. Thus, in former Soviet republics the debates were closely related to the development of strong nationalist movements, demands for national independence, and democratic reforms. In Western Europe, the intensity of the Chernobyl-related controversies depended mostly on the way nuclear technology is governed and regulated, on the perceived political power of nuclear advocates, and on their relations with state institutions. Second, from the point of view of radiation research, scientists and international agencies considered the accident a “unique opportunity” from which radiation specialists all over the globe could learn. We find this narrative in the former Soviet Union as well as in France and Britain. It had an impact on the assessment of Chernobyl effects in the official reports by such international expert groups as the International Chernobyl Forum. Third, through the lens of local, national, and transnational Chernobyl risk assessment, we can outline the power structures of knowledge

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production within the global nuclear technopolitical regime. The focus on normalizing living conditions in the most affected areas and on attributing responsibility to the individual plays an essential role in maintaining these power structures that are contested by heterogeneous national nuclear memories. The analysis of the narratives, instruments, and actors involved in the contested evaluation of the Chernobyl disaster’s impact and in its remediation allows a glimpse into the complex system of economic, political, and cultural stakes and the strategies that shape them, and are closely related to what Gabrielle Hecht would call the “nuclearity” of the disaster consequences.83 By promoting the return to normal in the affected territories, state, medical, and scientific authorities of the countries that bore the brunt of Chernobyl radioactive fallout, as well as international organizations, foreign experts, and epidemiologists, contributed not only to depoliticize and individualize the accident’s consequences, but also to “denuclearize” them. This denuclearization consisted of constant efforts to reframe accident-related impact on everyday lives as non-nuclear. The health and social problems in the affected territories have been continuously explained, both to local populations and to citizens of other countries interested in the development of nuclear technology, as something other than a direct result of the uses of nuclear energy. Rather, these problems in these accounts appear to originate from psychological distress, unhealthy lifestyles (smoking and alcohol consumption), or the inability to comply with simple rules of radiological protection.84 Similarly, the sheep farm restrictions in Britain were always framed as an administrative problem of marketing and compensation, as resulting from a biological specificity of the highland soil, but not as a nuclear issue. Strategies aimed at establishing the non-nuclearity of the consequences of a nuclear disaster and the multiple attempts to contest these denuclearization efforts relate not only to the past and present. They also aim at promoting or preventing particular futures. Nothing less than the future of nuclear technology and its role in society are at stake in the debates over the legacy of Chernobyl. NOTES 1 The Reaktor Bolshoĭ Moshchnosti Kanalnyĭ (RBMK) is a graphitemoderated and light-water–cooled reactor that was developed in the Soviet Union and has been used only in facilities on its (former) territory.

The Politics of Chernobyl Fallout  177 2 Hecht, “Nuclear Ontologies.” 3 Radioactive cesium (137Cs) is the isotope that was deposited on the soil following the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and is the main radioactive element responsible for a long-term radioactive soil contamination in many European countries. The becquerel (Bq) is the unit of radioactivity and corresponds to one disintegration or nuclear transformation per second. The unit kilobecquerel per square metre (kBq/ m2) is used to report soil contamination. In mapping the contamination in the aftermath of the disaster, Soviet and international experts chose soil deposition of 137Cs equal to 37 kBq/m2 as a provisional minimum contamination level. They estimated this level as ten times higher than deposition from global fallout in Europe, and they considered that people living on the territories with this level of contamination during a year would receive a radiologically important dose of radiation. For key figures on the areas of important levels of 137Cs ground deposition in different European countries after the Chernobyl accident, see IAEA, Environmental Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident, 23. 4 See, for example, Medvedev, The Legacy of Chernobyl. 5 The first contamination maps were published in Belarusian newspapers on 8 and 9 February 1989. See, for example, “Tysiacha Dzion Paslia Charnobylia,” Gomel’skaia Prauda, 9 February 1989, 2–3. A month and a half later the Communist Party’s newspaper Pravda printed the first contamination maps for Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Iu. A. Izraėl’, “Chernobyl: Proshloe i Prognoz na Budushchee,” Pravda, 20 March 1989. These revelations occurred shortly before the first partially free and competitive legislative elections in the USSR, the elections to the Congress of People’s Deputies that took place in the end of March 1989. 6 On the debates related to consequences of the Chernobyl disaster in the Supreme Soviets of the USSR, Belarussian, and Ukrainian republics, see Kasperski, “La politique de la mémoire d’une catastrophe nucléaire,” 154–60; Iaroshinskaia, Chernobyl 20, 70–80, 139–79. 7 The leading role of the nationalist actors in the political protest is not specific to the Chernobyl-related dissent or to Belarus or Ukraine. The nationalist movements became the main driving force of the social mobilization in the late 1980s that ultimately led to the collapse of the USSR in 1991, due above all to several structural and contingent reasons related to the long history and the specificities of nationalities policies in the Soviet Union. They enveloped all other protest claims, such as economic, social justice, and environmental issues. See Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed, 26–40; Martin, Affirmative Action Empire; Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization.

178  Bauer, Kalmbach, and Kasperski 8 On nationalist interpretations of the Chernobyl disaster in Belarus and Ukraine, see Kasperski, “La politique de la mémoire,” particularly chapter 2; Phillips, “Chernobyl’s Sixth Sense.” 9 Petryna, Life Exposed. 10 The Chernobyl Recovery and Development Program (CRDP), 2002–8, was among the most important of these kinds of initiatives. It was launched by the United Nations Development Programme in Ukraine on the basis of recommendations made in 2002 in a joint report of UN agencies. See UNDP/UNICEF, The Human Consequences of the Chernobyl. The program’s goal was to ensure the “return to normal life as a realistic prospect for people living in regions affected by the Chernobyl disaster” mainly through support of local economic development and involvement of local actors and communities in this development. The CRDP official web-page, http://www.undp.org.ua/en/local-development-and-humansecurity/37-local-development-and-human-security-/614-chornobylrecovery-and-development-programme (last accessed 10 September 2013), is no longer available, and there is no substantial information about the program on the UNDP website as of October 2016. This situation is very symptomatic of treating the impact of the disaster as an already “solved” problem. For more information on CRDP, see Matsuki, “Communities Helping Themselves.” 11 Kasperski, “The Chernobyl Nuclear Accident,” 124–5. 12 The promoters of international cooperation projects on the Chernobylaffected territories preferred to talk about the “return to normality” (see Lochard and Prêtre, “Return to Normality.”) They insisted that this return did not mean the return to the pre-accident situation. They promote not the rehabilitation of the contamination territories but of the “living conditions” on the lands that will still remain radioactively contaminated for a very long period of time. However, these nuances seem to disappear at the local level and are not likely to be understood by the local people. These differences are certainly ignored by Belarusian authorities, who consider their effort is to insure the rehabilitation or even the “revival” of the Chernobyl-affected territories. 13 The interpretation of the social and political significance of this new approach to the management of the disaster consequences here and below is based on Tatiana Kasperski’s research in her PhD dissertation as well as on the analysis by Sezin Topçu. See Kasperski, “La politique de la mémoire,” chapter 5; Topçu, “Chernobyl Empowerment?” 14 Funded by the European Commission and coordinated by a French consulting group, Mutadis, the ETHOS project had two phases and was

The Politics of Chernobyl Fallout  179 implemented in five radioactively contaminated villages in the Stolyn district in the south of Belarus. Several working groups included foreign and Belarusian radiological protection experts, local inhabitants, and teaching and medical staff focused on different aspects of the radiological protection and strategies for its everyday implementation. The results of the ETHOS project served as a foundation for the CORE (Cooperation for Rehabilitation) program launched on the initiative of the Belarusian state institution Komchernobyl (Chernobyl Committee) responsible for the management of the Chernobyl disaster consequences.   This program’s goal was the coordination and implementation of support for projects aimed at the long-term recovery of people’s livelihoods in the regions affected by the Chernobyl disaster. The projects were conceived in the four priority domains (health, radiological protection, memory transmission, and social and economic development) by local private and public actors in partnership with the national and foreign institutions and organizations. Among the partners of the CORE program were different UN agencies (UNDP, UNICEF, UNFPA, UNOCHA, UNESCO); the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE); the Agency for Development and Cooperation of the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the European Union (EU) Delegation to Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova; embassies of France, Germany, Poland, and Czech Republic; as well as several international non-governmental organizations. 15 This was, for example, the aim of the SAGE project, funded by the European Commission in 1998–2002. Five scientific institutions from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Belarus cooperated to define “strategies and guidance for establishing a practical radiation protection culture in Europe in case of long-term radioactive contamination after a nuclear accident.” See the project’s final report: Lochard et al., Strategies and Guidance. 16 Dubreuil et al., The ETHOS Project in Belarus; Rigby, “Principes et processus.” 17 Tatiana Kasperski’s analysis here is based not only on different printed materials and internet sources and interviews with experts and local inhabitants, but also on her experience as a translator and local coordinator for the visits of the French experts and members of the NGOs taking part in the CORE program in 2005–6. 18 Dupuy, Retour de Tchernobyl, 17. 19 The term “radiation phobia” with regard to the Chernobyl disaster appears in a report written by members of the National Commission on Radiological Protection of the USSR, presented in 1987 at the

180  Bauer, Kalmbach, and Kasperski IAEA headquarters in Vienna. See Ilyin and Pavlovskij, “Radiological Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident,” 24. 20 The reports produced by the Chernobyl Forum, an initiative of the IAEA launched in 2003 in cooperation with six UN agencies, the World Bank, and the governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine, provide the most telling examples of this discourse on psychological consequences of the disaster.   Among the main findings of the Chernobyl Forum experts, as they are presented in the Joint News Release by the World Health Organization, International Atomic Energy Agency, and the United Nations Development Programme, are conclusions that “‘poverty,’ ‘lifestyle’ diseases now rampant in the former Soviet Union, and mental health problems pose a far greater threat to local communities than does radiation exposure,” that “the relocation proved a deeply traumatic experience,” and that “persistent myths and misperceptions about the threat of radiation have resulted in ‘paralyzing fatalism’ among residents of affected areas.” WHO/ IAEA/UNDP, “Chernobyl: The True Scale of the Accident 20 Years Later; A UN Report Provides Definitive Answers and Ways to Repair Lives,” 5 September 2005, accessed 14 September 2013, http://www.who.int/ mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html. The texts of the reports of the UN Chernobyl Forum Expert Groups “Environment” and “Health” are available from the IAEA’s webpage for the Chernobyl Forum, accessed 14 September 2013, http://www-ns.iaea.org/meetings/rwsummaries/chernobyl_forum.htm. 21 For the details of the project, see UNESCO, Community Development Centers for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation. 22 For a detailed comparison of French and British Chernobyl debates, see Kalmbach, “Meanings of a Disaster.” 23 The term “Chernobyl solidarity movement” means the collectivity of nongovernmental initiatives that provide humanitarian aid for the regions in Eastern Europe that were affected the most by the radioactive fallout. 24 Compare IRSN, Baromètre IRSN 2006, 11. 25 On Chernobyl as a lieu de mémoire, see Kalmbach, “Radiation and Borders.” 26 The main actors of the Chernobyl debate can be grouped into clusters: public authorities (government, radiation protection agencies), nuclear power industry (companies, associations), anti-nuclear groups, and Chernobyl solidarity movement groups.   The use of the term “technopolitical regimes” differs from the way Gabrielle Hecht uses this concept in her work on France in as far as we do not distinguish between different regimes within one state. Nevertheless,

The Politics of Chernobyl Fallout  181 our use of the term describes the same linked sets of “individuals, practices, artefacts, programs, and ideologies.” See Hecht, Radiance of France, 56. 27 “Self-affectedness” means here the way in which a certain actor considers his or her direct environment to be affected by the accident. This affect can consist of a physical impact in terms of radioactive fallout, but it can also mean the transfer of the accident’s scenario to national nuclear plants. Thus “self-affectedness” refers to the national context, whereas “radiophobia and apocalypse” focus on the situation in Eastern Europe.   The concept “radiophobia” (which is often paraphrased in the sources without using the discredited term as such) implies the assumption that the increase in illnesses observable in the most affected regions in Eastern Europe is not due to radiation but rather a result of an exaggerated fear of this radiation, the psychological stress provoked by the resettlements, and the rapid changes in the political situation linked to the break-up of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 28 For criticism of the French state implied in French anti-nuclear protest, see Alain Touraine, La prophétie anti-nucléaire; Touraine, “Réactions anti-nucléaires.” 29 “Nucléocratie” is a specific French adaptation of the term “technocracy.” The term is used in a rather negative way to refer to the group of people holding certain key positions in the French nuclear sector and includes both the engineering as well as the administrative/policy side. The term was shaped by French economist and journalist Philippe Simonnot, Les nucléocrates. 30 For a detailed analysis of the French Chernobyl debate, see Kalmbach, Tschernobyl und Frankreich. 31 For concrete numbers on the scale of these restrictions until 1998, see the report by the British National Radiation Protection Board (NRPB). Nisbet and Woodman, Options for the Management of Chernobyl-Restricted Areas in England and Wales. 32 Markku Lethonen, “Reactions to Fukushima in Finland, France and the UK – Rupture or Continuity in the Nuclear Techno-Politics?” Second 3.11 Virtual Conference (2013), accessed 10 September 2013, http:// fukushimaforum.wordpress.com/online-forum-2/second-3-11-virtualconference-2013/reactions-to-fukushima-in-finland-france-and-the-ukrupture-or-continuity-in-the-nuclear-techno-politics/. 33 Karena Kalmbach is thankful to Walter Patterson for providing her with information on the anti-PWR campaign. 34 Wynne, “Misunderstood Misunderstanding.” A similar explanatory pattern existed in Northern Wales, where the restrictions were seen in relation to the nearby nuclear power plant, Wylfa.

182  Bauer, Kalmbach, and Kasperski 3 5 On the Windscale fire, see Arnold, Windscale 1957. 36 For instance, in Britain’s Nuclear Nightmare, James Cutler and Rob Edwards provide a critical account of the British nuclear industry. They start with a description of the landscape around Sellafield: “Standing on the edge of the fells and surveying the coastline to the west, it is hard to believe that the beaches and estuaries are irredeemably polluted by one of the most poisonous of all man-made substances – plutonium. It is impossible to credit that the only places in the world more contaminated with radioactivity are the ghost town of Pripyat next to the burnt-out hulk of Chernobyl, and the remote sites around the globe where nuclear bombs have been deliberately exploded” (1). Although this region was one of the British areas most affected by the Chernobyl fallout, the authors only refer to the plutonium emitted by Sellafield and do not even mention the cesium and iodine deposited in 1986 by the rainfall. 37 Doubts about the official French statements on the radioactive fallout led a number of skeptics to carry out measurements of their own. This resulted in the foundation of the first independent radiation protection institutes in France, CRIIRAD and ACRO. On the role of counter-expertise in the French nuclear debate, see Topçu, “Confronting Nuclear Risks.” 38 However, the French media is not considered here an actor in its own right. It is rather the commitment of certain journalists like Hélène Crié, Noël Mamère, or Galia Ackerman who have been responsible for the coverage on Chernobyl in the French media. That is why it is important to not only take into account the action of institutions and organizations but to link this action back to individual agency within these organizational structures and power relations. 39 One of the most prominent examples is Hélène Crié, who not only wrote on Chernobyl in the newspaper Libération, but also published a book together with the prominent anti-nuclear activist Yves Lenoir, in which they severely criticized French information policies on nuclear accidents. Crié and Lenoir, Tchernobyl-sur-Seine. 40 Chafer, “Politics and the Perception of Risk.” 41 In Britain, there was a link between the anti-energy and anti-weapon argument. However, this link was made regarding proliferation (see, for example, the prominent graphic showing missiles that lurch out of a reactor which was used by the CND in their campaigning) and not in the sense of a similar threat towards public health. 42 The two largest groups are Chernobyl Children’s Life Line and Chernobyl Children’s Project. For the history and activities of the British solidarity movement groups, see Internationales Bildungs- und Begegnungswerk, Tschernobyl und die europäische Solidaritätsbewegung, 105–16.

The Politics of Chernobyl Fallout  183 43 This statement is based on a key word search in the digital newspaper archives ProQuest and Newsbank. 44 See for example, Mackay and Thompson, Something in the Wind; Haynes and Bojcun, The Chernobyl Disaster; Hamman and Parrott, Mayday at Chernobyl. 45 A very clear example in this regard is the report by the Chernobyl Forum, Chernobyl’s Legacy. 46 For a list of events and organizations contributing to this initiative, see the Chernobyl Day website, accessed 10 September 2013, http://www. chernobyl-day.org/. 47 On the benefit system in Ukraine, see Petryna, Life Exposed; Petryna, “Biological Citizenship.” 48 See Kuchinskaya, “Twice Invisible.” 49 The International Chernobyl Project (1989–1991) was a response to the request by the USSR to IAEA for an international experts’ assessment in October 1989. See IAEA, International Chernobyl Project, and Celier, Garnets, and Neuilly, UNESCO Centres for Socio-Psychological Rehabilitation. 50 UNSCEAR, “Annex J.” 51 “Chernobyl’s Legacy to Science,” Nature 380 (1996): 653. 52 Lindee, Suffering Made Real; Beatty, “Genetics in the Atomic Age.” 53 Butler, “Future of Chernobyl Health Studies.” 54 UNSCEAR was founded during the time of increasing global radiation levels due to atmospheric nuclear testing in 1955 in order to synthesize radiation knowledge. 55 Studies of medical and occupational exposures included patients exposed to diagnostic radiation (for example, Thorotrast, X-rays) and undergoing radiation therapy, for example for ankylosing spondylitis and studies of nuclear workers, respectively. 56 UNSCEAR, Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation. 57 For the notion of platform, see Keating and Cambrosio, Biomedical Platforms. 58 In addition to the UNSCEAR reports described, the International Committee of Radiation Protection (ICRP) and the regular US National Research Council’s “BEIR reports” (BEIR stands for biological effects of ionizing radiation) also produce such kinds of overviews, with a focus on exposure limits and cancer risk estimates from low-level exposure. 59 Williams and Baverstock, “Chernobyl and the Future.” 60 On epidemiological “quasi-experimentation,” see also Bauer, “Modeling Population Health.” 61 Michelle Murphy, “Uncertain Exposures.” 62 Jargin, “Validity of Thyroid Cancer Incidence Data.”

184  Bauer, Kalmbach, and Kasperski 63 Epidemiological studies are often built on already existing administrative data and registries established for other purposes. Data on specific variables are then selected, validated, and linked to other data. 64 Researchers chose categorizations of variables that mimicked the Japanese studies on bomb survivors to ensure that results were compatible with the format of existing radiation risk knowledge. Also in this way the Life Span Study (LSS) has worked as an infrastructure for radiation epidemiology. 65 Dosimetric techniques include cytogenetic studies, in particular chromosome aberrations, which are a biological marker assessed from blood samples. With post genomic refinements of the method and a clearly observable dose-response relation, chromosome aberrations were seen as the most promising tool for biodosimetry of acute exposures. Still, the persistence of this effect if measured decades after the exposure is contested. 66 Alexey V. Yablokov, “Chernobyl’s Public Health Consequences: Some Methodological Problems,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1181 (2009): 32–41. 67 See Jerry Jessee, “The Atomic Age and the Age of Ecology: The Atomic Energy Commission and the Origins of Radioecology,” paper presented at the Nuclear International Research Group (NIRG) Workshop, “The Nuclear Industry in the 21st Century Environment,” University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, 20–21 April 2012. 68 See for example Olga Kovalchuk et al., “Wheat Mutation Rate after Chernobyl,” Nature 407 (2000): 583. 69 Butler, “Future of Chernobyl Health Studies.” 70 These assessments include those by the official governmental boards of radiation protection and their research institutions that have been part of the nuclear program, such as the Institute of Biophysics and its branches, as well as key medical research centres, such as the Institutes of Medical Radiology in Obninsk, as well as independent researchers, for example, from the Russian Academy of Sciences. 71 Vasilii S. Kazakov, Evgeni P. Demidchik, and Larisa N. Astakhova, “Thyroid Cancer after Chernobyl,” Nature 359 (1992): 21. 72 P. Jacob et al., “Thyroid Cancer Risk to Children Calculated,” Nature 392 (1998): 31–2. 73 See Yablokov, Nesterenko, and Nesterenko, “Chernobyl”; UNSCEAR, “Annex D.” 74 Balanov, “On Protecting the Inexperienced Reader from Chernobyl Myths.” See also Jargin, “Debate on the Chernobyl Disaster”; Kaiser, Jacob, and Blettner, “Screening Effects in Risk Studies of Thyroid Cancer.” 75 Balanov, “On Protecting the Inexperienced Reader from Chernobyl Myths.”

The Politics of Chernobyl Fallout  185 76 This is not the unanimous view held by established scientists. Simulation studies also showed that the bias introduced might be of an “acceptable” size. See Kaiser, Jacob, and Blettner, “Screening Effects in Risk Studies of Thyroid Cancer.” 77 See, for example, J.M. Elwood, Critical Appraisal of Epidemiological Studies and Clinical Trials (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). 78 Elisabeth Cardis, quoted in Peplow, “Special Report.” 79 Olga Kuchinskaya has described some of these intersections, addressing how political shifts in paradigms of radiation protection and exposure limits were revised several times in Belarus. See Kuchinskaya, “Twice Invisible.” 80 Celier, Garnets, and Neuilly, UNESCO Centres for Socio-Psychological Rehabilitation. 81 Petryna, “Biological Citizenship,” 261. 82 Latour, “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam.” 83 Hecht, “Nuclear Ontologies.” 84 This pattern of shifting the source of the problem from the actual environmental pollution to the behaviour of individual victims is not unique to the case of Chernobyl. For instance, it also plays a prominent role in debates about the health impacts of uranium mines. See MacDowell, “The Elliot Lake Uranium Miners’ Battle.”

REFERENCES Arnold, Lorna. Windscale 1957: Anatomy of a Nuclear Accident. 2nd ed. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Balanov, M.I. “On Protecting the Inexperienced Reader from Chernobyl Myths.” Journal of Radiological Protection 32 (2012): 181–9. Bauer, Susanne. “Modeling Population Health. Reflections on the Performativity of Epidemiological Techniques in the Age of Genomics.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 27, no. 4 (2013): 510–30. Beatty, John. “Genetics in the Atomic Age: The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, 1947–1956.” In The Expansion of American Biology, edited by Keith R. Benson, Jane Maienschein, and Ronald Rainger, 284–384. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press, 1991. Beissinger, Mark. Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Brubaker, Rogers. Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Butler, Declan. “Future of Chernobyl Health Studies in Doubt: European Commission Unlikely to Fund Lifetime Studies of Those Affected

186  Bauer, Kalmbach, and Kasperski by Fallout.” Nature Online, 30 September 2011. doi:10.1038/news.2011.565. http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110930/full/news.2011.565.html. Celier, Priscilla, Oxana Garnets, and Marie Thérèse Neuilly. UNESCO Centres for Socio-Psychological Rehabilitation of the Population Affected by the Chernobyl Catastrophe in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine: Training Programme for a SelfSustainable Development. Report on Training Held in Minsk, 10 to 16 January, 1999. Paris: UNESCO, 1999. Chafer, Tony. “Politics and the Perception of Risk: A Study of the Anti-Nuclear Movements in Britain and France.” West European Politics 1 (1985): 5–23. Chernobyl Forum, The. Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental and SocioEconomic Impacts and Recommendations to the Governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Vienna: IAEA, 2006. “Chernobyl’s Legacy to Science.” Nature 380 (1996): 653. Crié, Hélène, and Yves Lenoir. Tchernobyl-sur-Seine. Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1987. Cutler, James, and Rob Edwards. Britain’s Nuclear Nightmare. London: Sphere, 1988. Dubreuil, Gilles Hériard, et al. The ETHOS Project in Belarus 1996–1998: Synthesis of the Major Outcomes of the ETHOS Research Project on the Rehabilitation of Living Conditions in Contaminated Territories Affected by the Chernobyl Accident. Paris: Mutadis, 2000. Dupuy, Jean-Pierre. Retour de Tchernobyl: journal d’un homme en colère. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2006. Elwood, J.M. Critical Appraisal of Epidemiological Studies and Clinical Trials. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Hamman, Henry, and Stuart Parrott. Mayday at Chernobyl. Sevenoaks, UK: New English Library, 1987. Haynes, Viktor, and Marko Bojcun. The Chernobyl Disaster. London: Hogarth, 1988. Hecht, Gabrielle. “Nuclear Ontologies.” Constellations 13, no. 3 (2006): 320–31. –  The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. IAEA. Environmental Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident and Their Remediation: Twenty Years of Experience. Report of the Chernobyl Forum Expert Group “Environment.” Vienna: IAEA, 2006. http://www-pub.iaea.org/ mtcd/publications/pdf/pub1239_web.pdf. –  The International Chernobyl Project: Assessment of Radiological Consequences and Evaluation of Protective Measures. Technical Reports STI/PUB/885. Vienna: IAEA, 1991. Iaroshinskaia, Alla. Chernobyl 20 let spustia: prestuplenie bez nakazaniia. Moscow: Vremia, 2006.

The Politics of Chernobyl Fallout  187 Ilyin, L.A., and O.A. Pavlovskij. “Radiological Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident in the Soviet Union and Measures Taken to Mitigate Their Impact: Analysis of Data Confirms the Effectiveness of Large-Scale Actions to Limit the Accident’s Effects.” IAEA Bulletin 4 (1987): 17–24. Internationales Bildungs- und Begegnungswerk, ed. Tschernobyl und die europäische Solidaritätsbewegung. Dortmund: IBB, 2011. IRSN. Baromètre IRSN 2006: La perception des situations à risques par les Français. Fontenay-aux-Roses: IRSN, 2006. Jacob, P., G. Goulko, W.F. Heidenreich, I. Likhtarev, I. Kairo, N.D. Tronko, T.I. Bogdanova, et al. “Thyroid Cancer Risk to Children Calculated.” Nature 392 (1998): 31–2. Jargin, Sergei V. “Debate on the Chernobyl Disaster: On the Causes of Chernobyl Overestimation. With Responses by Alexey Yablokov and Janette D. Sherman.” International Journal of Health Services 42 (2012): 29–46. –  “Validity of Thyroid Cancer Incidence Data following the Chernobyl Accident.” Health Physics 101 (2011): 754–7. Kaiser, Jan Christian, Peter Jacob, and Maria Blettner. “Screening Effects in Risk Studies of Thyroid Cancer after the Chernobyl Accident.” Radiation Environmental Biophysics 48 (2009): 169–79. Kalmbach, Karena. “Meanings of a Disaster: The Contested ‘Truth’ about Chernobyl: British and French Chernobyl Debates and the Transnationality of Arguments and Actors.” PhD diss., European University Institute Florence, 2014. –  “Radiation and Borders: Chernobyl as a National and Transnational Site of Memory.” Global Environment 11 (2013): 130–59. –  Tschernobyl und Frankreich – Die Debatte um die Auswirkungen des Reaktorunfalls im Kontext der französischen Atompolitik und Elitenkultur. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag, 2011. Kasperski, Tatiana. “The Chernobyl Nuclear Accident and Identity Strategies in Belarus.” In History, Memory and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe: Memory Games, edited by Georges Mink and Laure Neumayer, 121–35. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. –  “La politique de la mémoire d’une catastrophe nucléaire: les usages de l’accident de Tchernobyl en Biélorussie (1986–2008).” PhD diss., Sciences Po Paris, 2012. Kazakov, Vasilii S., Evgeni P. Demidchik, and Larisa N. Astakhova. “Thyroid Cancer after Chernobyl.” Nature 359 (1992): 21–2. Keating, Peter, and Alberto Cambrosio. Biomedical Platforms. Realigning the Normal and the Pathological in Late-Twentieth-Century Medicine. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2003.

188  Bauer, Kalmbach, and Kasperski Kovalchuk, Olga, Yuri E. Dubrova, Andrey Arkhipov, Barbara Hohn, and Igor Kovalchuk. “Wheat Mutation Rate after Chernobyl.” Nature 407 (2000): 583. Kuchinskaya, Olga. “Twice Invisible: Formal Representations of Radiation Danger.” Social Studies of Science 43 (2012): 78–96. Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam: From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30 (2004): 225–48. Lindee, Susan M. Suffering Made Real: American Science and the Survivors at Hiroshima. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Lochard, Jacques, P. Croüail, C. Bataille, I. Fiedler, G. Voigt, J. Mercer, A. Nisbet, et al. Strategies and Guidance for Establishing a Practical Radiation Protection Culture in Europe in Case of Long-Term Radioactive Contamination After a Nuclear Accident: Final Report. Paris: Centre d’étude sur l’Évaluation de la Protection dans le domaine Nucléaire (CEPN), 2005. Lochard, Jacques, and Serge Prêtre. “Return to Normality after a Radiological Emergency.” Health Physics 68, no. 1 (1995): 21–6. MacDowell, Laurel Sefton. “The Elliot Lake Uranium Miners’ Battle to Gain Occupational Health and Safety Improvements, 1950–1980.” Labour / Le Travail 69 (2012): 91–118. Mackay, Louis, and Mark Thompson. Something in the Wind: Politics after Chernobyl. London: Pluto, 1988. Martin, Terry. The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. Matsuki, Yoshio. “Communities Helping Themselves.” IAEA Bulletin 50, no. 2 (2009): 49–52. Medvedev, Zhores. The Legacy of Chernobyl. New York, London: Norton, 1999. Murphy, Michelle. “Uncertain Exposures and the Privilege of Imperception: Activist Scientists and Race at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.” In Landscapes of Exposure: Knowledge and Illness in Modern Environments, edited by Gregg Mitman, Michelle Murphy, and Christopher Sellers, 266–82. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Nisbet, Anne, and Rona Woodman. Options for the Management of ChernobylRestricted Areas in England and Wales. NRPB-R305. Chilton, UK: National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB), 1999. Peplow, Mark. “Special Report: Counting the Dead.” Nature 440 (2006): 982–3. Petryna, Adriana. “Biological Citizenship: The Science and Politics of Chernobyl-Exposed Populations.” In Landscapes of Exposure: Knowledge and Illness in Modern Environments, edited by Gregg Mitman, Michelle Murphy, and Christopher Sellers, 250–65. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. –  Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.

The Politics of Chernobyl Fallout  189 Phillips, Sarah Drue. “Chernobyl’s Sixth Sense: The Symbolism of an EverPresent Awareness.” Anthropology and Humanism 29, no. 2 (2004): 159–85. Rigby, Julie. “Principes et processus à l’oeuvre dans un projet d’amélioration de conditions de vie dans les territoires contaminées par la catastrophe de Tchernobyl-ETHOS I (1996–1998).” PhD diss., Université de Technologie de Compiègne, 2003. Simonnot, Philippe. Les nucléocrates. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1978. Topçu, Sezin. “Chernobyl Empowerment? Exporting ‘Participatory Governance’ to Contaminated Territories.” In Toxic World: Toxicants, Health and Regulation in the XXth Century, edited by Soraya Boudia and Nathalie Jas, 135–58. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2013. –  “Confronting Nuclear Risks: Counter-Expertise as Politics within the French Nuclear Energy Debate.” Nature and Culture 3 (2008): 225–45. Touraine, Alain. La prophétie anti-nucléaire. Paris: Seuil, 1980. –  “Réactions anti-nucléaires ou mouvement anti-nucléaire.” Sociologie et Société 13, no. 1 (1981): 117–45. UNDP/UNICEF. The Human Consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident. A Strategy for Recovery. New York: UNDP/UNICEF, 2002. UNESCO. Community Development Centres for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation Belarus, Russia and Ukraine: Achievements and Prospects. Paris: UNESCO, 1996. UNSCEAR. “Annex D: Health Effects Due to Radiation from the Chernobyl Accident.” In Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation: UNSCEAR 2008 Report to the General Assembly, with Scientific Annexes. Vol. II: Effects, 47–219. New York: United Nations, 2008. –  “Annex J: Exposures and Effects of the Chernobyl Accident.” In Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation: UNSCEAR 2000 Report to the General Assembly, with Scientific Annexes. Volume II: Effects, 453–566. New York: United Nations, 2000. Williams, Dillwyn, and Keith Baverstock. “Chernobyl and the Future: Too Soon for a Final Diagnosis.” Nature 440 (2006): 993–4. Wynne, Brian. “Misunderstood Misunderstanding: Social Identities and Public Uptake of Science.” Public Understanding of Science 1 (1992): 281–304. Yablokov, Alexey V. “Chernobyl’s Public Health Consequences: Some Methodological Problems.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1181 (2009): 32–41. Yablokov, Alexey V., Vassily B. Nesterenko, and Alexey Nesterenko. “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment.” Special Issue, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1181 (2009).

6 Permanence, Justice, and Nuclear Waste at Prairie Island james w. feldman

In 2010, President Barack Obama created the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, charging its fifteen members – a mix of politicians, academics, environmental activists, and energy industry executives – to review policies and options for managing the country’s ever-increasing supply of radioactive waste. After more than six decades of false starts, technical failures, public protests, and broken promises, the United States has no workable solution to the question of what to do with spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive waste. The search for a low-carbon energy source and the waste-related disaster at Fukushima Daiichi in 2011 further highlight the need to find a solution to the problem. The first line of the commission’s 2012 report succinctly stated the situation: “America’s nuclear waste management program is at an impasse.” The commission issued a set of recommendations that it hoped would point towards a solution to the dilemma. It suggested “a new, consent-based approach to siting future nuclear waste management facilities.” It also highlighted the virtual consensus that geologic storage – underground sequestration that will isolate waste from the environment for thousands of years – remains the best option. No similar consensus exists on where to site such a repository. “Siting storage or disposal facilities has been the most consistent and most intractable challenge.” Finding willing host communities has proven “exceptionally difficult” but has become essential in site selection. “Any attempt to force a top-down, federally mandated solution over the objections of a state or community … will take longer, cost more, and have lower odds of ultimate success.” While a siting decision needs to meet technical specifications, the commission found, the problems that have plagued past attempts to resolve the radioactive waste dilemma have been more social and political than technical.1

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Tracing the historical patterns of waste storage becomes a critical endeavour, given both the history of false starts and new awareness of the necessity for local input and consent in radioactive waste management decisions. The Blue Ribbon Commission’s insistence on the importance of a consent-based approach to radioactive waste underscores the need to know how people have viewed and discussed this issue in the past, and how these views and discussions have changed over time. In the absence of a federal repository, where did the waste actually go? How did the communities that encountered radioactive waste on a daily basis deal with it? Prairie Island, a small Mississippi River island 30 miles southeast of Minneapolis, is one of these places. Since the 1970s, the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant has been the subject of path-breaking protests and regulatory battles over the storage of nuclear waste. The plans of Northern States Power Company, the utility that built and operated the plant, to store spent fuel at the reactor drew widespread opposition from local residents, environmentalists, and the Mdewakanton Sioux, a small tribal group with lands neighbouring the power plant. As Bell and Bell note in this volume (chapter 8), the presence of nuclear facilities forces communities to negotiate unstable relationships among economics, identity, environmental and public health, and the tensions and uncertainties created by each of these variables. At Prairie Island, these issues revolved around the question of permanence: just how long would radioactive waste remain a threat to the community? The controversy provided a stage for different conceptions of the public good to come into conflict. Protesters saw the waste as permanent, and believed that the plan violated emerging principles of environmental justice by placing a disproportionate amount of the risk for environmental harm upon already marginalized groups. Supporters of the storage plan defined public health and permanence differently, suggesting that the eventual removal of the waste would mitigate local harms and that the broader public good would be best served by spreading the economic benefits of low-cost energy, the continued generation of nuclear power, and the storage of spent fuel at Prairie Island. In the early 1990s, protesters forced the issue out of the regulatory arena and into the legislative one – ensuring that the Minnesota Legislature would take a contentious vote to allow waste storage at Prairie Island. Prairie Island became a national test case for the dry cask storage of spent fuel at reactors, now the nuclear industry’s standard procedure given the continuing inability of the federal government to craft a long-term storage plan. The controversy drew together wider issues involving environmental justice

192  James W. Feldman Figure 6.1. Singer Bonnie Raitt addressed more than 400 protesters who rallied at the Minnesota state capitol in February 1994 to protest the proposed storage of radioactive waste in dry casks at the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant. The coalition that emerged to oppose the storage proposal put the rhetoric of environmental justice at the centre of its argument.

Source: Duane Braley. Copyright 1994, Star Tribune.

and sustainability, and serves as an important case study for the debate in the United States about nuclear energy and radioactive waste and for the reformulation of environmental issues in a way that puts social analysis squarely at the centre of environmental protest. This essay explores how different stakeholders have discussed and understood the radioactive waste dilemma and what might be termed a “discourse of radioactive waste.” If radioactive waste is as much a moral and political issue as a technical one, then how people have talked, debated, and protested matters greatly. Experts and bureaucrats have been exploring the options for waste disposal in the United States since the 1950s. Whenever they have tried to make plans for

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siting a repository in a specific place, however, they have met bitter ­opposition – and at times, sustained public protest – from local stakeholders. Discussions about siting such a repository have focused on several interrelated questions: Who has benefitted from the use of nuclear power? Who holds the responsibility for storing the radioactive by-products of nuclear energy? Who faces the burden of risk generated by these radioactive materials? In conversations about how and where to deal with radioactive waste, local and national stakeholders, environmentalists, experts, and bureaucrats have conducted an extensive dialogue on how to balance competing and contested concerns about public and environmental health, economic security, and social justice. At Prairie Island, the discourse on waste focused increasingly on how to define the public good and how to understand the presence of temporary gains and permanent risks shared disproportionately. Early attempts to find a permanent system for the storage and disposal of radioactive waste paid scant attention to these social questions. In the earliest years of the nuclear age, the military and civilian leaders who headed the nuclear industry put very little thought into waste disposal. Waste was dumped in the oceans, thrown into shallow desert pits, and left to accumulate at power plants and weapons facilities. As plans for a repository developed, conflict about how to balance the economic imperatives, public and environmental health risks, and social concerns crystalized. In the 1950s, scientists postulated that the best possible solution would be to embed radioactive wastes deep within mined salt formations. This led to an effort in the early 1970s by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to build a repository in an abandoned salt mine near Lyons, Kansas. The effort faced bitter opposition from locals and the state of Kansas, and was eventually abandoned, both because of these concerns as well as worries about the site’s technical feasibility. Fifteen years of bureaucratic stalemate, academic study, and poor public relations followed. In the 1980s, hopes for a repository site focused increasingly on Yucca Mountain, Nevada, and exclusively so after the 1987 Nuclear Waste Policy Amendment Act. This site, too, faced fierce local opposition and charges that the location had been chosen for political rather than technical reasons, and the Department of Energy in 2009 put the project on an indefinite hold. In each case, the federal government wielded its “top-down” authority in an attempt to establish a repository against the wishes of local and state communities, and federal experts failed to recognize the social concerns at the heart of local opposition. While these debates over the

194  James W. Feldman

siting of a national repository played out, spent nuclear fuel built up at reactors around the country, creating a host of technical problems and localized protests over radioactive waste and nuclear power. Nowhere were these debates more significant or contested than at Prairie Island.2 Promoting, Regulating, and Protesting Nuclear Power in Minnesota Like many nuclear power plants, the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Station became a target of protest and dispute long before it started producing power. Northern States Power (NSP) initially proposed the plant in response to two key energy trends: growing concern about the sulphur dioxide pollution produced by coal plants and the anticipated boom in commercial nuclear energy. The company did not expect opposition to its plans, and the plant had sailed through the permitting process by the AEC, the US Public Health Service, and the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration with little controversy. NSP started acquiring land on the island in 1960, prepared the site in 1967, and began construction of the twin 520,000 megawatt pressurized water reactors a year later. Construction ran slightly behind schedule, but workers completed Unit 1 in September 1973 and Unit 2 early the following year.3 As construction on the Prairie Island reactor proceeded, an antinuclear movement based in Minneapolis-Saint Paul coalesced. The trigger for this emerging opposition was the request by NSP for a state permit to discharge small amounts of heated water and low-level radioactive wastes into the Mississippi River at Prairie Island and at Monticello, another nuclear plant under construction to the northwest of Minneapolis. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) had been created in 1967 and given the authority to issue permits to control pollution of the state’s air and water. At the MPCA’s February 1968 public hearing on the Monticello permit, a group of scientists from the University of Minnesota raised their concerns about the impact of the thermal and radioactive discharges on the river’s marine life and potential implications for the water supplies of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, as both cities drew their drinking water from the Mississippi downstream of the Monticello plant. Mayor Arthur Naftalin told the MPCA that the issue was “a matter of the gravest concern to the people of Minneapolis” and asked that the agency enforce strict standards on radioactive discharges. Naftalin suggested that the issue was one of balancing costs

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with public health. “Perhaps we are imposing standards which may turn out to be unnecessary but I believe the public is willing to pay for adequate health protection and I do not think we can be too careful at any time where public health is involved.” All of the parties involved in the growing controversy agreed with Naftalin’s point about the need to balance economics, environmental concerns, and public health, but they disagreed strongly on how to prioritize these factors and on the potential impact of the reactors at Monticello and Prairie Island. The brewing controversy grew to include permits for both plants and the role of states in regulating the entire nuclear power industry. For the first time, organized citizen protest played a significant role in the construction and licensing of a commercial nuclear plant in the United States.4 Facing growing public concern, the MPCA slowed the permitting process and hired an expert consultant to help it determine the best course of action. Dr Ernest C. Tsivoglou, a former federal public health official who had been critical of the AEC in the past, reviewed literature on radiation exposure and the specific controversy over the Monticello plant. He, too, saw the issue as one of balancing a variety of factors. The MPCA should maintain “a positive and aggressive policy of minimizing environmental radioactive pollution, while at the same time maintaining a rational perspective” on the potential benefits of nuclear power. This meant a cautious approach that ensured that any radioactivity released would remain far below the levels suggested as safe by the AEC. Tsivoglou also cautioned against overreacting to the perceived threat of radiation. He noted the “tendency to lose perspective regarding the relative importance of radioactive pollution, and to become highly preoccupied with radioactivity to the point of exclusion from consideration of other kinds of pollution and of the relative risks or hazards associated with other aspects of daily existence.” Tsivoglou reaffirmed the role of the MPCA in using its regulatory authority to balance the needs of public health and economic production. In June 1969, MPCA issued a permit that allowed the discharge of both heated and radioactive water into the Mississippi River, but at levels approximately one third of what was permitted by the AEC permit. The MPCA drew immediate opposition from all sides – both those promoting nuclear power as well as those who favoured strict regulation of the new technology – and thrust Minnesota into the national eye as a test case for the regulation of radiation in the environment.5 NSP officials believed that standards set by the AEC permit both protected public safety and allowed for the efficient operation of the

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plant, and also that only the AEC, and not the state of Minnesota, had the right to regulate radioactive discharges. Company officers believed that the MPCA had set permissible levels of radioactivity “so low that they cannot be measured by presently developed technology.” Remaining in compliance with the permit would force the Monticello plant to run far below capacity and shut down frequently to remain under the allowable discharge levels; it would “eliminate it as a dependable source of electric power.” The consequences of an unreliable power supply would be far greater than the negligible impacts of radioactive discharges. NSP had been charged with supplying reliable power, and a “failure to adequately discharge this responsibility would have consequences more severe in their import and effect upon the economy of the area and the public health and safety than many of the speculative and ill-founded fears voiced … by opponents of the plant.” Disregarding the state permit while it sought a resolution to the legal questions of the right of the MPCA to regulate, NSP began operating the Monticello reactor in 1970.6 Concern about the possible environmental and health consequences of the nuclear plants continued to spread. The Minnesota Environmental Control Citizens’ Association (MECCA) had formed in 1968 in response to a local air pollution issue, but opposition to the discharge of radioactive waste from Monticello and Prairie Island became one of the group’s key concerns. MECCA members developed a policy in opposition “to any nuclear power system that intentionally discharges radioactive waste into the environment,” explained Robert Nelson, the group’s chair. “This position is based on a general scientific agreement that there is no safe level of exposure to radiation … We feel that only a zero emission system – one with no planned radioactive discharge and no leakage measurable with today’s best detection devices – should be acceptable to the people of Minnesota.” In August 1970, MECCA delivered a petition signed by 10,000 residents of the Twin Cities, asking the state to take legal action to stop the fueling of the Monticello plant and to withhold its approval of the permits. “This petition is one more example of how the citizens of this community have repeatedly and strongly objected to the operation of a nuclear reactor … that will release radioactive isotopes into the air we breathe, the water we drink and the soil in which our food is grown,” explained one MECCA officer. Unlike the NSP statements on the issue, MECCA spokespersons focused on the potential environmental and public health consequences of radioactive discharges rather than the potential economic implications of moving

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away from nuclear power. Local media coverage intensified after the Minneapolis newspapers reported in July 1971 that an unplanned discharge of radioactive water at Monticello had passed through the city’s drinking water plant before the intake pipes could be closed. City health officials expected no adverse consequences, but the issue heightened concerns about the safety of nuclear power.7 The regulatory dispute between NSP and MPCA not only galvanized the anti-nuclear movement in Minnesota, it also led to a precedentsetting legal decision with significant consequences for the commercial nuclear power industry. In 1969, soon after the MPCA issued its permit, NSP filed a lawsuit challenging the right of Minnesota to set its own regulatory standards, arguing that Congress had granted the AEC the exclusive right to regulate radiation. Federal and state regulators, industry insiders, and anti-nuclear protesters from around the country eagerly awaited the outcome of the case, which would set a precedent that other states would surely follow. Twelve other states joined Minnesota as plaintiffs, and the National Governor’s Conference unanimously adopted a resolution supporting states’ rights to regulate radiation. “Minnesota is the center of the atomic industry right now,” explained one local correspondent. “We are establishing guidelines for the entire industry.” In December 1970, a federal judge ruled in NSP’s favour, finding that Congress had indeed intended the AEC to have sole regulatory power. An appeal by the state to the district court upheld this decision, and the US Supreme Court declined to hear the case. The decision cleared a significant legal hurdle for both the AEC and the nuclear industry, seeming to make way for the long-predicted expansion of nuclear power.8 Spent Nuclear Fuel at Prairie Island As the anti-nuclear movement grew more sophisticated, the focus of the debate shifted from exposure to radiation and the risk of accidents – issues that protesters had used effectively to raise public awareness about the risks of nuclear power – to more technical issues such as the viability of commercial reprocessing and the storage of spent nuclear fuel. When engineers designed the first wave of commercial reactors, they planned to store spent fuel at the reactors in cooling pools for only a few years, after which the fuel would be transported to centralized locations for commercial reprocessing. After its use in a reactor, the spent fuel rods contained a mixture of uranium and plutonium, and

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had used only a small amount of the fuel’s fissionable material. Reprocessing – dissolving the highly radioactive spent fuel rods with nitric acid – allowed for the chemical separation of plutonium and uranium. This had several important consequences. It made 99 per cent of the uranium and plutonium from the spent fuel available for commercial reuse in the form of mixed oxide fuel. Experts regarded the use of mixed oxide fuels and reactors that could run on plutonium as necessary for the expansion of the nuclear power industry. The wastes that resulted from the reprocessing, however, were in liquid rather than solid form, which made them much more difficult to store or to transport. The separation of plutonium created an additional concern: plutonium served as the essential component of nuclear weapons. Making plutonium available as a commercial fuel raised the risks of plutonium falling into the hands of terrorist organizations or leading to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in other nations. Furthermore, the commercial viability of reprocessing remained unclear. All of these concerns – although primarily fear of nuclear proliferation – caused President Jimmy Carter to issue a moratorium on commercial reprocessing in 1977.9 These national-level policy issues had significant on-the-ground consequences at Prairie Island, as they did at reactors around the country. In its initial design, Prairie Island had space at the facility for the storage of 210 spent fuel assemblies in its spent fuel pool. Used fuel would be covered by circulating water until it had cooled to a point that would allow transportation to a reprocessing facility. In 1976, NSP requested and received permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the NRC had replaced the AEC in 1975) to expand its spent fuel storage capacity at Prairie Island to 687 assemblies, arguing that it needed the additional space until commercial reprocessing became viable. The MPCA unsuccessfully challenged the decision to allow this expansion without the preparation of an environmental impact statement.10 In 1979, just two years after completing its initial expansion, NSP again requested permission to re-engineer its spent fuel pool at Prairie Island, this time to hold 1,582 fuel assemblies.11 This second NSP request led to another round of regulatory hearings. Although it continued to deny the right of the state of Minnesota to regulate radioactive waste, NSP applied to the Minnesota Energy Agency (MEA) for a “certificate of need,” which was required for the fuel expansion, as well as for an amendment to its operating license with the NRC. The company justified the expansion on the grounds that the economic benefits of nuclear power production far outweighed

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the negligible risks to public health and the environment. As spent fuel accumulated at the reactor, and without the availability of commercial reprocessing or away-from-reactor storage, NSP suggested that it had only two options at Prairie Island: shut down the plant or modify the spent fuel pools. The company made it clear that it did “not consider shutting down Prairie Island a viable option.” The reactors provided 30 per cent of NSP’s electricity; closing the facility would lead to an interruption of electricity service, decreased reliability, and an estimated cost of 160 million dollars to replace the capacity of the reactor with purchases from other utilities. Without an expansion of the spent fuel pool, NSP would be forced to shut down the reactor entirely by 1983. The company insisted that there would be little additional exposure to radioactivity: “the incremental environmental impact of the proposed modification is insignificant.” Weighing the combined economic, social, and environmental impacts of their request, NSP officials concluded that “the real ‘socially beneficial use’ of the proposed modification is that it allows continued operation of the Prairie Island Plant.” NSP officials once again advanced their own vision of the public good.12 The MPCA renewed its attempts to secure an environmental impact statement (EIS) for waste storage at Prairie Island, placing concern over permanence at the centre of its argument and suggesting that the longterm presence of nuclear waste fundamentally changed the calculus for determining both environmental harm and public good. The MPCA contended that the expansion of the spent fuel pool constituted the creation of a semi-permanent nuclear waste site at the reactor, on an island in the Mississippi River, and appealed yet again to the NRC to require the creation of an EIS. The NRC had prepared a generic EIS on the issue of expanding the spent fuel pools at reactors around the country; MPCA and other opponents of the plan asked for consideration of conditions specific to Prairie Island, given their contention that the action constituted the creation of a permanent waste repository. One MPCA attorney explained: “[T]here is no assurance as to when, if ever, the spent fuel stored at the site will be transported from the site. Thus, the proposed action has the potential to make the Prairie Island site an indefinite repository for a large amount of radioactive waste. This has the potential for significant environmental effects in terms of additional radioactive air and thermal emissions.” The plant had not been engineered for permanent storage, and environmental assessments had not been conducted with this permanence in mind. An EIS would help anticipate the potential impacts of long-term storage.13

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Anti-nuclear activists shared these concerns about permanence. A group called the Prairie Island Intervention Project formed to pressure the state to prepare an EIS on the issue, pleading its case before the state’s Environmental Quality Board (EQB) in public hearings that took place in 1980.14 The coalition consisted of eight organizations, including avowedly anti-nuclear groups like MECCA, but also several grassroots organizations that stressed the need for broad public input. The American Indian Movement (AIM) joined the coalition as well, and tribal opposition to the Prairie Island reactor would become increasingly prominent in the next decade. The coalition represented a broadening of concern about the impact of the Prairie Island reactors, and dozens of residents of the Red Wing area testified in front of the EQB. The issue of permanence emerged as a key concern. One Prairie Island Project circular publicized the EQB hearings, stating that “this matter has serious implications for all of us … Now is the time for the people committed to a safe-energy future to join in strong opposition to the threat of permanent storage of radioactive waste on the banks of the Mississippi.” One of the many residents of the region who testified at the hearings linked the issue of permanence to her worries about public and environmental health. “Radioactivity lasts virtually forever. It is deadly to mankind, all other living creatures and to our environment. It is vitally important that decisions of such magnitude as the one we are facing with NSP’s proposal to increase radioactive storage at Prairie Island be based on as much information as possible. It is a decision that will affect generations out of mind.” In public hearings in Red Wing and Saint Paul, almost all who testified as citizens – as opposed to representatives or experts of NSP or the Prairie Island Project – opposed the expansion of fuel storage at Prairie Island, or at least demanded the completion of an EIS.15 NSP officials responded to the concerns about the permanence of waste storage by trying to separate the practical issue of spent fuel storage at the reactor from the more contentious national issues of reprocessing and radioactive waste disposal. Dale Vincent, a project engineer for NSP, stated the company’s position unequivocally: “NSP does not now and has never intended that the Prairie Island spent fuel pool should become a permanent repository for spent fuel. NSP has committed to the MPCA and to the Federal Government that we will ship spent fuel off site as soon as a storage facility becomes available for Prairie Island’s spent fuel.” Vincent thought that the EQB should focus its inquiry on the current proposal to expand the fuel pool. “The

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planned modification does not depend upon the ultimate availability of reprocessing and does not involve reprocessing. Whether wastes from reprocessing can be disposed of or not has nothing to do with the question of the environmental impacts of modifying the spent fuel pool at Prairie Island on a short term storage basis.”16 Local concern about the Prairie Island reactor had peaked just as NSP submitted its request for expanded storage, and this changed the tenor of the debate. In October 1979 – just one month after NSP filed its request with the state and six months after the crisis at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania – a ruptured steam tube triggered a radiation alarm at Prairie Island, shut down the reactor, and sent the plant’s workers streaming out of the facility. Only a minimal amount of radiation escaped, but the fallout from the incident was much more significant. Local residents did not hear about the radiation alarm and plant evacuation from NSP or from the government, but rather from a public radio station in Red Wing. Residents of the Mdewakanton Sioux community, located next to the reactor, did not hear about the scare from anyone; they simply noticed the cars leaving the plant well before the end of the shift. The confused response by the company and the government sparked an immediate reaction. Three hundred protesters rallied at the NSP headquarters in Minneapolis and fifty more marched on the Red Wing city hall, demanding the shutdown of the Prairie Island facility. Clyde Bellecourt, executive director of AIM, charged that reservation land had been “totally contaminated by NSP.” While this was an exaggeration, the AIM leader’s comments highlighted the perceived threat that the reactor posed to the Mdewakanton Sioux community.17 Despite the public pressure, the EQB determined in September 1980 that the expansion of the spent fuel pool “did not have the potential for significant environmental effects” and did not require an EIS. The NRC came to the same conclusion. The Minnesota Energy Agency subsequently granted the certificate of need, largely on the basis of the economic interpretation of the public good suggested by NSP: denial would have “an adverse effect upon the future adequacy, reliability, safety, or efficiency of energy supply to NSP, its customers, and to the people of Minnesota and neighboring states.” Mark Mason, the director of MEA, suggested that many of those opposed to spent fuel pool expansion wanted to shut down the plant entirely, but that this question lay beyond the purview of his agency. “It is clear from the record of this proceeding that some members of the public strongly oppose nuclear power in general … Areas other than spent fuel temporary

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storage are not proper subjects for this particular proceeding … [T]he Agency’s mandate is not universal.” Questions about the use of nuclear power, Mason suggested, would be more properly addressed by the state legislature. And that is just where the controversy was headed.18 Permanence and Environmental Justice at Prairie Island The continuing failure of the federal government to determine a national policy for the storage and disposal of high-level radioactive waste ensured that Northern States Power, and nuclear reactors around the country, would face the continuing dilemma of where to store spent fuel. In 1982, in an attempt to resolve the issue, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA), which required the Department of Energy (DOE) to identify sites for a federal repository. The bill mandated the selection of one site in the eastern United States – where the vast majority of nuclear waste was generated – and one in the west. The act included a variety of provisions to ensure equity and local participation in decisions about siting the waste repository, and also set up a fund to help pay for the project, created out of fees charged to nuclear energy. This ensured that those who benefitted from the energy would pay for the repository. Congress also set 1998 as the date by which spent nuclear fuel would be moved from commercial reactors to a federal facility. But the NWPA did not function as intended. DOE ceased its search for an eastern repository in the mid-1980s, and Congress amended the act in 1987, selecting Yucca Mountain – against the strident objections of the state of Nevada – as the site of a single facility that would accept all of the nation’s high-level radioactive waste. Nevada’s refusal to cooperate with the federal government and other delays ensured that DOE did not initiate its study of the Yucca Mountain site until 1992. By this point, it was clear that the federal government would default on its 1998 deadline for accepting waste, and that utilities around the country would need to pursue other solutions for the spent fuel problem.19 In 1988, NSP announced that it could no longer wait for a federal repository. The company proposed to transfer fuel that had resided in the cooling pools for over ten years to an independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI). The ISFSI consisted of “dry casks” – forty-eight massive, pressurized, concrete-and-steel containers that would reside outside of the reactor on concrete pads. NSP’s announcement once again thrust Prairie Island into the national eye. Although it would not

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be the first reactor to construct a dry cask ISFSI – three others already used the technology – industry watchers expected the Minnesota case to become the most controversial. As one commentator explained, the looming regulatory battle would “reverberate far beyond Minnesota … [O]ther utilities and regulators are watching. And antinuclear forces here and elsewhere believe that waste storage is the industry’s Achilles’ heel, the best way to roll back nuclear power and eventually strangle the nation’s 111 nuclear plants.”20 Hoping to avoid some of the regulatory acrimony that had marked its previous requests, NSP officials asked the EQB to conduct an EIS on the proposed facility in 1989. With an EIS finding no significant impact as a part of the record, NSP submitted a formal application for a certificate of need.21 Once again, the company’s justifications rested on economic grounds. Without the ISFSI, Prairie Island’s two reactors would close by 1995 – leading to an economic disaster. Nuclear power remained the company’s cheapest source of energy, and NSP relied heavily on the two reactors at Prairie Island, which accounted for 20 per cent of the state’s power supply. Company officials estimated the cost of replacing the plant’s generating capacity and building a new power plant at 1 billion dollars, and cited millions of dollars of lost local and state tax revenues. “This would represent a significant and unnecessary expense for NSP ratepayers and adversely impact the economic development of those areas served by NSP.” Dry cask storage represented the best possible solution to the spent fuel dilemma. The technology protected public and occupational health, had minimal environmental impact, and could be applied without impairing the continued operation of the reactors.22 NSP officials made the explicit case that Prairie Island not only represented their cheapest and most efficient source of power, but also that the plant had served as a world leader in safety and efficiency. Company officials cited an industry journal that had rated Prairie Island Unit 2 as the second most efficient reactor in the world and Unit 1 as seventh; no other American reactors had placed in the top ten. Prairie Island’s workplace radiation exposure numbers measured less than a quarter of the national average, and the reactor generated low-level waste at a rate of less than one third the national average.23 The reactors had won awards from the NRC as well as from several industry groups. The Prairie Island plant’s strong record raised the stakes in the looming controversy over the future of nuclear power; if anti-nuclear protesters could use the radioactive waste issue to shut down a model

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plant like Prairie Island, what would this signal for commercial reactors elsewhere?24 Before the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) would make a decision on NSP’s application, however, state policy sent the issue to administrative law court for a review of the legal questions at hand and a non-­binding recommendation. This administrative procedure became a crucial turning point in the long history of nuclear energy at Prairie Island – and around the country – and the question of permanence emerged as the legal crux of the matter. In hearings in Red Wing, the Prairie Island Reservation, and Saint Paul in December 1991, Judge Allan W. Klein heard expert testimony from both sides, as well as the comments of 162 members of the public, and he also received almost 5,000 written statements. After finding in favour of NSP on several complicated legal questions, Klein issued a ruling that radically changed the nature of the debate over radioactive waste storage at Prairie Island.25 Klein determined that the ISFSI should be considered a “permanent” repository and therefore required legislative authorization. In 1977, the Minnesota Legislature had passed the Radioactive Waste Management Act in response to the federal government’s search for a site to build a permanent repository for the nation’s radioactive waste. The law aimed to prevent the construction of a facility in Minnesota like Yucca Mountain by requiring explicit legislative approval for the construction of a permanent waste storage facility. It defined such a facility as “a geographic site, including buildings, structures, and equipment in or upon which radioactive waste is retrievably or irretrievably disposed by burial in soil or permanently stored.” The two sides in Judge Klein’s administrative court vigorously contested whether or not the ISFSI constituted a management facility separate from the reactor and whether or not the waste would be stored there “permanently.” The issue revolved around whether or not the federal government would fulfil its obligation of accepting commercial spent fuel by 1998 or sometime soon thereafter. Judge Klein believed that it would not. He had no confidence that the Department of Energy would open a facility at Yucca Mountain – or any alternative site – in the near future. “If we knew that the dry cask storage would be temporary, then it is a reasonably safe and cost effective way to deal with the storage problem, and would be eligible to receive a Certificate of Need … Unfortunately, past delays in federal siting raise questions about whether the dry cask storage will be temporary or will end up being permanent … Once the casks are in place, the path of least resistance is to leave them there

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indefinitely.” The ISFSI, Klein ruled, would require authorization from the full Minnesota Legislature.26 This was exactly the kind of ruling that anti-nuclear forces had worked to achieve for more than two decades. It ensured that the entire public would engage in the debate over nuclear power in Minnesota. Previous discussions had never left the dark rooms of the regulatory process; even public hearings saw only limited citizen participation. One member of the Mdewakanton Sioux community called the ruling “a great victory and a great day for democracy … [T]he citizens of the state will at last have a voice, through their elected officials, in the critical decision of whether to store high-level nuclear waste on the banks of the Mississippi River.” As the celebrations continued, however, the PUC opted to disregard Judge Klein’s advisory recommendation and issue the certificate of need. The Mdewakanton community and the Prairie Island Coalition (PIC) – a group that now included over thirty environmental, consumer, and student groups – filed suit in state court seeking to halt construction, alleging that the facility first required legislative approval. A group of sixty-nine state legislators filed a brief with the court as well, stating their belief that this issue should come before the legislative branch “due to the magnitude of the issues.” The state court of appeals agreed, sending the debate to the legislature.27 Squarely in the public eye, the controversy became, in the eyes of one commentator, “the hottest and most divisive environmental, energy, and jobs issues seen in Minnesota in decades.” In February 1994, after seven months of deliberation, Democratic Senator Steve Novak introduced a bill that would allow NSP to store seventeen dry casks at Prairie Island – far fewer than the forty-eight requested by the company, but enough to keep Prairie Island open until the federal government could make good on its promise to assume responsibility for the spent fuel. Four hundred supporters of the bill travelled to the Capitol for a rally on the day that a Senate committee voted in favour of the bill. Protests against the bill were more frequent and often larger. Singers Bonnie Raitt and Dave Pirner sang at a protest concert at the University of Minnesota; protests in downtown Minneapolis blocked rush hour traffic; a rally at Prairie Island gathered 800 opponents of the storage plan. As the bill proceeded through many iterations and hearings in both the State Senate and House, the debates inside the legislature were no less acrimonious. Senate Majority Leader Roger Moe, a twenty-four–year veteran of the legislature, called it the most divisive issue of his tenure. “It has members at one another … It has evolved into a very, very nasty

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issue.” At least two state senators received death threats, and the state police limited admission to the public galleries of the legislature during debate to minimize disruptions.28 The controversy split traditional political alliances and created strange political bedfellows. Democrats controlled the State House, and Steve Novak, a Democratic senator from suburban Minneapolis, took the lead in advocating for legislative authorization for dry cask storage. But most of the opposition to the bill came from Democrats as well. Most – but not all – Republican legislators supported dry cask storage. In addition to NSP, the Minnesota branch of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) provided significant support for the storage bill, creating an unlikely alliance between the organized labour movement and a large corporation. On the other hand, the controversy brought the American Indian Movement and the state’s environmental organizations together – two groups that did not always work towards the same ends.29 Indeed, the opposition to the dry cask storage at Prairie Island hinged on a coalition of the Mdewakanton Sioux community and environmental groups that used the increasingly sophisticated rhetoric of environmental justice to make their case to the broader public. Environmental justice emerged in the 1980s in response to the recognition that minority communities around the United States and the world faced a disproportionate risk of environmental harm while having little chance to participate effectively in environmental decision making. The siting of incinerators, toxic waste dumps, and landfills near these communities served as a particularly powerful example of environmental racism. The movement blended the racial critique of the civil rights movement with the anti-corporate commentary that emerged after the Love Canal disaster in the 1970s. Environmental justice advocates adopted a much more inclusive view of nature than the mainstream environmental groups, defining the environment as their places of work, play, and worship, rather than as distant, pristine wilderness areas or national parks. The controversy over the storage of radioactive waste at Prairie Island contained all of the elements that had coalesced into the environmental justice movement. But it also represented a fusion of environmental justice concerns with those of the more traditional environmental movement and a blending of social and environmental concerns.30 As the debate over radioactive waste at Prairie Island escalated, opponents of dry cask storage increasingly relied on the rhetoric of environmental justice. As had been the case in 1979, a radiation scare

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peaked concern just as the issue became controversial. In 1990, surveys discovered traces of the radioactive isotope tritium in tribal well water, likely from a leak in the plant’s discharge system. Although the releases remained well within federal safety limits, the presence of the isotope raised the fears of those living closest to the plant. Mdewakanton Sioux Vice-Chair Darelynn Lehto described her community’s opposition to the project: “Would you want this dumped next door to your homes, your day care center, your business?” As the dry cask bill worked its way through the legislature, the state’s American Indian leaders held a press conference with the leaders of the state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The groups labelled the plan a classic example of “environmental racism” and yet another case of environmental risk with harm falling disproportionately on people of colour. “Would any other community be expected to make room for a radioactive waste dump?” Lehto asked. “We do not want to live in fear of radiation sickness, we do not want to live in fear of a nuclear accident and we do not want to be forced off our land for the convenience and profit of a utility company.” A key point of the environmental justice movement was the demonstration that incidents like Prairie Island were not isolated, but part of a systemic pattern of environmental racism that cut across time, geography, and racial group. The Mdewakanton Sioux saw the Prairie Island proposal in just this way. “The Community finds itself in a vulnerable position, a position in which most groups of Indian people have found themselves since the arrival of European settlers. The Community lacks resources and knowledge to provide an informed critique of the scientific issues involved in the NSP proposal.” The Mdewakanton connected the local situation to other examples of environmental racism, from the siting of waste dumps to the health risks associated with radiation.31 Claims about the environmental injustice of the Prairie Island plant took on added meaning when NSP announced that it had reached a preliminary agreement with the Mescalero Apache tribe in New Mexico for the construction of a facility that could store the waste generated by NSP and other utilities until the federal government completed the Yucca Mountain repository. To the Prairie Island Coalition and the Mdewakanton community, the proposal seemed to be yet another example of “radioactive colonialism” and a society that forced its most vulnerable members to face greater risks from radiation. Not surprisingly, the Mescalero initiative proved controversial, and the plan eventually failed. Back in Minnesota, opponents of the ISFSI at Prairie Island alleged that

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the proposal had never been more than a ruse perpetuated by NSP to convince the public that Minnesota’s waste would eventually be moved.32 Arguments about environmental justice came not just from the Mdewakanton Sioux community, but from the groups involved in the PIC as well. The heart of the argument against the proposal for dry cask storage came down to the belief that once put in dry casks, the waste would remain at Prairie Island, causing an already underprivileged group to bear a disproportionate amount of the risks of harm. “The Mdewakanton Sioux Community is being asked to bear increased risks because government has failed to provide for adequate permanent storage of spent nuclear fuel,” stated the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition. All members of society – including the most marginalized – had a right to participate in decisions about such topics as energy and waste disposal. “Participation means that energy decisions are made not by a small body of experts, planners or entrepreneurs but by the public at large armed with essential information about the costs and benefits of various energy choices. To the fullest extent possible, the public must participate in decisions about energy use patterns and supply choices, especially the allocation of costs and harms.”33 Supporters of the dry cask plan disputed both the description of the facility as permanent and the focus on the risk faced by one marginal group. The nearby community of Red Wing, Minnesota – where most of the plant workers lived and which received the tax revenues generated by the plant – became a centre for support of the ISFSI plan. A group called Citizens Alliance for Reliable Energy (CARE) formed to lobby for legislative authorization. CARE members described the group as “a local, grass roots organization who is working very, very hard in order to promote a Common Sense decision regarding temporary storage of spent fuel. The organization has membership from all walks of life in Red Wing. This organization realizes the significance of this issue and represents the majority of citizens in our community” (emphasis in the original). CARE urged legislators to consider the broader impact of shutting down the plant. Refusing to approve the ISFSI would not solve the problem of radioactive waste storage but would lead to layoffs, reduced tax revenues, and higher energy costs that would be felt throughout the community, not by a single group.34 Amidst the controversy, legislators continued to work on the issue. For much of the legislative session, it appeared that no common ground could be found. If the legislature failed to act, most experts agreed that NSP would be forced to close the plant, or at least significantly curtail

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power generation. Finally, just hours before the close of the session, the legislature passed a bill that seemed to offer something to both sides: NSP would get authority to build seventeen dry casks, enough to run the reactor through 2000, but would then shut down the plant if it had no alternative storage for spent fuel. NSP would also develop renewable energy capacity so that it could decrease its reliance on nuclear power. The compromise emerged after continued pressure from NSP. In the days before the vote, NSP Chairman James Howard met privately with ten senators who had opposed the bill, and his pledge to close the plant if needed convinced them to change their votes. Opponents of ISFSI claimed that these “back-room dealings” once again demonstrated the power imbalances at work. A spokesperson for the Prairie Island Mdewakanton community commented, “It proves that back-room deals work … We’ve always been willing to talk, but unfortunately the Indian community didn’t count.” Still, the PIC claimed that the promised phase-out of nuclear power – if the promise was kept – represented a significant victory.35 The Prairie Island Coalition continued to organize and protest the decision after the passage of the compromise bill. The group staged rallies at the Capitol and at the power plant for months, and again when NSP actually loaded its first dry cask in May 1995. The environmental justice implications of the issue continued to serve as the central point of these protests. In 1996, the Prairie Island Coalition hosted a symposium titled “Confronting Nuclear Racism” that brought together representatives of seven communities facing risks to their health and environment from every step of the nuclear fuel cycle – a cycle that connected Prairie Island to other disadvantaged communities in both the United States and Canada. Speakers discussed the impact of uranium mining on aboriginal communities in the American southwest and Canada, the proposed storage facilities at the Mescalero reservation and at Yucca Mountain, which lies within the territory of the Western Shoshone, and a uranium enrichment facility planned by an NSP subsidiary for a predominantly African-American community in Louisiana. The symposium underscored the contention that “at every link in the nuclear chain, communities of color bear a disproportionate share of the destruction and risks associated with radiation exposures from nuclear waste and failing nuclear technology … Nuclear racism is a fundamental link in the global nuclear chain. Without nuclear racism, the whole nuclear industry could not continue to exist.” Activists at Prairie Island connected their struggle to national and international struggles for environmental justice.36

210  James W. Feldman

The coalition had good reason to maintain its active presence. As the opponents of the ISFSI had feared, the 1994 legislation did not end the controversy. By the late 1990s, the federal government appeared no closer to resolving the vexing issues around long-term storage. The seventeen casks at Prairie Island began to fill, and NSP returned to the legislature once again to ask for an expansion of the ISFSI. After another contentious round of legislative debates and the prospect of the forced shutdown of Prairie Island, the legislature in 2003 approved up to fortyeight casks at Prairie Island and stipulated that any future requests could be handled administratively, and would not need to come before the legislature. The 2003 law also required Xcel energy (NSP merged with another company and changed its name in 2000) to pay the Prairie Island Mdewakanton Sioux community 2.5 million dollars per year so that the tribe could purchase land away from the reactor for members who wished to relocate. In 2008, Xcel requested permission to increase generating capacity at each of the Prairie Island reactors by 80 watts and to store an additional thirty-five dry casks at the ISFSI. In 2011, the company received license renewals to continue running the Prairie Island plant through 2033. A 2012 decision by the federal government to cancel plans for the Yucca Mountain repository ensures that the radioactive waste will remain at the Prairie Island ISFSI for the foreseeable future – just as opponents of the storage facility had long predicted.37 The long-term presence of radioactive waste is only one of the legacies of this story. For over forty years, Prairie Island served as a bellwether for the anti-nuclear movement and the nuclear power industry. National questions about the storage of spent fuel, the preparation of environmental impact statements, and the burdens of risk from radiation all played out at Prairie Island. The resolutions to these questions at Prairie Island reverberated around the country; dry cask storage is now the industry standard for storing fuel at reactors until the development of other options. If the storage of spent fuel once appeared to be the “Achilles heel” of the commercial nuclear power industry, that tender spot has been protected; in February 2012, the NRC approved the first operating and construction license for a new nuclear power plant in over three decades. After almost fifty years of protest and public debate, the generation of nuclear power at Prairie Island will continue. This has often been a result of anti-nuclear protest in the United States – power generation continues at other plants that have been the target of anti-nuclear protest, such as Three Mile Island, Seabrook Station in New Hampshire, and

Permanence, Justice, and Nuclear Waste at Prairie Island  211

Diablo Canyon in California. Nevertheless, scholars need to focus on the discourse of waste generated by these controversial episodes. These histories illuminate the nuclear waste stalemate that plagues the country today. Scholars, activists, and citizens need to figure out how and why people reacted as they did and explore the issues that triggered protests and support. At Prairie Island, these issues were not technical concerns but rather competing conceptions of the public good, perceptions of justice, and permanent risk shared disproportionately. It seemed to the protesters at Prairie Island that while the benefits of nuclear power flowed to the utility customers of the Twin Cities and the tax and employment benefits went to Red Wing, the members of the Mdewakanton Sioux community were left with nothing but an elevated risk of exposure to radiation and declining land values. Nevadans opposed the Yucca Mountain facility for similar reasons. In these places the discourse of waste hinged on the distribution of benefits and risks. When the president’s Blue Ribbon Commission called for a c­ onsent-based approach to nuclear waste siting that addresses the concerns of local communities, it had this kind of story in mind. Solutions to the complex dilemma of radioactive waste management – and the future of nuclear energy in general – will require addressing these issues. NOTES 1 Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, Report to the Secretary of Energy (Washington, DC: US Department of Energy, January 2012), vi, viii. 2 For a concise history of federal radioactive waste policy, see Walker, Road to Yucca Mountain. 3 Walker, Three Mile Island, 6; Abrahamson, Minnesota, 18; NSP, “Northern States Power Puts the Accent on Environment” 1967, Minnesota Environmental Citizens’ Control Association Files (hereafter, MECCA Records), Minnesota Historical Society, Saint Paul, MN (hereafter MHS), Box 3, Folder: “Nuclear Radiation, 1958–1968; News Release, Northern States Power Company,” 1 February 1969, in “Pamphlets Relating to Nuclear Power in Minnesota,” MHS; Saint Paul Dispatch, 21 August 1973. 4 Minnesota Committee for Environmental Information, “Scientists Question Reactor Benefits,” Scientist and Citizen 10 (August 1968): 154–7; “Cooling It in Minnesota,” Environment 11 (March 1969): 21–5; Arthur Naftalin, “Statement before the Pollution Control Agency,” 8 April 1969,

212  James W. Feldman MECCA Records, Box 3, Folder: “Nuclear Radiation, 1968–1970”; Melosi, Atomic Age America, 228. 5 Tsivoglou, Radioactive Pollution Control, 6, 9; Northern States Power Company, “Statement on PCA Permit No. 5366, Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant,” 11 August 1969, MECCA Records, Box 3, Folder: “Monticello, undated, 1969”; Walker, Containing the Atom, 310–16. 6 Walker, Containing the Atom, 310–16; MECCA Newsletter, October 1970. 7 MECCA News Release, 14 June 1969, MECCA Records, Box 3, Folder: “Northern States Power Company”; Russell Hatling to Attorney General Douglas Head, 31 August 1970, MECCA Records, Box 3, Folder: “Monticello”; Saint Paul Dispatch, 22 July 1971; MECCA Newsletter, November 1972; Minneapolis Tribune, 20, 27 November 1971; Saint Paul Dispatch, 23 November 1971. 8 Boffey, “Radioactive Pollution”; quote from Jim Peterson’s Outdoor News: The Sportsman’s Weekly 2 (11 July 1969), in Box 3, Folder: “Monticello, undated, 1969,” MECCA Records; Walker, Containing the Atom, 310–16. 9 Walker, Road to Yucca Mountain, 95–109. 10 This request also led to a contested court case with national implications. The MPCA appealed the NRC ruling that NSP did not need an EIS for the expansion of the spent fuel pool. The NRC appeal board denied its request, holding that the current lack of a permanent solution to the radioactive waste problem was not germane to decisions about the expansion of shortterm storage at reactor sites. The MPCA challenged this ruling in federal court, where it was joined with a similar challenge at the Vermont Yankee reactor in Vernon, Vermont. The court ordered the NRC to initiate a rulemaking procedure on waste confidence – to determine the likelihood that the federal government or the commercial nuclear power industry would ever develop permanent radioactive waste storage. The NRC concluded that although there was no permanent repository at present, there was a “reasonable assurance” that a solution to the problem would be available when needed, although they could not identify a time frame by which permanent disposal could be achieved. The waste confidence ruling provided a significant motivation for the creation of federal legislation on the permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste. Walker, Road to Yucca Mountain, 169. 11 Jocelyn F. Olson to Howard Kaibel, 13 April 1980, and pre-filed testimony of Dale M. Vincent, 15 April 1980, both in Folder 1, Papers of the Minnesota Environmental Quality Board, Minnesota Historical Society, Saint Paul, MN (hereafter, MN EQB).

Permanence, Justice, and Nuclear Waste at Prairie Island  213 12 Northern States Power Company, “Certificate of Need Application to Increase Storage Capacity of the Spent Fuel Pool at the Prairie Island Generating Plant,” 1979, MHS Archives, quotes on 9, 88, 22. 13 US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Final Generic Environmental Impact Statement; Olsen to Kaibel, 13 April 1980. 14 The EQB was constituted of citizen representatives as well as the heads of state agencies concerned with environmental protection and economic development, and was charged with reviewing proposed projects that influenced the state’s environment. Although NSP applied to the Minnesota Energy Agency for its certificate of need, the EQB determined whether or not the project required an EIS. 15 “Public Hearings, Prairie Island Project,” ca. 1980, Folder: “Nuclear Power, 1972–1986,” Joyce M. Brady Papers, MHS; State of Minnesota, Environmental Quality Board, Transcript of EQB hearing, Red Wing, 1, 4, and 5, May 1980, Folders 2 and 4, MNEQB, quotes on 5 May, 17. 16 Dale M. Vincent, Rebuttal Testimony, 25 April 1980, Folder 2, MNEQB. 17 Minneapolis Star, 3, 4, and 18 October 1979. 18 Mark Mason, “Findings of Fact, Conclusions, and Decision,” 1981, in Minnesota Attorney General, Environmental Protection Division, Nuclear Waste Disposal and Regulation Files, MHS, 44 and “Memorandum.” 19 There is a voluminous literature on Yucca Mountain and the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act. See, for example, Walker, Road to Yucca Mountain; Flynn et al., One Hundred Centuries of Solitude; Hulse, Nevada’s Environmental Legacy. 20 Minneapolis Star Tribune, 22 December 1989 and 11 November 1991; Northern States Power Company, “Application for Certificate-of-Need.” 21 Minnesota Environmental Quality Board, Final Environmental Impact Statement. 22 Northern States Power Company, “Application for Certificate-of-Need,” 8, 14–15. 23 High-level waste consists of highly radioactive materials, or materials that will remain radioactive for very long periods of time, such as spent fuel rods or the liquid wastes generated by reprocessing. Low-level wastes include more lightly contaminated materials – it can include clothes or machinery with low-levels of radioactivity. Different protocols and laws govern the disposal of different kinds of waste. 24 Northern States Power Company, “Application for Certificate-of-Need,” 17–18. 25 Klein, “Findings of Fact.”

214  James W. Feldman 2 6 Ibid., 42–3. 27 Minneapolis Star Tribune, 20 July 1993; “Supplemental Petition: Certain Individual Minnesota House of Representatives and Minnesota Senate Motion for Leave to File an Amicus Curae Brief,” 1993, https://www.leg. state.mn.us/webcontent/lrl/issues/nuclearwaste/amicusbrief.pdf. 28 Minneapolis Star Tribune, 24 February, 4, 31 March, 7 May, and 13, 25 October 1994; Prairie Island Coalition Newsletter, September 1994. 29 Minneapolis Star Tribune, 3 April 1994. 30 For brief introductions to environmental justice, see Adamson, Evans, and Stein, Environmental Justice Reader; Steady, Environmental Justice; McGurty, “From NIMBY to Civil Rights”; Visgilio and Whitelaw, Our Backyard. 31 “Minnesota Runs Out of Space for Its Nuclear Waste,” Morning Edition, National Public Radio, 10 March 1994; Minneapolis Star Tribune, 8 November 1991 and 6 April 1994; Minnesota Environmental Quality Board, Final Environmental Impact Statement, Comment Letter 14. 32 Collins and Hall, “Nuclear Waste in Indian Country”; Huygen, “Clouded Vision”; Minneapolis Star Tribune, 4 February 1994. 33 Joint Religious Legislative Coalition, “Joint Religious Legislative Coalition Position on Prairie Island Spent Fuel Storage,” MHS. 34 “Citizens Alliance for Reliable Energy,” MHS, 1994. 35 Minneapolis Star Tribune, 25 March and 7 May 1994; Laws of Minnesota, 1994, Ch. 641-S.F. No. 1706. 36 Prairie Island Coalition, Confronting Nuclear Racism, 4–5. 37 An excellent summary of the ongoing controversy over nuclear energy at Prairie Island and Monticello, compiled by staff at the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library and titled “Resources on Minnesota Issues: Nuclear Waste Storage in Minnesota,” can be found at http://www.leg. state.mn.us/lrl/issues/issues?issue=prairieisland.

REFERENCES Books & Articles Abrahamson, Dean E. Minnesota: A Primer on Energy Policy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1974. Adamson, Joni, Mei Mei Evans, and Rachel Stein. The Environmental Justice Reader: Politics, Poetics, & Pedagogy. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002. Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. Report to the Secretary of Energy. Washington, DC: US Department of Energy, 2012.

Permanence, Justice, and Nuclear Waste at Prairie Island  215 Boffey, Phillip M. “Radioactive Pollution: Minnesota Finds AEC Standards Too Lax.” Science 163 (March 7, 1969): 1043–4. Collins, Nancy B., and Andrea Hall. “Nuclear Waste in Indian Country: A Paradoxical Trade.” Law & Inequality 12 (June 1994): 267–350. “Cooling It in Minnesota.” Environment 11 (March 1969): 21–8. Flynn, James, James Chalmers, Doug Easterling, Roger Kasperson, Howard Kunreuther, C.K. Mertz, K. David Pijawka, et al. One Hundred Centuries of Solitude: Redirecting America’s High-Level Nuclear Waste Policy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995. Hulse, James W. Nevada’s Environmental Legacy: Progress or Plunder. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1999. Huygen, Conrad L. “Clouded Vision: The Mescalero Apache and the Nuclear Legacy.” Environmental Law and Policy Journal 15 (December 1994): 1–8. McGurty, Eileen Maura. “From NIMBY to Civil Rights: The Origins of the Environmental Justice Movement.” Environmental History 2, no. 2 (1997): 301–23. Melosi, Martin V. Atomic Age America. Boston: Pearson, 2013. Minnesota Committee for Environmental Information. “Scientists Question Reactor Benefits.” Scientist and Citizen 10 (August 1968): 154–7. Minnesota Environmental Quality Board. Final Environmental Impact Statement: Prairie Island Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation. Saint Paul, MN: Minnesota Environmental Quality Board, 1991. Prairie Island Coalition. Confronting Nuclear Racism: A Prairie Island Coalition Report. Lake Elmo, MN: Prairie Island Coalition, 1996. Steady, Filomina Chioma, ed. Environmental Justice in the New Millennium: Global Perspectives on Race, Ethnicity and Human Rights. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Tsivoglou, E.C. Radioactive Pollution Control in Minnesota. Minneapolis: Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, 1969. US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. Final Generic Environmental Impact Statement on Handling and Storage of Spent Light Water Power Reactor Fuel. Washington, DC: US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 1979. Visgilio, Gerald R., and Diana M. Whitelaw. Our Backyard: A Quest for Environmental Justice. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Walker, J. Samuel. Containing the Atom: Nuclear Regulation in a Changing Environment, 1963–1971. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. –  The Road to Yucca Mountain: The Development of Radioactive Waste Policy in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. –  Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

216  James W. Feldman Archival Collections at the Minnesota Historical Society, Saint Paul, MN Citizens Alliance for Reliable Energy Joint Religious Legislative Coalition Joyce M. Brady Papers Minnesota Attorney General, Environmental Protection Division Minnesota Environmental Citizens’ Control Association Papers Northern States Power Company. Certificate of Need Application: To Increase Storage Capacity of the Spent Fuel Pool at the Prairie Island Generating Plant, 1979 Papers of the Minnesota Environmental Quality Board Prairie Island Coalition Newsletter

Electronic Resources Klein, Allan W. “Findings of Fact, Conclusions and Recommendation in the Matter of the Application of Northern States Power Company for a Certificate of Need for the Construction of an Independent Spent Fuel Storage Facility.” 10 April 1992. https://www.leg.state.mn.us/webcontent/ lrl/issues/nuclear waste/oahnsp41092.pdf. Northern States Power Company. “Application for Certificate-of-Need for Prairie Island Spent Fuel Storage.” Docket NO. E002/CN-91–19. Minneapolis, MN. 1991. https://www.leg.state.mn.us/webcontent/lrl/ issues/nuclear waste/NSP_1.pdf. “Supplemental Petition: Certain Individual Minnesota House of Representatives and Minnesota Senate Motion for Leave to File an Amicus Curae Brief.” 1993. https://www.leg.state.mn.us/webcontent/lrl/issues/ nuclear waste/amicusbrief.pdf.

7 Nuclear Waste Management and Nuclear Power: A Tale of Two Essential US Department of Energy Sites in Idaho and New Mexico m i c h a e l g r e e n b e r g , h e n r y m ay e r , c h a r l e s w . p o w e r s , a n d d av i d k o s s o n

Introduction The race to use nuclear atoms to create unbelievably destructive weapons or inexpensive energy was won by US scientists who created two nuclear weapons that helped end World War II. The building of “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” required turning the United States into a nuclear factory.1 Thousands of locations in almost every state mined, processed, and refined uranium, and engineered and tested nuclear weapons and their components. Fifty years later, Hazel O’Leary, then secretary of the US Department of Energy (DOE), declared a moral commitment to closing the circle by cleaning up contamination caused during and after World War II by the building of nuclear weapons.2 Over 130 of the nuclear weapon sites have required moderate to substantial remediation, at an estimated cost of over 100 billion dollars to date; the vast majority have been remediated to standards acceptable to the US government and their

Acknowledgements: Resources for survey and staff support were provided with the support of the US Department of Energy, under Cooperative Agreement Number DE-FC0106EW07053 entitled The Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation III awarded to Vanderbilt University, and the US Department of Homeland Security. We would like to thank Dr Marc Weiner for his assistance with the survey instrument and administration. The opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Energy or Vanderbilt University, or any of the people acknowledged. This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an Agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights.

218  Greenberg, Mayer, Powers, and Kosson Figure 7.1. Location of key US Department of Energy (DOE) sites.

Source: DOE.

host states. Many of the sites are closed, but others have been returned to the public for use. By 2050, the DOE’s environmental management program hopes to have a major role at only four sites: Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Idaho; Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), New Mexico; Hanford, Washington; and Savannah River, South Carolina. Realistically, the schedule may be delayed by current funding limitations. This chapter is about two of the four sites: INL and WIPP. Funded by the DOE, the authors have examined biological, chemical, physical, engineering, legal, and social science issues. After briefly describing INL and WIPP and their nearby populations, we examine public perceptions and preferences of those who live near these two sites compared to several other major DOE sites and to the US public as a whole. The chapter answers the two following questions: 1. Is the INL site-specific sample population more willing than other DOE sites and the US population as a whole to host new nuclear science, engineering, and other research and development missions?

Nuclear Waste Management and Nuclear Power  219 Figure 7.2. Idaho National Laboratory (INL) site.

Source: INL.

2. Is the WIPP site-specific sample population more willing than other DOE sites and the US population as a whole to host commercially used nuclear fuel stored at current or closed power generation facilities across the United States? Our expectation was that INL respondents would be more supportive of new nuclear science and engineering missions, and WIPP regional residents would be more inclined to store used nuclear fuel in their area because government, private, and citizen support for these roles has been slowly built in these two regions. Idaho and WIPP Sites The DOE Idaho site is 890 square miles of semi-arid terrain located in southeast Idaho. The nearest urban area is Idaho Falls, about 30 miles away. Idaho Falls is a small city that has grown from about 40,000 in 1980 to 58,000 in 2012. About 280 miles west of Idaho Falls is Boise, a major

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growth centre in the mountain states. Boise has attracted business, and its population has increased from 102,000 in 1980 to 212,000 in 2012. Idaho Falls has several sustainable economic functions. The downtown, like many small to middle-sized American cities, had suffered a downturn as population and retail businesses moved towards suburban locations, but it has been recovering. While the city is known by many as a place near the DOE INL site, it is clearly the centre of a major agricultural area, and is also a jumping off point for travellers headed to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks about 150 miles to the east, as well as to Jackson Hole and other tourist sites. The INL has nine waste management, manufacturing projects, and naval training facilities for nuclear reactors spread out across this massive facility. The site began its US government role as a gunnery range for the US Navy. Visitors can still see the remnants of massive platforms constructed to test guns from the largest US battleships of the time. The US Atomic Energy Commission took over the Idaho site in 1950 to develop and test nuclear reactors and associated technologies. Waste management, environmental restoration, nuclear engineering, and various associated non-nuclear activities related to national security, biotechnology, and energy efficiency were added to its portfolio. During its more than half-century history, the Idaho site has had a breeder nuclear reactor program, a large radioactive waste management mission, and multiple test areas. The site has granulated high-level nuclear waste stored in underground stainless steel bins, transuranic residuals (defined below under WIPP), low-level and mixed waste, and multiple nuclear energy missions. During the 1990s, the DOE’s citizens advisory board, DOE staff, the state and federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service, the US National Park Service, the Shoshone-Bannock tribes, and the local business community all developed a future land use plan for the site. The plan called for the federal government to own and manage the site, and for DOE and non-DOE research industrial technology to be added. Core functions remained nuclear technology, waste management, national security, and a broad set of activities grouped under environmental engineering, science, and technology. This plan is about twenty years old, and while it may not fully represent today’s thinking, the site currently has major ongoing remediation and decontamination programs associated with the US nuclear weapons legacy. The nuclear industry has influenced the regional economy and the population.3 Carlsbad, New Mexico, population 26,000, seems like a desert resort. Located in the Chihuahuan desert region on the Pecos River, visitors see

Nuclear Waste Management and Nuclear Power  221 Figure 7.3. Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), New Mexico.

Source: WIPP.

tree-lined streets, parks, and recreation areas, including a beach on Lake Carlsbad, about 18 miles northeast of the Carlsbad Caverns National Park and about 40 miles from the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is a 16 square mile facility built by the DOE to receive, store, and manage transuranic wastes in a structure 2,150 feet below ground in a salt basin that has existed for at least 250 million years. Transuranic waste is legally defined by the US government as material contaminated with elements that have atomic elements higher than uranium, including americium-241 and several isotopes of plutonium produced during the production of nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and nuclear research. Transuranic waste has a long half-life and must be carefully managed. The current plan is for WIPP to receive waste for twenty-five to thirtyfive years on trucks and trains. The DOE chose WIPP after a location in Lyons, Kansas, was rejected and after New Mexico’s elected officials

222  Greenberg, Mayer, Powers, and Kosson

offered to examine the Carlsbad area as a location for long-term storage and management of nuclear waste. The DOE has invested tens of billions of dollars in the site, and its efforts have been supported by New Mexico’s elected officials. The public increasingly supports the activities at the WIPP site.4 The legislation that created WIPP mandates that it will only manage transuranic waste from DOE’s defence site, and current site requirements stipulate a maximum waste load. Nevertheless, given the government’s inability to open the Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada, which was built to store some highly toxic defence nuclear waste, there will be pressure either to expand the current repository or to add another repository adjacent to the current one at the WIPP site for other defence and commercial wastes. However, WIPP has gone through an extensive consultation process with state officials and community members who have had considerable input on the site, dealing with transportation to the site and other key issues.5 Hence, the Idaho site has been a location where nuclear science and engineering is a major priority, and WIPP is where the US government has successfully built and operated a nuclear waste management facility for the entire country. Both facilities have state government support for their activities, but how much support do they have from nearby residents? Sample Surveys While hundreds of surveys have reported on public support for nuclear power, far fewer have reported on public perceptions and preferences for waste management technologies. The surveys typically are part of much larger multi-subject public opinion polls that include questions about everything from political preferences for elected officials to questions about public preferences for tax, education, and many other policies. Several dozen have included multiple questions around the issues of nuclear energy and waste management.6 About a decade ago, the DOE concluded that not only was there contradictory data concerning public preferences and perceptions about nuclear power and nuclear waste management, but there was also little information about those who live relatively near the DOE sites. It commissioned the authors to conduct surveys in 2005, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. The results of these surveys were presented in multiple papers, and major findings were presented in a book.7 The first four surveys used random digit dialing of landline phones. However, in the 2011 survey, which is the focus of the data in this chapter, we collected information using 75 per cent landline phones and

Nuclear Waste Management and Nuclear Power  223

25 per cent cell phones. This change was necessary because the US population increasingly only answers cell phones.8 The cell phone–only population is disproportionately younger than the landline-only one. Without a mixed cell and landline sample, results will not adequately reflect younger populations, even if the results are weighted by age. Every survey contains some bias. Consequently, the authors always compare the demographic attributes of the samples with their larger population group. In this case, the US random sample is compared to total US demographic data. The regional samples for Idaho, WIPP, Hanford, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Savannah River were compared with US data from the American Community Survey for these regions. Slight adjustments were made by weighting by age and race/ethnicity. Weighting does not remove all biases, because factors such as question order, wording, and other elements of the survey itself affect results. An important caveat about the data collected for the survey is that the sample sizes for the DOE site regions are small. The national sample was 850, and each of the six DOE site regions was represented by 180 samples. Sampling error is the probable difference in response with a pre-specified degree of statistical confidence between interviewing the entire population and a specific sample. The sampling error is estimated by multiplying the specified confidence level (typically 1.96 for a 95 per cent CI) by the standard error estimate for each question. Sampling error decreases as sample size increases, but levels off at less than 3 per cent at about 1,100 samples. In this case, the national sample was 850, and the sampling error for a sample of that size is 3.4 per cent. Therefore, if half the sample indicated that it favoured more reliance on nuclear energy, we can have 95 per cent confidence that the actual value lies between 46.6 per cent and 53.4 per cent. The site-specific samples were each 180, which means a sampling error of 7.3 per cent. If half the sample at one of our six sites favoured more reliance on nuclear energy, then we can be 95 per cent confident that the actual value lies between 42.7 per cent and 57.3 per cent. These large sampling errors for each of the sites mean that only major differences among the sites will be statistically significant at P < .05. In other words, it is difficult to find statistical differences with sample sizes of 180. A final note about the sampling design is that the authors attempted to obtain a 20 per cent response rate and 30 per cent cooperation rate. From experience, we know that many US residents do not want to answer survey questions, even if the surveyor is not asking for money or about marketing. Therefore, we designed this survey around the

224  Greenberg, Mayer, Powers, and Kosson

idea that up to eight callbacks would be required to reach our response cooperation rate goals. For the record, our response rate was 20.1 per cent, and our cooperation rate was 29.9 per cent. The Local Populations A 50 mile radius around the Idaho and WIPP sites, as well as around the other DOE sites, was used as the “regional” population. This radius is a compromise between a much larger area, such as one with a radius of 100 miles, and a much smaller area, such as one with a radius of 10 or 20 miles. The 100 mile radius dilutes the impact of the population that lives close to the site, and the 10 to 20 mile one underrepresents the larger regional populations near some sites. Table 7.1 shows demographic and survey data for the two host counties for INL and WIPP. Bonneville County, Idaho, has slightly higher socioeconomic status than the Idaho population as a whole, but generally is similar to the rest of Idaho. Eddy County, New Mexico, has slightly lower socioeconomic status and proportionately far fewer American Indians than the rest of New Mexico. An interesting observation from our survey is that Idaho’s respondents were more likely to classify their county as an “excellent” place to live compared to Eddy County or the United States as a whole. Question 1: Idaho Site and Preference for Nuclear Technology Consistent with our expectation, the Idaho region sample is much more willing to host new nuclear energy, science, and related research and development missions and facilities than any of the other DOE sites and US residents as a whole, with the exception of Oak Ridge (Table 7.2). These findings are supported by data that shows considerable trust for DOE, familiarity with the nearby site, and support of nuclear energy in the United States. The findings are not subtle, and we saw them in our previous surveys.9 The Idaho site region population is not only much more willing to host nuclear missions and support the expansion of nuclear energy than its counterparts and United States population as a whole, but it is also less worried about activities on the site, and trusts the DOE and its contractors to manage existing nuclear-related activities and new potential nuclear activities. Of course, this is a very massive isolated site, and some respondents may not be concerned because the dangerous activities are many miles away from them.

Table 7.1. Contextual Demographic Data for the Idaho and WIPP Regions

Attribute Population, 2012 density, square mile Population density, 2010 Graduated college, persons 25+ years old, 2007–11, % Median household income, 2007–11, $ Persons below poverty level, 2007–11, % % African American, 2012 % Latino American, 2012 % American Indian, 2012 % under 5 years old, 2012 % 65+ years old, 2012 % sample rated local county as excellent place to live, 2011

Bonneville County, Idaho (host county)

Eddy County, New Mexico (host county)

Idaho (state)

New Mexico (state)

United States

106,684

54,419

1,595,728

2,085,538

313,914,040

55.9 26.7 51,311

12.9 15.7 47,725

19.0 24.6 46,890

17.0 25.4 44,631

87.4 28.2 52,762

10.6

12.8

14.3

19.0

14.3

0.7 12.1 1.1 9.0 11.4 54.2*

1.8 45.1 2.3 7.0 14.2 22.9

0.8 11.6 1.7 7.3 13.3

2.4 47.0 10.2 6.9 14.1

13.1 16.9 1.2 6.4 13.7 37.2

n/a

n/a

Source: US Census Bureau, “Quick Facts United States,” accessed 5 July 2013, http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/ PST045215/00. *Sample is for the 50 mile area, which includes but is not limited to Bonneville and Eddy counties.

Table 7.2. Comparison of Preferences for New Nuclear Missions, Summer 2011 Survey

Preference Willing to host new nuclear energy, research, laboratory, and other DOE science and technology facilities in my state, % Level of concern about DOE site, 1 = not worried, 10 = extremely worried, avg. score Familiarity with DOE site (very and somewhat), % DOE will make sure that that radioactive and chemical wastes at the site do not pollute the air, land, and water (strongly agree and agree), % Site contractors will make sure that that radioactive and chemical wastes at the site do not pollute the air, land, and water (strongly agree and agree), % Trust DOE to effectively manage new nuclearrelated facilities (strongly agree and agree), % Trust site contractors to effectively manage new nuclear-related facilities (strongly agree and agree), % US should rely more on nuclear power, % US should rely more on coal, % US should rely more on natural gas, % After Fukushima remain a firm supporter of increasing nuclear power, % After Fukushima still a supporter but more concerned

Idaho (INL)

WIPP

Hanford

Los Alamos

Oak Ridge

Savannah River

USA (overall)

42.9

27.3*

33.1*

31.6*

39.5

21.1*

30.0*

2.8

3.9*

4.9*

4.2*

4.2*

4.1*

n/a

71.3

40.2*

50.0*

54.6*

50.0*

48.0*

n/a

75.8

80.4

59.7*

59.7*

57.1*

62.0*

n/a

78.9

74.8

65.3*

62.8*

56.1*

58.5*

n/a

84.4

76.7

68.2*

60.3*

63.2*

71.6*

n/a

73.7

67.4

65.3

52.3*

56.5*

59.1*

n/a

69.5 25.1 81.8 37.2

41.0* 40.1* 70.9* 19.5*

41.2* 22.0* 61.4* 32.0

29.3* 40.2* 68.9* 21.4*

56.7* 38.9* 71.1* 35.0

53.4* 43.5* 66.9* 17.5*

37.3* 32.5* 67.7* 17.7*

47.8

42.0

40.3

35.1*

43.5

60.5*

41.5

*INL site significantly different from other sites at P < .05.

Nuclear Waste Management and Nuclear Power  227

It should be noted that the survey data were gathered beginning on 6 July 2011 and ending on 9 September 2011, about four months after the Fukushima events occurred and changed public opinion and some governments’ policies about nuclear energy.10 The total US population and the population around the DOE sites demonstrated less trust for DOE and its contractors after this event than before, by an average loss of 10 to 15 per cent.11 Even after Fukushima, Idaho site region residents were more supportive of nuclear power than the other DOE site regions. Only 17.7 per cent of respondents in the national sample said that they remained firm supporters of increasing nuclear power following Fukushima. This proportion was the highest (37.2 per cent) among Idaho site region residents, and was also relatively high at the Hanford and Oak Ridge sites. These firm supporters and those who said they still were supporters but were more concerned about nuclear energy after Fukushima then before, consisted of 85 per cent at INL compared to 59 per cent of the US national sample. Among the sites, 78 per cent of Oak Ridge and Savannah River respondents remained supporters of nuclear power after Fukushima. The other sites were less supportive. The overall impression from Table 7.2 is that INL is notably different from the other sites and the United States as a whole. INL is closest to WIPP in lack of concern about the site and trust of DOE. Question 2: Moving Used Nuclear Fuel Richard and Jane Stewart’s book Fuel Cycle to Nowhere (2011) meticulously documents the troubled history of the US effort to manage its nuclear waste. For this chapter, the starting point is the three-decadesplus plan to dispose of high-level defence nuclear waste in a large tunnel inside Yucca Mountain, Nevada, located approximately 80 miles north of Las Vegas. This partly built long-term repository has come under political attack by many residents of Nevada who believe that they were arbitrarily chosen as a nuclear dumping ground.12 Space does not permit us to discuss this issue further, other than to say that we recommend the Stewarts’ book and the Blue Ribbon Commission report (2012).13 To date, the investment of tens of billions of dollars at the Yucca Mountain site has created a partly completed storage site and a controversy that may not be resolved anytime soon.14 Given today’s realities, other more or less plausible alternatives have been considered. One is an alternative long-term storage facility, which is not Yucca. The second

228  Greenberg, Mayer, Powers, and Kosson

is to find multiple “temporary” nuclear waste storage sites elsewhere in the United States. A logical, if not legally, politically, or even environmentally acceptable option at this time is to “temporarily” store highlevel nuclear waste from other DOE sites and commercial waste from nuclear power plants at one of the DOE’s major nuclear environmental management sites, most specifically WIPP.15 The advantage of using one of the existing sites is that many of these DOE defence waste sites are massive, and their employees, including contractors, have considerable experience with handling nuclear materials. In addition to the formidable legal and political obstacles in choosing one of these sites, a major risk-related issue is how this waste would be moved from all the commercial nuclear power plant sites in the United States to one or more of these sites. A decision to move it implies that waste would need to travel between states. Nuclear waste already travels across the United States. However, nuclear waste coming from a commercial nuclear power plant to another site could be a political target for those who seek to close the US nuclear power industry because of waste management issues. In August 2012, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) indicated that it would not license any new nuclear power plants or give extensions to existing plants until the waste management storage issues have been settled, a decision that impacted sixteen permits for new reactors and fourteen for renewals.16 Notably, used fuel waste was the major issue. Legal efforts to block shipments of materials across state boundaries in the United States are not unprecedented. For example, the US government blocked interstate shipments of the US chemical warfare agent stockpile, requiring each of the eight continental US sites to destroy materials on site. States have attempted to prevent interstate movement of municipal trash, but their restrictions have been blocked by the US Supreme Court. The spectre of moving commercial nuclear waste hundreds to thousands of miles seems politically and legally daunting. The Fukushima events in 2011 made the challenge even more difficult. In 2008 and 2009, we asked 6,000 US residents to tell us what they know about the disposition of nuclear waste from commercial nuclear power plants.17 The samples were divided into regions with nuclear waste management facilities, science and laboratory facilities, places with nuclear power plants, and all other locations. The geographical distinctions hardly mattered. Sixty-four per cent of the respondents could not answer the question, that is, they did not bother to guess. Among those who did provide an answer, 23 per cent thought that

Nuclear Waste Management and Nuclear Power  229

commercial nuclear fuel waste was stored at Yucca Mountain, which of course is not the case. A small proportion, less than 4 per cent, thought this waste was reprocessed and used as new fuel, dumped in the ocean, or reprocessed into weapons grade material. About 10 per cent of the sample actually knew that it was stored at existing commercial nuclear power plants. Part of what we learned from that exercise was that many US residents believed that “spent” nuclear fuel was no longer toxic and hot, which clearly is not the case. That misunderstanding was eliminated in 2011 when people saw television coverage of explosions and fires emanating from the used fuel storage facilities in Japan. Our summer 2011 survey asked several pointed questions. One asked those surveyed if they supported a policy that would transfer all used fuel from storage pools to concrete as soon as practically achievable, and the second asked if they thought this waste should be transferred to any of the three or four locations that are already managing US defence waste. Table 7.3 shows the answers to these two questions, and they are fascinating. WIPP has a much higher proportion favouring transferring all the used fuel in casks to one of the existing DOE defence waste sites. Currently, we are surveying Idaho, WIPP, Hanford, and Savannah River

Table 7.3. Comparison of Preferences for Location of Commercial Nuclear Waste Storage, Summer 2011 Survey

Preference

Idaho Los Savannah USA (INL) WIPP Hanford Alamos Oak Ridge River (overall)

Transfer all the 31.4 used fuel in casks to locations in the US that already manage and have the US defence waste, % Transfer all used fuel 31.4 in concrete casks to a single deep underground repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, %

58.1

28.7

50.5

38.3

42.7

51.6

22.6

23.0

30.5

34.0

20.8

22.6

Source: Greenberg, Nuclear Waste Management, 106, Table 5.6.

230  Greenberg, Mayer, Powers, and Kosson

region residents to determine if their preferences have changed. Based on these initial questions only asked in 2011 after Fukushima, it is not unreasonable to assume that many residents of the WIPP area would be willing to host additional nuclear waste management facilities. What Next for INL and WIPP? The future of nuclear power in the United States and elsewhere in the world has been the subject of ongoing political, corporate, and public debate for over a half-century. American presidents, other elected officials, and chairs of key US agencies have not presented a simple and consistent message to the American public about nuclear power and waste management throughout the last two decades.18 Whatever decisions are made about nuclear power, nations that have nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants have an obligation to protect their citizens, ecosystems, and property by investing in demonstrably effective technologies and management practices. In the United States, the INL site has been seeking a major role in developing and testing new nuclear technologies within the DOE complex. INL’s website states that “INL is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s complex of national laboratories. The laboratory performs work in each of the strategic goal areas of DOE: energy, national security, science and environment. INL is the nation’s leading centre for nuclear energy research and development.”19 The site lists nuclear safety analysis, irradiation services, nuclear operations, management of spent fuel, and biocorrosion of fuels as areas where its work is advancing and is state of the art. Dr Ralph Bennett, director of international and regional partnerships for INL, has been promoting nuclear energy, including a new nuclear power plant in the state. Notably, he emphasizes increasing evidence of global climate change and national security challenges associated with fossil fuel dependence. Focusing on Idaho, he notes that the state imports 80 per cent of all its energy and 45 per cent of its electrical energy. He adds that coal is no longer viewed as a preferred option and that natural gas is expanding as a source, and then asserts that a nuclear plant in Idaho would fit with regional needs and reduce the need for natural gas and coal plants, reducing carbon dioxide emissions.20 In many other states, this presentation would not necessarily be taken seriously or might even be viewed with hostility, but in Idaho it resonates with a pro-nuclear sentiment near INL. Surveys in addition

Nuclear Waste Management and Nuclear Power  231

to ours suggest that a clear majority of the regional population does not view nuclear science and energy production as a stigma but rather as a source of jobs and economic growth.21 The latest published statewide survey was conducted in 2008.22 It divides the state into six areas. The DOE site region used in this chapter is a close fit to Region VI of that survey. Sixty-one per cent of the respondents from Region VI supported the construction of a nuclear power plant in their county as a way to provide electricity for Idaho. The corresponding number for the adjacent region was 60 per cent. Going from east to west in Idaho, the proportions drop gradually to 45 per cent in the western portion of the state in the Boise-centric part of Idaho, and to 27 per cent in the northwest panhandle. Some would argue that these data are the geographical manifestation of a “company town” attitude near INL, and others would counter that self-interest is a legitimate political criterion. Indeed, a second nuclear power–related question in this survey found that only 21 per cent favoured construction of a nuclear power plant in their county to supply electricity to other states, a clear indication of self-interest. Nuclear politics in New Mexico have been much more heated, including recently. In April 2011, a local news station, KRQE, reported that WIPP’s contractor was reducing the workforce at WIPP. On 17 July 2011, Milan Simonich, a reporter with the Santa Fe New Mexican, reported that WIPP would need to expand its mission to avoid the loss of 500 jobs. Slightly less than two years after the 2011 news, Congressman Steven Pearce introduced legislation that would allow WIPP to accept transuranic waste from outside the DOE.23 The waste would likely come from West Valley, New York, a former commercial nuclear waste facility. A few weeks later, a letter published in the Associated Press criticized Pearce’s bill as making “New Mexico a deadly nuke waste dump for a few jobs.” In June 2013, a self-described activist on nuclear weapons issues wrote that New Mexico should not become the nation’s “nuclear outhouse.” These exchanges have become relatively common in New Mexico. One side argues with considerable vitriol that New Mexico has already born a disproportionate share of the nuclear war-making burden and that it should not receive waste from Hanford, New York state, and other locations. With major DOE sites at WIPP and Los Alamos, those in favour of expanding in New Mexico have countered that these facilities create high paying and stable jobs, and are recession proof. Those opposed point to periods when the DOE reduced the budgets of the DOE complex leading to economic vulnerability, and maintain that

232  Greenberg, Mayer, Powers, and Kosson

the DOE has exaggerated the economic benefits and understated the long-term stigma effect.24 Two breakdowns of safety culture occurred at the WIPP site in 2014. Those events, which in one case resulted in venting to the surface, are under investigation by the DOE and the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. It is likely that the WIPP site will not resume normal functioning for two years, which is a setback for the DOE’s efforts and arguably could have an impact on public perception and trust of the DOE. In the near term, we do not expect any radical changes in the work taking place at INL. During the coming decade, INL could enhance its role in the nuclear science, engineering, or waste management fields, and the state of Idaho could move forward to build a nuclear power plant, although we doubt it. WIPP’s role could dramatically change, and at a minimum WIPP will be part of a fascinating exercise in political manoeuvring focused on nuclear waste management and nuclear power. While these events unfold, INL and WIPP are surrounded by some of the most spectacular recreational landscapes in the United States and are likely to cultivate these tourist opportunities as well as agricultural ones. NOTES 1 Gosling and Fehner, The Manhattan Project; Groves, Now It Can Be Told. 2 Office of Environmental Management, Closing the Circle. 3 Greenberg et al., “The US Department of Energy’s Regional Economic Legacy”; Greenberg et al., “Facing an Uncertain Economic Future.” 4 Jenkins-Smith et al., “Reversing Nuclear Opposition.” 5 Ibid. 6 See, for example, Ansolabehere, and Konisky, “Public Attitudes toward Construction of New Power Plants”; see also Greenberg, Nuclear Waste Management for a review. 7 Greenberg, Nuclear Waste Management. 8 Blumberg and Luke, “Wireless Substation”; Joel Cantor et al., “Implications of the Growing Use of Wireless Telephones for Health Care Opinion Polls”; CTIA, “Wireless Quick Facts (2011)”; Zukin, “The Future Is Here!” 9 Greenberg, Nuclear Waste Management. 10 Ipsos, “Global Citizen Reaction to the Fukushima Nuclear Plant Disaster”; Jeffrey M. Jones, “Disaster in Japan Raises Nuclear Concerns in U.S.”; Pew Research Center, “Opposition to Nuclear Power Rises amid Japanese Crisis.”

Nuclear Waste Management and Nuclear Power  233 11 Greenberg, Nuclear Waste Management, ch. 5. 12 Environmental Health Center National Safety Council, A Reporter’s Guide to Yucca Mountain; Kunreuther et al., “Public Attitudes”; Macfarlane and Ewing, Uncertainty Underground. 13 Stewart and Stewart, Fuel Cycle to Nowhere; Blue Ribbon Commission, Report to the Secretary of Energy. 14 Ball, “Clinton Declares Yucca Mountain ‘Will Be Off the Table Forever’”; Macfarlane and Ewing, Uncertainty Underground, 2006. 15 Heaton, “The Carlsbad/WIPP History of Transuranic Disposal in Salt”; National Research Council, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant; Timm and Fox, “Could WIPP Replace Yucca Mountain?” 16 CNS News, “President Obama Defends the Use of Nuclear Energy after Fukushima.” 17 Greenberg and Truelove, “Right Answers and Right-Wrong Answers.” 18 Clinton, Back to Work; Bipartisan Policy Centre, “Former Senator Pete Domenic”; Greenberg, Nuclear Waste Management, ch. 1; MSNBC, “Obama Renews Commitment to Nuclear Energy”; Nuclear Energy Institute, “Nuclear Power Plants Vital Element”; Wallenstein and Yang, “Obama Support for Nuclear Power Faces a Test.” 19 Idaho National Laboratory (INL) website, accessed 30 August 2016, https://www.inl.gov/about-inl/general-information/. 20 Bennett, “Nuclear Power in Idaho.” 21 Alm et al., “Intrastate Regional Differences in Political Culture”; Social Science Research Center, Boise State University, 16th Annual Idaho Public Policy Survey; Gonzalez, 13th Annual Idaho Public Policy Survey. 22 Social Science Research Center, Boise State University, 19th Annual Idaho Public Policy Survey. 23 Coleman, “Congressman Pearce Introduces Bill.” 24 Brauer, “Do Military Expenditures Create Net Employment?”; Dumas et al., Assessment of the Environmental and Economic Impacts; Greenberg et al., “The US Department of Energy’s Regional Economic Legacy”; Lowrie, Greenberg, and Frisch, “Economic Fallout.”

REFERENCES Alm, Leslie, Ross Burkhart, W. David Patton, and James Weatherby. “Intrastate Regional Differences in Political Culture: A Case Study of Idaho.” State and Local Government Review 33 (2001): 109–19. Ansolabehere, Stephen, and David Konisky. “Public Attitudes toward Construction of New Power Plants.” Public Opinion Quarterly 73 (2009): 566–77.

234  Greenberg, Mayer, Powers, and Kosson Ball, Molly. “Clinton Declares Yucca Mountain ‘Will Be Off the Table Forever.’” Las Vegas Review Journal (17 January 2008). Accessed 10 February 2012. www.lvrj.com/news/13860977.html. Bennett, Ralph. “Nuclear Power in Idaho: A First Look at Issues.” PowerPoint presentation, 2008. Accessed 9 July 2013. http://nuclear.inl.gov/docs/ papers-presentations/nuclear_power_in_idaho.pdf. Bipartisan Policy Centre. “Former Senator Pete Domenic Delivers Speech on Future of Global Nuclear Energy.” 1 December 2009. Accessed 2 December 2009. http://bipartisanpolicy.org/press-release/former-senator-petedomenici-delivers-speech-future-global-nuclear/. Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. Report to the Secretary of Energy. Washington, DC: US Department of Energy, 2012. http://www. energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2013/04/f0/brc_finalreport_jan2012.pdf. Blumberg, Stephen J. and Julian V. Luke. “Wireless Substation: Early Release of Estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, January–June 2010.” National Center for Health Statistics (US). Accessed 24 August 2011. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/wireless201012.htm. Brauer, Jurgen. “Do Military Expenditures Create Net Employment? The Case of U.S. Military-Nuclear Production Sites. In Economics of Conflict and Peace, edited by Jurgen Brauer and William Gissy, 201–25. Aldershot, Brookfield, VT: Avebury, 1997. Cantor, Joel, Susan Brownlee, Cliff Zukin, and John Boyle. “Implications of the Growing Use of Wireless Telephones for Health Care Opinion Polls.” Health Services Research 44 (2009): 1762–72. Clinton, William J. Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. CNS News. “President Obama Defends the Use of Nuclear Energy after Fukushima.” cnsnews.com, 16 March 2011. Accessed 10 February 2012. http://cnsnews.com/news/article/president-Obama-defends-nuclearenergy. Coleman, Michael. “Congressman Pearce Introduces Bill to Allow Most Toxic Nuclear Waste to Be Buried in New Mexico.” Albuquerque Journal, 12 May 2013. CTIA, the Wireless Association. “Wireless Quick Facts (2011).” Accessed 5 August 2011. http://www.ctia.org/your-wireless-life/how-wirelessworks/wireless-quick-facts. Dumas, Lloyd, Bernd Franke, Jay Coghlan, Colin King, Geoff Petrie. An Assessment of the Environmental and Economic Impacts of the DOE Environmental Management Programs in New Mexico. Santa Fe, NM: Nuclear Watch of New Mexico, 2003.

Nuclear Waste Management and Nuclear Power  235 Environmental Health Center National Safety Council. A Reporter’s Guide to Yucca Mountain. Washington, DC: Environmental Health Centre National Safety Council, 2001. Gonzalez, J.E. 13th Annual Idaho Public Policy Survey. Boise, ID: Boise State University, March 2002. Accessed 5 July 2005. http://scholarworks. boisestate.edu/ppc_pps/16/. Gosling, F.G, and Terrence Fehner. The Manhattan Project: Making the Atomic Bomb. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1994. Greenberg, Michael. Nuclear Waste Management, Nuclear Power, and Energy Choices: Public Preferences, Perceptions, and Trust. New York: Springer, 2012. Greenberg, Michael, David Lewis, Michael Frisch, Karen Lowrie, and Henry Mayer. “The US Department of Energy’s Regional Economic Legacy: Spatial Dimensions of a Half Century of Dependency.” Socio-Economic Planning Sciences 36 (2002): 109–25. Greenberg, Michael, Katherine T. Miller, Michael Frisch, and David Lewis. “Facing an Uncertain Economic Future: Environmental Management Spending and Rural Regions Surrounding the U.S. DOE’s Nuclear Weapons Facilities.” Defence and Peace Economics 10 (2003): 85–97. Greenberg, Michael, and Heather Truelove. “Right Answers and Right-Wrong Answers: Sources of Information Influencing Knowledge of NuclearRelated Information.” Socio-Economic Planning Sciences 44 (2010): 130–40. Groves, Leslie. Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project. New York: Da Capo Press, 1962. Heaton, John. “The Carlsbad/WIPP History of Transuranic Disposal in Salt.” Presentation to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future Disposal Subcommittee, 7 July 2010. Accessed 17 December 2011. http:// cybercemetery.unt.edu/archive/brc/20120621025349/http://brc.gov/ sites/default/files/meetings/presentations/john_heaton-the_carlsbad_ history_rev_2.pdf. INL. “General Information.” INL website. Accessed 5 July 2013. https://www. inl.gov/about-inl/general-information/. Ipsos. “Global Citizen Reaction to the Fukushima Nuclear Plant Disaster.” PowerPoint presentation, 2011. Accessed 19 September 2011. https://www. ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/ipsos-global-advisor-nuclear-powerjune-2011.pdf. Jenkins-Smith, Hank, Carol Silva, Matthew Nowlin, and Grant deLozier. “Reversing Nuclear Opposition, Evolving Public Acceptance of a Permanent Nuclear Waste Disposal Facility.” Risk Analysis 31 (2011): 629–44.

236  Greenberg, Mayer, Powers, and Kosson Jones, Jeffrey M. “Disaster in Japan Raises Nuclear Concerns in U.S.” Gallup, 16 March 2011. Accessed 23 September 2011. http://www.gallup.com/ poll/146660/disaster-japan-raises-nuclear-concerns.aspx. http://www. gallup.com/poll/146660. Accessed September 23 Kunreuther, Howard, Douglas Easterling, William Desvousges, and Paul Slovic. “Public Attitudes toward Citing a High-Level Nuclear Waste Repository in Nevada.” Risk Analysis 10 (1990): 469–84. Lowrie, Karen, Michael Greenberg, and Michael Frisch. “Economic Fallout.” Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy (Summer, 1999): 120–6. Macfarlane, Allison M, and Rodney Ewing, Uncertainty Underground, Yucca Mountain and the Nation’s High-Level Nuclear Waste. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. MSNBC. “Obama Renews Commitment to Nuclear Energy.” 16 February 2010. Accessed 12 December 2010. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/35421517/ns/ business-oil_and_energy#.V8IDPfkrKUk. National Research Council. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, A Potential Solution for the Disposal of Transuranic Waste. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1996. Nuclear Energy Institute. “Nuclear Power Plants Vital Element in President Bush’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Initiative.” 12 February 2003. Accessed 10 February 2010. http://www.nei.org/News-Media/Media-Room/NewsReleases/Nuclear-Power-Plants-Vital-Element-in-President-Bu. Office of Environmental Management, Department of Energy (DOE). Closing the Circle on the Splitting of the Atom. Washington, DC: DOE, 1995. Pew Research Center. “Opposition to Nuclear Power Rises amid Japanese Crisis.” 21 March 2011. Accessed 19 September 2011. http://www.peoplepress.org/2011/03/21/opposition-to-nuclear-power-rises-amid-japanesecrisis/. Social Science Research Center, Boise State University. 16th Annual Idaho Public Policy Survey. Boise, ID: Boise State University, April 2005. Accessed 28 February 2005. http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/ppc_pps/18/. –  19th Annual Idaho Public Policy Survey. Boise, ID: Boise State University, 2008. Accessed 9 July 2013. http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/ppc_pps/21/. Stewart, Richard, and Jane Stewart. Fuel Cycle to Nowhere: US Law and Policy on Nuclear Waste. Nashville TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2011. Timm, Christopher, and Jerry Fox. “Could WIPP Replace Yucca Mountain?” Nuclear Engineering International 13 (September 2011). Accessed 17 December 2011. http://www.neimagazine.com/features/featurecould-wipp-replaceyucca-mountain-/.

Nuclear Waste Management and Nuclear Power  237 Wallenstein, Peter, and Jia Lynn Yang. “Obama Support for Nuclear Power Faces a Test.” Washington Post, 18 March 2011. Accessed 10 February 2012, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obamas-support-for-nuclearpower-faces-a-test/2011/03/18/ABQLu8r_story.html. Zukin, Cliff. “The Future Is Here! Where Are We Now? And How Do We Get There?” Public Opinion Quarterly 70 (2006): 426–42.

8 Port Hope Burning: The Trail of Eldorado, the Uranium Medical Research Centre, and Community Tension over Scientific Uncertainty d av i d e l i j a h b e l l a n d marissa zappora bell

Introduction Driving into Port Hope, Ontario, for the first time, there is little indication that the area is home to the world’s oldest and historically most prominent uranium refinement and conversion facility. No historical landmark indicates the role uranium processed in Port Hope played in the Manhattan Project, the Cold War arms race, or the global distribution of uranium fuel rods for nuclear reactors. Once, according to Penny Sanger’s Blind Faith, a large billboard welcomed newcomers stating, “Beautiful old Port Hope – the town that radiates friendliness.”1 Yet the association of uranium and radioactivity with medical healing and industrial pride has long since decayed into unease, stigma, defensive mistrust, and controversy surrounding the world’s oldest legacy of radioactive industrial contamination. Within the community of Port Hope, there are concerns for how a radioactive reputation may precede the town, and also about the safety and health of long-term residents. What Port Hope and groups such as the Uranium Medical Research Centre (UMRC) have ultimately learned is that attempts to balance concerns for positive self-representation with those for potential hazard must inevitably come at some cost: defined along variable but interwoven biomedical, financial, and social conditions. Home to many retired persons from the social and political elite of nearby Toronto, Port Hope remains a town of subtle contradiction. Little of the environmental and industrial controversy enveloping Port Hope is readily observed – not in the array of evergreens and deciduous trees lining the roads, on the sandy lakeshore with sailboats dotted on the horizon and harboured in neat rows, in the classic twentieth century village architecture (voted “Best Preserved Main Street in Ontario”), or

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in the cool rippling of the prized trout and salmon stream, the Ganaraska River.2 There is a sense of idyllic peace and, at least according to many news reports and community bulletins, a sense of social strain to preserve that peace.3 Social strain in Port Hope may be summarized in one gnawing thought: at what cost? At what cost will the idyllic peace of a community confronted with legacies of radioactive contamination manage economies of risk? To minimize or disregard public health concerns is to invite a higher degree of biomedical injury. To maximize or inflate public health concerns is to invite greater financial damage in terms of real estate value, tourism, and reduction of employment through local industry. Our attention in this chapter is focused on the social costs associated with negotiating balance, which we conceptualize as something like a currency of exchange between biomedical and financial concerns. Social cost is readily observed in debates over social morality, environmental justice, political-economic incentive, or historical representation – all conditions which link and integrate biomedical and financial concerns in different ways. Most immediately for any narrative assessment of Port Hope contamination is the historical connection to the legend of El Dorado, where conquerors and places of intrigue combine in a quest for treasure beyond imagination. Yet this El Dorado myth, including all its costs and consequences, has become all too real in Port Hope, through the aptly named Eldorado Corporation and subsequently, associated industry.4 The purpose of our investigation of social costs borne by the community of Port Hope is threefold: (1) we seek to better document a story of ongoing public health contestation, which has directly involved our volunteer organization, the Uranium Medical Research Centre; (2) we analyse why this scenario has evolved into a case of such protracted emotional and political sensitivity; and (3) we hope to suggest a course for improvement and alleviation of social consequences for communities burdened with identities, legacies, and labels of “radioactive contamination.” Our examination of social consequence is a lessons-learned approach meant to hold relevance for any localized community involving unresolved scientific debate over environmental contamination. Of importance, we as authors wish to openly acknowledge our affiliation with the Uranium Medical Research Centre; we are both unpaid research associates of the US branch of this organization, based in both New York and Washington, DC. Although not directly involved in the UMRC Canada pilot study in Port Hope, our affiliation certainly affects our interpretation of history surrounding these events. Our shared

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commitment, goals, and ideals undoubtedly affect how we choose to interpret the political consequences that have arisen in the wake of UMRC pilot studies in Port Hope. Yet in assembling this chapter, we have not been motivated by any sentiments of guilt about UMRC activities, or efforts towards justification; as social scientists, we readily accept implications and repercussions associated with labels of “contamination,” yet were only surprised by the scale and intensity of what we observed. In this chapter, we hope to analyse and assess the social response to UMRC activities out of concern for a larger and more generalized well-being than the scope of public health or epidemiology readily permits. At present, we are also not motivated by sentiments of loss for the poisoning of an otherwise idyllic lakeside town, or the juxtaposition of a scenic façade with a harsher reality of radioactive contamination amid high stakes industrial development. Françoise Zonabend writes about the apparent clash of such divided worlds, mostly evidenced by a mutual disinterest or avoidance of awareness between the nuclear industrial developers of the Normandy coast in France and the more localized resident population.5 Finally, we have not investigated what Hugh Gusterson posits as “the most interesting question of all about nuclear technology: why some fear it and others do not.”6 We accept that there is divided opinion over the threat and danger of low-level radioactive waste and associated nuclear technology, and over how much attention such issues should receive within any community. What we wish to document and describe is how divisions in community opinion and concern may align with larger political and scientific debates and result in drastic consequences. We are interested in how polarization, latent within a community, may become activated in the context of radioactive risk, and then render the community prone to widespread threats, distrust, and interpersonal violence. We examine how the social polarization over interpretations of risk from the nuclear industry and radioactive contamination can create a scenario where a sharply divided community may turn on itself, where the polarized views of “Yes Harm” and “No Harm” suddenly become a catalyst for suspicion and harm to everyone. Inherent in the political contextualization of this chapter is the fact that we, as authors, have never been objective bystanders. This subjectivity is essential to our experiential understanding and embedded analysis. The title of this chapter, referring to Port Hope “burning,” has several meanings: (1) a biological and physical reference to properties associated with exposure to radioactive contamination; (2) a symbolic

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reference to the dissolution of hope and dissipation of a residential dream equally observed in literature concerning victims of residential contamination across the continent (for effective summation see Fitchen);7 (3) most importantly, a reference to the community tension and strong friction generated by scientific controversy over localized health concerns. We present overt community friction as the product of latent division and polarization, where social contestation over sensitive issues can magnify quickly in the presence of opposing medical voices and constructs for scientific authority, particularly when high political-­ economic and social-moral stakes are tied to scientific determination. Furthermore, we suggest social anxieties and community tensions require interpretation within the rhetoric of loss spanning individual, corporate, and larger societal considerations. This is the unfortunate story of repercussions on the community of Port Hope, many aspects of which we see as applicable to any community subjected to a public health debate, uncertainty, and scientific mistrust. Background: Social Geography and Local History Port Hope lies approximately 100 kilometres east of Toronto, and was once a prominent nineteenth century shipping village on the northern coast of Lake Ontario. In 2011, slightly over 16,000 people called Port Hope home.8 While the town of Port Hope has a steady local economy that includes a small amount of tourism, the municipality is most widely known for its historic uranium refinery, which has left Port Hope with the largest volume of historic low-level radioactive wastes in Canada. A large portion of these wastes are in the form of contaminated soil (approximately 1.7 million cubic metres) associated with radium and uranium refining dating back to the 1930s.9 Due to lack of regulation and disregard for environmental or public health concerns from the 1930s until the mid-1970s, significant amounts of radioactive waste were also dumped into Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Ganaraska River.10 Cameco, once known as Eldorado Mining and Refining Ltd and then Eldorado Nuclear Ltd, is situated adjacent to the town centre of Port Hope and is not only the oldest refinery of uranium in Canada but also in the world. The legacy of radioactive contamination in Port Hope is tied to the large amounts of waste produced by the refining activities of Cameco and its predecessors over eight decades.11 Particularly in the late 1940s and 1950s, large shipments of waste were delivered to the Welcome Waste Management facility approximately 1 kilometre west of Port

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Hope. This resulted in approximately 12,000 cubic metres of processed waste and 255,000 cubic metres of contaminated soils. Up until 1988, much larger volumes (over 200,000 cubic metres) of processed waste were shipped to Port Granby, 16 kilometres to the west of Port Hope.12 Yet the real contamination concerns are not from registered deposition and waste management centres, but from unauthorized or simply unrecorded dumping, spillage from transportation vehicles, wind and water diffusion from sites, locations of “temporary” waste storage, and the use of heavy metal waste to underlay and fill roads, parking lots, and building construction sites throughout the town of Port Hope. Since the dissolution of the government-run Eldorado Nuclear Ltd in 1988, all contamination deposited in and around Port Hope has been relabelled to be of a “historical” nature, meaning that the original generator is no longer in business and cannot be held responsible.13 The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Office, which the Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd operates on behalf of Natural Resources Canada, oversees the historical radioactive wastes. Also, tied in for oversight is the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), which in 2000 replaced the long-standing Atomic Energy Control Board. The radioactive legacy in Port Hope, tied as it is to the historical activities of a crown corporation (under both Eldorado Mining and Refining Ltd and later Eldorado Nuclear Ltd), has led to many assumptions about conflict of interest.14 For much of their duration, the refinement activities at Port Hope were exempt from regulation based on demands for military secrecy and the need for governmental production. Although the Atomic Energy Control Board was created in 1946, oversight of the Eldorado–Cameco predecessors was largely negligible, as a result of exceptionally close ties among corporate, military, scientific, and government interests overlapping with the Eldorado (now Cameco) management. The experiences of the Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee (PHCHCC) and the Uranium Medical Research Centre (UMRC) sustain questions about the neutrality and potential for conflict of interest associated with government-run CNSC and Health Canada in their assessments of Port Hope.15 Cameco and the Legend of Eldorado The present-day public health controversy associated with Cameco Corporation and Zircatec Precision Industries Inc. has a long and tortuous history. Corporate management over the past eighty years has shifted

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from Eldorado Gold Mines Ltd to Eldorado Mining and Refining Ltd to Eldorado Nuclear Ltd, and subsumed companies of the Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation, Power Resources Inc., Uranerz Exploration and Mining Ltd, Uranerz USA Inc., and fuel intermediary Nukem Energy. In 1996, at the time of purchase, Power Resources Inc. was the largest producer of uranium in the United States. According to the World Nuclear Association, Cameco is currently the world’s largest publicly traded uranium company and the second largest uranium producer, accounting for 18 per cent of world uranium production.16 In 2004, Cameco divested its interests in gold to the newly formed company, Centerra Gold.17 Yet the legacy of “Eldorado,” selling radium up until World War II and uranium ever since, and its search for the riches of the earth remains intact, given the great value of refined radium and uranium. After World War I, the Radium Girls were using brushes dipped in radium to add luminescent paint to military watches and aviation dials on the east coast of the United States. Radium was hailed as a magical, effective cure-all, as the only known treatment for cancer, and was a popular remedy for arthritis and other chronic diseases ranging from gout to circulatory disorders.18 In a hallmark case of workers’ rights and occupational safety, authorities withheld medical data pertaining to the Radium Girls, and sick young women were accused of acquiring syphilis through sexual promiscuity.19 Yet even as the knowledge of illness and danger associated with radium spread, the technological allure and the hope for its unparalleled healing potential remained. The allure of riches from radium (in 1910 it was fetching 200,000 dollars per gram) was enough to send prospector Gilbert LaBine into the Canadian Arctic in 1930 to look for new sources. Until the 1920s, the only known mine for radium was in Jáchymov in the modern day Czech Republic. The radium market swung to Belgium, following the discovery of rich pitchblende in the Belgian Congo (currently the Democratic Republic of the Congo). By 1925, this abundant pitchblende dropped the price of radium down to 75,000 dollars per gram. Gilbert LaBine’s new source, found in Port Radium on the eastern shore of Great Bear Lake in the Arctic region of the Northwest Territories, broke the radium monopoly in Belgium. By 1933, Gilbert LaBine was producing and refining radium at Port Hope, and although the price was down to 25,000 dollars per gram, he was still making substantial profit.20 The Eldorado refinement facility in Port Hope began in 1933 after Gilbert LaBine encountered Charles Morrow of the Sculthorpe family in a hotel lobby in downtown Toronto. LaBine was looking for a place to

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refine his newly mined pitchblende. At 1 gram of radium per 6.5 tons of ore, LaBine’s find was much richer than the Belgium pitchblende at 1 gram per 10 tons of ore, and therefore worth the challenges of mining and transporting it from the Arctic. For refining, access to water for both shipping and the industrial process was essential, as was proximity to the important Toronto–Montreal shipping route. Morrow had recently inherited a seed mill on the Port Hope waterfront at the mouth of the Ganaraska River. According to Sanger’s history of the nuclear industry in Port Hope, he happily traded his mill for 9,000 shares of Eldorado Gold Mines stock, and within one month the value of his shares quadrupled.21 The year 1933 was not only the beginning of the radioactive legacy in Port Hope; it was the beginning of a whole new era – coinciding with Adolf Hitler coming to power in Germany and Leo Szilard (among others) envisioning the explosive power of sustained nuclear reactions.22 This was the turning point, when global politics intertwined with the availability of uranium and the technological capacity for uranium refinement. From the Manhattan Project to Global Politics and Industry The Eldorado Company began refining radium in Port Hope in 1933 for its numerous assumed medicinal applications, as well as for use in luminous paints. Once the importance of uranium was established, the radium refinement process was adapted and transferred to uranium. While the pitchblende from Port Radium held only minute quantities of radium, it consisted of approximately 40 per cent natural uranium.23 Up until the late 1940s, this mined pitchblende was left as waste in large piles or used as construction backfill. In August 1939, scientists Leo Szilard and Albert Einstein wrote a letter to US President Franklin Roosevelt, suggesting the potential for chain reactions produced within masses of uranium to create “extremely powerful bombs of a new type.”24 Szilard and Einstein, both German by birth, also suggested the high probability that Nazi Germany was developing the same technology. By the time Roosevelt received the letter, Hitler had invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, and World War II had started. Roosevelt did not hesitate. Although early advancements and concerns for secrecy related to atomic energy caused the United States to break away from partnering programs in both Canada and the United Kingdom, uranium refined by Eldorado Mining and Refining Ltd remained integral to wartime atomic research and the creation of the world’s first atomic weapons in the US Manhattan Project.

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Uranium went from its sales price in 1939 at 2 dollars and 50 cents a pound as radium milling waste to becoming an essential element to the post–World War II superpowers for nuclear technology and weaponry. When the Nazis overran Belgium in 1940, the Eldorado Company of Canada became the Allied world’s sole producer and refiner of uranium. In 1941, the United States purchased 8 tons of uranium oxides from the Eldorado Gold Mine, which at that point was still lying as by-product waste from radium refinement piled in Port Hope. These uranium oxide stores and all subsequent production were a short boat ride away from the US Manhattan Engineering District (MED) in the Niagara region of New York state. Importantly, the Americans considered the process of uranium refinement at Port Hope protected geopolitically from any impending Nazi invasion.25 The Eldorado mine in Port Radium was abandoned completely in the early war years, as business collapsed under the stress of war. Yet, with uranium’s new importance, Port Radium reopened and mined uranium. In 1942 the United States signed a contract for 700 tons of uranium oxides mined from Port Radium, all managed under the direction of the Eldorado exclusive sales agent, Boris Pregel.26 The British feared that the Americans would monopolize the only available supply of uranium, and the Canadian government worried about losing access to its own resources. It stepped in, set prices for share purchase, forced a sale, and accused both Eldorado’s sales agent Boris Pregel and refinery manager Marcel Pochon of illegal foreign transactions.27 In January 1944, the reorganized company became a crown corporation known as the Eldorado Mining and Refining Ltd, a reconfiguration that demanded either removal or modification of loyalties for both Pregel and Pochon. Marcel Pochon, a French chemist whom the LaBine brothers lured from the United Kingdom to manage the refinery as soon as they discovered pitchblende, was the last surviving student to have directly worked under the Curies, and one of the few chemists in the world who knew how to extract radium from ore. Attributing the death of Marie Curie and other fellow students to radium, he was keenly aware of dangers from exposure, telling a Port Hope newspaper in 1933 that “the slightest fraction of a milligram taken into the system leads to cancer, anemia, and disease of the hip bones … For radium, although perhaps the greatest cancer-cure known, is a deadly poison.”28 Pochon was clever enough to insert a clause into his contract that ensured his salary would continue should he succumb to any poor health from radium poisoning.29 Yet his concern for the deleterious health effects of radium

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and the associated degradation of the environment, which caused him to monitor radioactivity in the Port Hope harbour, did not elicit any concern for public health on the part of the Canadian government.30 Federal concerns for radioactive material remained strictly in reference to sustained nuclear reactions and the geopolitical significance of nuclear weaponry. Since radiation was not viewed as a potential public health threat, Marcel Pochon’s notes and environmental monitoring were never the subject of a federal inquiry. Canadian federal interest in Pochon’s work only arose in the context of wartime pressures and international demand for access to uranium, and Canadian government concerns related specifically to a possible US monopoly over Canadian resources. In March 1945, the Canadian government charged Pochon, along with two other company officials, with criminal conspiracy for unauthorized sale of uranium to the United States. The charges resulted from new legislation designed to restrict the movement of uranium; at the same time the government also tried to minimize public attention towards uranium. Eventually, it withdrew the Canadian criminal charges, but a civil action in the state of New York replaced them. It settled out of court through the involvement of Boris Pregel. Pregel was the real subject of the Canadian federal lawsuit. Previously a competitor with Eldorado as the owner of independent pitchblende mines, in 1940 he received a seven-year contract and became the exclusive agent for Eldorado sales throughout the world.31 This contract was an obstacle to the Canadian federal government, which recognized that Pregel’s role in transferring uranium to the US Manhattan Project undercut the capacity for a crown monopoly over uranium distribution. Although Pregel declared the charges against both him and Pochon for distributing uranium entirely political in nature, he eventually paid a large sum of money, and his contract was annulled in order to settle the case.32 In this way, the new federal regulations allowed the Canadian government to take over the Eldorado Company and eliminate any private competition. Although the government invited Pochon to remain with Eldorado after its successful transfer to a crown monopoly, he voluntarily retired the following year. Eldorado as a crown corporation maintained dominance in uranium mining and refining throughout the 1940s and 1950s, establishing Beaverlodge Mine and the associated residential zone of Uranium City, Saskatchewan, in 1952. When the demand for uranium for nuclear power plants and energy production increased, the potential for a more

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favourable public business image also emerged. The Eldorado Mining and Refining Ltd seized upon this opportunity for wider cultural acceptance by becoming Eldorado Nuclear Ltd. Finally, demonstrating an equal form of political opportunism, the government dismantled the crown corporation in 1988 by merging it with the Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation to evolve into the privately owned Canadian Mining and Energy Corporation, better known by the abbreviated title of Cameco Corporation.33 Environmental Studies for Contamination The environmental impact of radioactive dumping, spilling, and leaching in Port Hope has been documented and studied in numerous ways over the decades. According to Pat McNamara’s Nuclear Genocide in Canada, the beginning of Port Hope’s official recognition of an environmental disaster started in 1966 with D.G. Andrews, a professor of nuclear engineering. Andrews’s correspondence and reports suggest that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) employed him to investigate the possibility that enough waste uranium dumped in various locations in and around Port Hope could pose a threat if used for the illegal creation of a nuclear weapon.34 Although the RCMP’s concern was about state security and the geopolitics of nuclear weaponry, they started to pay attention to sites of radioactive waste near residential areas. Concerns about the illegal creation of a nuclear weapon were unfounded, as a high ratio of waste uranium would be necessary to produce any enriched quantities, and the lack of technology did not allow for such a dramatic conversion. Nevertheless, the investigation by Andrews drew attention to Port Hope as an industrial town developed around Eldorado/Cameco activities, with no geographical buffer separating or insulating residents. Anxieties about how radioactive isotopes in the environment could pose a threat to the residential population emerged in 1983 when a Health Canada team identified uptake of radium, lead, and uranium in garden vegetables, suggesting that a resident eating vegetables from a contaminated garden could receive a dose of 0.0068 millisieverts from identified levels of radium-226.35 Bliss L.Tracy, a career nuclear physicist with Health Canada, led another investigation focused primarily on airborne uranium emissions; it concluded that the annual dose calculated at 0.16 millisieverts was not significant enough to cause any major health effects.36 Tracy later partnered with Brian Ahier from the Health Canada

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Radiation Protection Bureau to employ statistical modelling based on hindcast comparison and arrived at similar results and conclusions.37 Ahier and Tracy’s studies in the mid-1990s also indicated problems related to water contamination. Their radionuclide study on water and sediments of Lake Ontario near Port Hope revealed levels of radium and uranium that were of concern.38 Not surprisingly, this study found the highest concentrations of radium and uranium in the waste rock in locations labelled “tailing management areas,” sites associated with historic dumping. This study had similar findings as the earlier work of the International Joint Commission, which found that Port Hope harbour waters had gross concentrations of alpha-beta radioactivity above maximum acceptable levels according to the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.39 More recently, a study by Jovanovic and colleagues found that the bioaccessibility of uranium in Port Hope soil was considerably greater than in studies of comparable locations.40 Affected by geographic features of landscape, and moderated by ground consistency and soil texture, dangers from leaching through both groundwater and run-off were cited as of particular concern.41 A study commissioned by Cameco found that the risk to biota at the Port Hope conversion facility did not extend to the greater Port Hope area.42 The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission found measures at the Port Hope conversion facility for radium, uranium, and arsenic all exceeded acceptable limits set by the Port Hope Area Initiative, a committee assembled under the joint oversight of the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), Public Works and Government Services Canada, and Natural Resources Canada.43 However, they believed all of the excess levels detected stemmed from periods of historic dumping prior to corporate ownership by the Canadian government. This designation of “historic,” which references a time period before an open acknowledgment of a public health hazard and therefore curtails any direct accountability, must be seen as an important reconfiguration in concepts of blame. With no one to blame, nothing was done. The Question of Epidemiological Interpretation While the presence of hazardous wastes and low-level radioactive contamination has been fairly well established and acknowledged, how this waste affects, measures, and provides indicators of public health has proven extremely contentious and politically charged. There is great flexibility in the collection and coding of data pertaining to morbidity and mortality, and the assessment of this data for association and

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comparative risk is even more variable. The founder of modern causation theory, Austin Bradford Hill, had this to say about drawing conclusions of causation in science: All scientific work is incomplete – whether it be observational or experimental. All scientific work is liable to be upset or modified by advancing knowledge. That does not confer upon us a freedom to ignore the knowledge we already have, or to postpone the action that it appears to demand at a given time.44

At the time of his publication in the 1960s, Hill was engaged in debates about the association between cigarettes and lung cancer amid campaigns of doubt produced by the Tobacco Institute Research Committee and the Council for Tobacco Research in the United States. As internal memos later revealed, the production of scientific doubt was extremely valuable in delaying actions against cigarette producers and advertisement practices.45 In 2008, local environmental activist Pat McNamara submitted a petition to the Auditor General of Canada suggesting potential for similar “campaigns of scientific doubt” associated with Cameco and environmental contaminants in Port Hope. McNamara concluded by citing conflict of interest by the Canadian government and requesting further public health scrutiny that was free from any immediate conflict of interest. The official Health Canada response was as follows: The Government of Canada takes the health of the residents of Port Hope very seriously. The following comprehensive health studies have been undertaken by different agencies/departments of the Government of Canada since the early 1980s: • Standardized Mortality Ratios in Selected Urban Areas in Ontario, 1954–1978 (Kusiak and Howe, 1984; Ecosystems, 1984) • Mortality Atlas of Canada, Volume 3, 1973–1979 (Health and Welfare Canada, 1984) • A Study of Childhood Leukaemia around Canadian Nuclear Facilities (Clarke et al., 1989, 1991) • Birth Defects and Cancer Incidence Atlas of Ontario (Health Canada, 1993) • Great Lakes Health Effects Program: Port Hope Harbour Area of Concern: Health Data and Statistics for the Population of the Region (1986–1992) (Health Canada, 1998)

250  David Elijah Bell and Marissa Zappora Bell • Cancer Incidence in Port Hope, 1971–1996 (Health Canada, 2000) • Cancer and General Mortality in Port Hope, 1956–1997 (Health Canada, 2002) All the health outcomes of these studies suggest that the health of Port Hope residents is very similar to other residents of Ontario. Overall, Port Hope death rates for all causes and all cancers combined were similar to the general population of Ontario … In view of these conclusions above and the earlier studies, it was decided that further studies are not necessary.46

The two cancer studies performed by Health Canada in 2000 and 2002 were to be the authoritative assessment of Port Hope and cancer.47 While the data used for these studies included the most comprehensive data of any study to date, a community-based organization, the Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee (PHCHCC), was determined not to let Health Canada alone interpret the data. In 2004, the PHCHCC commissioned Eric Mintz as an independent and unaffiliated epidemiologist to review the same Health Canada data but make independent conclusions. Using the Health Canada data and making comparisons with national averages, Mintz found the overall death rate in Port Hope between 1986 and 1997 was elevated by 13 per cent. Childhood cancer deaths were 48 per cent more than expected; childhood leukemia was 41 per cent more than expected; brain cancer was elevated for both men and women; nasal/sinus cancer was significantly elevated for men; both lip and bone cancer were at least twice the expected rate for men for 1986–1996; colorectal cancer was elevated for women; and cancers such as esophageal cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma were elevated for both men and women.48 Mintz concluded his review by stating: The patterns of several cancer rates … are consistent with environmental contamination … Along with the brain cancer, colon cancer and some of the rare cancer results, the available evidence points to there being problems in Port Hope.49

However, Mintz conducted this study on behalf of the PHCHCC as a critique of Health Canada and not subject to further peer-review, and the full unpublished report remains in the hands of PHCHCC.50

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The Role of Public Perception: Anecdotal Evidence and Lay Perspectives The local residential community has internalized the scientific controversy in different ways, with only a small but vocal portion of the public expressing significant concern about radioactive contamination. Between the 1930s and 1970s, the general population was not overly troubled, but the discovery in 1975 of elevated radon gas at St Mary’s elementary school (built upon a foundation of refinery waste in the 1960s) triggered a community reaction.51 St Mary’s had a reading of 63 picocuries per litre, which is twelve times current Canadian allowable levels.52 In reports dated 1978 but not disclosed to the school board or general public, Atomic Energy Canada Limited (AECL) also detected radon gas at the Dr Powers elementary school at 506 picocuries per litre, or ninety-four times the Canadian allowable level. Found in the sub-slab foundation space of an extension housing the kindergarten and gymnasium, this was the highest reading. This extension to the original Dr Powers school was built in 1950, with refinery waste used as backfill. No attention, remediation, or change in routine occurred. The public “discovery” of radon gas contamination did not occur until 2004 when board member Pat McNamara requested AECL files on the school property following a routine excavation. In 2006, local resident Evans-Gould contacted AECL to have it monitor the property radiation levels by her fence; the resulting radiation levels were high enough that the “Geiger counter went crazy.”53 Importantly, residents in Port Hope can only obtain AECL information about their own property and cannot legally access information concerning a neighbour’s property. This select inquiry process contributes to an opaque knowledge network, which is likely to arouse both suspicion and increased anxiety for some residents. The degree to which the lack of synthetic understanding and a restricted capacity for inquiry has increased fear or discomfort in local residents, particularly in the context of AECL policy, is open to debate and in need of further research. Regardless of statistical arguments and dialectics, local priorities often can be seen in an efficient and emblematic way through anecdotal evidence. While scientific perspectives often dismiss first-hand experience as sensationalistic, within journalism and other forms of mass media such representations can allow access to individual voices and be symbolic of key issues within the community as a whole. Anecdotal

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evidence also does something that scientific reports cannot do: it gives a face to suffering and aids in the realization that suffering does not occur only in the form of quantitative or biological disease. Suffering is inherent in situations involving uncertainty and suspicion, and is likely to interact with quantitative measurements through heightened recall bias and detection bias through assumptions for causality. Speaking to journalist Katie Harries, resident Molly Mulloy described how she attended kindergarten at Dr Powers in 1999, and at the age of forty was diagnosed with a brain tumour. In an interview, she stated: “I am convinced that in multiple ways my life has been destroyed by that industry in Port Hope.”54 There are many examples of local residents who complained of health issues that potentially related to the presence of the nearby nuclear industry. Such comments emphasize the inherent uncertainty of causation and tend to exemplify the pain of ambiguity, confusion, and distrust. One online commenter on Harries’s article wrote of his father’s diagnosis with cancer: “We’ve researched and found that papillary thyroid cancer can be caused by exposure to radiation. My father was hired sometime in the late 70s and early 80s by a contractor based out of Warkworth, Ontario, to clean up some of these sites around Port Hope.” Another anonymous commenter mentioned health problems potentially related to living near Port Hope: “My family lived in Port Hope for six years. My daughter developed female health problems (age 9).”55 From any review of environmental health literature, news articles, and internet social forums regarding Port Hope, two overarching categories emerge: “lay” perspectives and “scientific” perspectives. Generally, the stereotypes and associations supporting these categories do not work in favour of the more proactive risk “alarmists” tied to lay perspectives, but rather work to support the more conservative risk “deniers” associated with education, public governance, and scientific government organizations. This inherent polarization tied to culturally constructed categories does little to address the underlying problems. Many concerned residents will suspect that government institutions are predisposed to deny harm. Conversely, government officials will anticipate that residents will be overly alarmed by any report of positive findings for contamination. The net result is that two dichotomized positions act in exaggerated ways to compensate for an opposing reaction; government officials will endorse more flexible and less conclusive findings while residential activists will take a bolder and more

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dramatic stance. Yet, most importantly, debates over how much concern there should be can become lost in this process of polarization, and the issue reformulates into a contentious dichotomy of “yes, this is a real problem” or “no, this is not.” The fact that standards for a problem being real and significant can be variably defined, with many politicaleconomic and social-moral considerations, is also lost. The Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee The Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee (PHCHCC) formed in 1995 to represent the local population, support and voice their interests, and fight for their biological and environmental wellbeing specifically with reference to past and present contaminants in the local environment. Governed by a voting body, PHCHCC membership was open to local residents over age 18 “who support the objective of the Committee to implement comprehensive, independent health studies of the people who have lived in the community.”56 Incorporated in 1995, it intended to provide a more organized and concerted effort in addressing concerns about community health and environmental hazard. Drawing from the benefits of an organizational face and formalized public commitment, Faye More became the longest serving chair of PHCHCC and the most active voice representing concerns over radioactive waste in Port Hope. In 2004, under her direction, the PHCHCC first contacted the UMRC for assistance in carrying out an assessment of local contamination independent of any government-­ affiliated researchers. Since its formation, the PHCHCC has been active in prompting studies of local contamination and has petitioned for health assessments involving increased scrutiny by Canadian authorities and unaffiliated parties. Though it is a community-based group, the local community has not always been very supportive or accepting of PHCHHC’s attempts to further investigate contamination. Pat Lawson, who founded the PHCHCC, was harassed and threatened frequently.57 Reports by community organizers and scientists involved in PHCHCC studies led to their becoming victims of harassment, a process that continues to this day. In order to understand the tension that divides support for the PHCHCC, it is essential to recognize the social effects and stigma associated with the “contamination” label. Also the importance of the PHCHCC stance towards Health Canada and the CNSC on the issue of

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local contamination repositions the PHCHCC as a social minority that contests wider structures of authority and power. Thus, the PHCHCC position on Health Canada reconfigures comfortable and traditional assumptions for government-based authority on health issues. Inherent in its charter, the PHCHCC maintains a high degree of scepticism of studies by Health Canada and the CNSC; it cites the intrinsic political-economic bias and conflict of interest related to the many years in which versions of these organizations, through the Canadian government, were responsible for oversight and regulation of toxic dumping in Port Hope. After Health Canada completed its two major cancer review studies in 2000 and 2002, which confirmed its conclusion of no increased risk, PHCHCC members believed that Health Canada remained committed to defending and standing by its earlier conclusions. PHCHCC now sees any positive finding for toxic contamination at the individual, clinical, or broader epidemiological levels as vindication in its battle against Health Canada’s inherent bias and suppression of evidence, and it considers Health Canada’s public legitimacy is on the line. It is possible that the toxic contamination issue represents a historically sensitive chafe for Health Canada, with associations stretching back to a time when much radiation science was concealed under the cloak of military secrecy. Regardless, it is not surprising that today, faced with accusations, Health Canada has assumed an aggressive, defensive stance. The UMRC Pilot Study of 2007 From the outset, the Uranium Medical Research Centre (UMRC) was seen as a go-between for the main parties in this dispute. After the PHCHCC contacted it with a request for a radiological and biological examination of residents in the town of Port Hope, it began looking into possible sources of funding. After the federal government, the Port Hope municipality, and Cameco Corporation all denied requests for funding, PHCHCC and UMRC began raising funds from donations within the community. By 2006, the PHCHCC was able to raise 11,000 dollars dedicated to the UMRC radiobiology project. The UMRC, operating entirely on a volunteer basis, used these funds solely for the cost of third-party commercial laboratory analysis that required highly sensitive inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) with capabilities of detecting ion concentrations as low as one part per billion as opposed to the more conventional part per million. It demanded this level of sensitivity in order to separate and isolate individual isotopes

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of uranium and other heavy metals. The need for part per billion sensitivity would quickly become apparent. The project selected participants based on their history of exposure and health conditions; each participant had complaints of musculoskeletal pain, central nervous system disorders, immune dysfunction, or versions of neoplastic disease. There were nine participants. Four worked for or had worked for Eldorado Nuclear, Cameco Corporation, or Zircatec Precision Industries, while five were Port Hope residents occupationally unaffiliated with these industries. Two non-residents of Port Hope, who resided in an area closer to Toronto, were included as controls. ICP-MS was based on twenty-four hour samples, meaning total urine passed in a twenty-four hour period. The most noteworthy findings included positive identification for uranium-236 in four participants. Uranium-236 is not a naturally occurring isotope, but rather is formed when uranium-235 captures a neutron, typically within a nuclear reactor. This evidence suggested that Cameco was at least partly engaged in a process of recycling and reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, and that some of this spent nuclear fuel made its way into the bodies of four study participants. One of the four participants also had a uranium-238/uranium-235 ratio, which was in the range of “depleted” uranium, another by-product of the enrichment process. The results of the UMRC study were presented in the conference proceedings of the 2007 European Association of Nuclear Medicine.58 Then they were made public at a joint PHCHCC and UMRC press release in Toronto, sponsored by the Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, a Canadian water charity working to protect Lake Ontario and the Great Lakes. After the announcement of these results, Health Canada initiated an intense backlash. The Health Canada Backlash and the Question of Misinformation Campaigns The Health Canada backlash was immediate. One week after the joint UMRC and PHCHCC press release, Jack Cornett, the director of radiation protection for Health Canada, attended a Port Hope town council meeting for the openly stated purpose of discrediting the findings. According to a PHCHCC report of the event, Jack Cornett declared that the UMRC study was not significant and suggested that its results, if properly interpreted, held no cause for alarm.59 At the same meeting, Cameco distributed fact sheets, explicitly labelling UMRC as a “controversial international anti-nuclear organization,” which could not be

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trusted.60 The UMRC study itself was dismissed with the suggestion that such a small sample and only two controls were “methodological flaws” that would not allow for any generalizable conclusions. Similar concerns about internal and external validity were echoed by Murray Finkelstein, the author of a report for the municipal council of Port Hope, who also conducted a review on behalf of Health Canada.61 However, after claiming that methodological flaws compromised the results, Cornett still asserted that the results obtained in the UMRC study were all “within the normal range, [falling] below regulatory limits” and “typical of Canadians,” which means his interpretation validated the methods but not the conclusions of UMRC analysis.62 Although the UMRC study, as a pilot study, was never designed for external validity involving generalizable results, Cornett did not explicitly criticize either internal or external forms of validity. Instead, he suggested that results were accurate in terms of meeting individual expectations (internal validity) and were likely applicable to a wider population of Canadians (external validity). The attempt to discredit UMRC findings remained solely in the realm of subjective social politics associated with interpretation of findings. Cornett’s criticism was still a two pronged attack, which roughly aligned with lay and scientific perspectives: first, it rallied public opinion against UMRC on the assumption that the study was erroneous as a result of poor methodology, and second, it raised scientific questions through emphasis on misinterpretation of findings. Drawing from public perceptions of methodology, with concerns for the role of generalizability taken out of context, the first attack can only be considered slanderous. The second attack was in line with historical examples of scientific campaigns to increase doubt, such as those carried out by tobacco companies throughout the twentieth century, which contest potentially damaging conclusions.63 Continuing this second argument related to interpretation of findings, in April 2008 Health Canada addressed the UMRC by saying results were “consistent with the previous studies by Health Canada and by other groups … Your independent validation of these earlier studies is gratifying.”64 In response, Tedd Weyman, deputy director of the UMRC, simply wrote: There are no scientific literature or government reports agreeing with Dr. Cornett’s statement that it is typical of Canadians’ bodies to contain spent nuclear reactor fuel, depleted uranium or enriched Uranium-234.65

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Political-Economic and Social-Moral Stakes: The Stigma of Contamination Historically, Citizens for Port Hope, a community group focused primarily on the economic welfare of Port Hope, has stood at odds with the health concerns espoused by PHCHCC. Blake Holton, as chair of Citizens for Port Hope, suggests that local concerns about longstanding radioactive waste in Port Hope, which emerged in the 1970s, were framed primarily in terms of a sense of social stigma rather than a fear of a public health hazard.66 Economic considerations involving the local economy and property values continue to be a significant local concern. Even today, as assessments from UMRC and PHCHCC fail to evoke any environmental remediation or public health intervention, the Citizens for Port Hope continue to prioritize depreciated businesses and fallen real estate values as focal points for ongoing class action. When UMRC and PHCHCC released the Port Hope pilot study, not only was there a backlash from Health Canada and CNSC, but there was also a backlash on social and political levels because local “real estate deals fell through and bed and breakfast bookings were cancelled.”67 Richard Norlock, the sitting member of Parliament at the time, spoke against the studies for bringing “needless, negative attention to the community of Port Hope.”68 The idea seemed pervasive that, with attention given to the generic “contamination issue” in Port Hope, whether substantiated as a public health threat or not, Port Hope was stigmatized and stood to lose significantly in many economic ways. This idea affects the interpretation of any public health threat; stigma and political-economic anxiety are direct influences on a public health threat and must be understood as mediators in any biological interpretation. Any public health assessment privileging health indicators over political-economic factors is likely to be framed as a social-moral stake that insists health considerations should be given priority over all political-economic considerations. Sociologists Auyero and Swistun examined residential contamination concerns in a community surrounding a large petrochemical compound in southern Buenos Aires, Argentina, with discussion pertinent to Port Hope. These researchers observed that neither the petrochemical company nor the residents of this highly industrial environment had any interest in drawing conclusions about negative health effects

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from contamination, despite relatively glaring evidence of public health hazard from the researchers’ perspective. Ethnography and personal interviews revealed that residents were fully aware of ongoing health consequences from their contamination exposure, yet they were also aware that recognition or attention to these health consequences was of no benefit to them and potentially could cause great harm to their economic livelihoods. Incentive or advantage, defined economically, socially, or morally, is a form of social stake. For the petrochemical workers, the most pertinent social stake was keeping a steady job and maintaining a “home.” Auyero and Swistun suggested that a “toxic uncertainty” was maintained as a result of political and economic forces, which left little room for anything other than uncertainty when struggles for daily life had to take precedence over delayed and ambiguous health consequences from environmental hazard.69 Yet slightly contrary to the case presented by Auyero and Swistun, Sjӧberg illustrates a scenario where higher agency and control may correspond to greater risk denial.70 This may be more applicable to Port Hope, where despite obvious political-economic concerns associated with stigmas of contamination and residents’ desire to maintain normal living conditions, the political-economic demands for basic survival were not as harsh as described in the industrial sector of southern Buenos Aires. Clearly in the case of Port Hope, the fact that no one was forced to live in the town and that townspeople considered it a privileged location because of its scenic tranquility outside but accessible to downtown Toronto are important factors. People took pride in their homes, in the success of a local economy, and did not want to feel badly about their choice for continued residence. This is simply another form of social stake. Ultimately, the stake of defending variable self-interests – whether in terms of morality intertwined with damage to biological health, financial well-being, or residential ideal – must be understood as lenses through which people, perhaps unwittingly, view and interpret environmental contamination. Finally, the situation in Port Hope differs from conditions described by Auyero and Swistun in one other important respect: social stakes relate not only to residents and a large company, but also to significant governmental interests. To admit radioactive hazard in Port Hope was to acknowledge a legacy of largely irreversible contamination tied to past government activity and to current national/international energy and military interests in refined uranium. Any careful assessment of public health that acknowledged the importance and impacts of “toxic

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uncertainty” associated them with tightly interwoven governmental and private sector interests. To return to Hill’s criteria, he states: In passing from association to causation I believe in “real life” we shall have to consider what flows from that decision. On scientific grounds we should do no such thing. The evidence is there to be judged on its merits and the judgment (in that sense) should be utterly independent of what hangs upon it – or who hangs because of it. But in another and more practical sense we may surely ask what is involved in our decision. In occupational medicine our object is usually to take action.71

In cases of clinical ambiguity associated with occupational medicine, there is a predisposition to take action. Yet in the case of environmental contamination associated with high political-economic stakes, there is an opposing predisposition: to take as little action as possible as late as possible. In passing from association to causation, the burden of proof dramatically changes based on these social stakes. Community Tension Tied to Scientific Debate In Port Hope, to counteract negative attention associated with the radiobiological contamination study, local businesses organized a “Take Back Port Hope” campaign to restore the town’s reputation.72 At the same time, they started to marginalize those who voiced concern over contamination, asked questions, or encouraged scientific investigation. They labelled the scientists and community organizers of the UMRC pilot study as “small, but loud, self-interest groups,” thus distancing this minority from the rest of the Port Hope community.73 Similar sentiments were expressed about the PHCHCC and the Port Hope Families Against Radiation Exposure (FARE), which supported the radiobiology studies in conjunction with the PHCHCC; a website commenter posted a message to Harries on 4 May 2008, using the pseudonym “Clean Mind, Clean Body – Cleaned Out,” that referred to their “overheated, overactive, overarching imaginations.”74 Others turned to the more aggressive tactics of active defamation and victimization of study instigators to try to restore the positive image of Port Hope. FARE allegedly became a “primary target of the pro-Cameco side. Letters circulated, signs went up in windows, [and] FARE members and their relatives were verbally abused on the street.”75 Commenters such as John Moran discussed attempts to initiate meaningful

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dialogue among industry, government, and the community, but they were prevented through “vicious personal attacks, physical threats” and actions forcing people to move their business elsewhere.76 At one point PHCHCC Chair Faye More cancelled a meeting involving UMRC after “a steady escalation of intimidation, harassment and false allegations.”77 A Vicious Cycle: Compounding Interaction between Social Fear and Denial According to Sjӧberg, the topic of risk from radioactive waste tends to support an interesting polarization of extreme risk deniers on one side and extreme risk alarmists on the other. In a survey administered to over 2,500 respondents in multiple locations in Sweden, Sjӧberg found twice as many individuals whom he labelled as “deniers” as those he labelled “alarmists.”78 Whether this ratio of denier to alarmist remains consistent in similar scenarios and whether there are identifiable factors that will influence the ratio or the majority one way or another are two important questions that warrant further research. In Sjӧberg’s classification scheme, the denial of radioactive harm deniers can be amplified to the point where deniers marginalize the alarmists. Presumably, the deniers must be in a majority for such a reaction, and we are again left to speculate if the inherently more conservative view of the deniers is socially predisposed to be in the majority. Marginalization and ostracism contribute to a climate of fear, creating a social environment of persecution where physical violence becomes based more on levels of social angst. What is important to note pertaining to radioactive waste is the potential for opposing groups characterized by fear and denial to have a self-reinforcing and even compounding effect. Fear of radiation is often emotional and without substantive objective basis; it contributes to a local denial of danger, particularly in a society that privileges objective scientific perspectives on a cultural level. Yet people fear radiation precisely because it is odourless, tasteless, and invisible, and because it defies the material and visual points of reference afforded such importance in the cultural tradition of Western science. Finally, concerns about environmental injustice are often tied to much larger issues of social tension and political injustice. According to anthropologists Hoffman and Oliver-Smith, “disasters disclose fundamental features of society and culture, laying bare crucial relationships

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and core values.”79 This same revelatory characteristic should also be observed for situations of environmental hazard, crises that may be considered “slow” or chronic disasters. Furthermore, it is the very contested nature of some environmental disasters that allows for the stressful and traumatic conditions most essential to the process of revealing core relationships within social climates of tension and inequality. Residential Contamination Concerns: Application of the Kübler-Ross Stages of Acceptance Model In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross gained wide acclamation as Western science realized that the social process of dying had long evaded objective scrutiny.80 The result, the Kübler-Ross model, posits five states of grief or stages of variant acceptance of death, where only the fifth and final stage is “acceptance” in any conventional sense. These stages are (1) denial and isolation, (2) anger, (3) bargaining, (4) depression, and (5) acceptance. Yet social processes of grief and acceptance occur not only on individual levels relating to loss and death, but also on broader community levels. The Kübler-Ross model, despite its simplification inherent in the social modelling of any complex process, is applicable to the scenario and history of environmental health confrontation as instigated by the UMRC study. The Lake Ontario Waterkeeper observed an identifiable social pattern, where “first, the individuals and organizations who spoke out are ostracized … [and] second, access to a fair forum is limited.” Expanding on the Waterkeeper’s observation in the context of the Kübler-Ross model but appropriate to rhetorics of loss concerning variable social stakes, we construct a similar model following our experiences of radioactive contamination confrontation in the town of Port Hope. We follow the general structure of Kübler-Ross’s ideas, but restructure and contextualize the content to fit our observations. This model proposes six stages: (1) denial: suspicion of harm is discouraged; (2) bifurcation: social separation occurs over polarized concerns for harm; and marginalization: the minority group is ostracized; (3) discrediting: re-examination of data includes claims for mistrust; (4) intimidation: aggressive social accusation and threats are made; (5) public judgment bias: access to a fair and independent tribunal is restricted; and (6) litigation bias: litigation is stretched over significant time incurring financial cost, with both factors favouring institutionalized industry or organization.

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In many ways, death may be easier to conceive of and accept than the reconfiguring of a community as “contaminated” or the protracted battle necessary to attach responsibility for environmental injustice on an industrial perpetrator. Even if concerns for environmental health prevail and require the dissolution or penalization of political-economic institutions, divided opinion will remain. large ­ Ultimately, “acceptance” must mean that both sides of a divided community carry on with their views, acknowledging that any clear conviction or vindication related to contamination comes only at the cost of tremendous social change, even though social change is constant, happening every day. Social Buffers within Paradigmatics of Loss Maintaining scientific scepticism prolongs the length of time involved in making social determinations or conclusions. This prolonged period for scientific determination holds great potential to act as a social buffer against impending change to industry, society, or lifestyle, particularly when scientific determination may create significant impacts. It is in this context that controversy and uncertainty may help alleviate terms of loss and change. Uncertainty allows for a space of contestation, where uncertainty of a condition is not as bad as certainty, and terms or responsibilities associated with scientific determination are still negotiable. Controversy allows for a limited and liminal space for contestation and empowerment, both for the individual as well as for any corporation facing potential loss. This space of uncertainty is defined by the fact that awareness of hazard likelihood cannot be held in direct association with any damage incurred. Damage incurred is not deliberate damage. This is the primary importance of controversy as a social buffer, as part of the social process for eventually reaching scientific (or simply historic) conclusion. As every environmental activist knows, protesting terms of environmental contamination is an uphill battle as a result of the politicalindustrial advantages associated with corporations and time. Although our society prizes the principle of individuality, the political-economic structure of any bureaucratic society favours the institution. In addition, while individuals can be held accountable for environmental crimes, corporations can conveniently shed an old skin and be reborn again. Legacies and realities of radioactive contamination will not be so easily transformed.

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Local Authority and the Erosion of Trust Of all the social changes common to the twenty-first century, the erosion or at least reconfiguration of authority associated with traditional structures and institutions of power is an important change to observe. In an era of exceptionally high interchange and availability of information, domains of traditional authoritative knowledge including government, medicine, and academia are either challenged or simply viewed differently. Both knowledge and social judgment flow more freely and gain influence more through aspects of public consumption and marketability within social media than through endorsement by traditional political authorities. Yet, for the most part, our trust in the medical profession remains fairly high, while research demonstrates that trust in government and industry officials responsible for management of industrial nuclear technologies is very low.81 This interestingly corresponds to the condition that cultural fear of medicalized radiation is very low, while fear of industrial technologies involving radiation is high.82 The discordant perception of fear and danger should be directly attributed to varying degrees of trust. Many factors contribute to the erosion of trust, such as inconsistencies in information provided, potential for bias or conflict of interest, and issues of perceived accountability. Most importantly, the ways in which authority is trusted is also changing. Suggestions for Healing with Uncertainty The process of grieving in many cultures is seen as much more difficult in the absence of the deceased’s body, particularly if there lingers some doubt about whether a person really did die. In much the same way, the problem of Port Hope trying to heal without knowing for sure what it is trying to heal from is equally problematic. In many ways, a clean, constructed version of history can offer more comfort and peace to a community, with “peace” defined in a traditional sense. Yet this version of uniform history and complacency has become significantly harder to achieve in an age of mass digital and internetbased media, where written evaluation and record is no longer limited to official “scientific” opinions, and forms and approaches to recognized authority have shifted. We maintain, like Foucault, that power is inextricable from knowledge, and that both are tied to constructions of truth.83 Truth, in an academic sense associated with greater

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complexity, may stand at odds with traditional notions of peace framed by tranquility. To conclude, as we evaluate options before any community with concerns for radioactive contamination, we suggest that community “peace” should not be conceived of as an idyllic social atmosphere in which no one has any disease and everyone is happy. Peace is doing what needs to be done for individuals to maintain a sense of conscience – even if hazardous exposure has resulted in respiratory problems or insomnia with biological discomfort and disrupted sleep. Sometimes this means silently accepting and sometimes it means actively ­arguing – for both risk deniers and risk alarmists. We must recognize that variable moral compasses will cause people to act in often contradictory “moral” ways, and that dealing with bias and politicaleconomic incentive is an important part of calibration for every moral compass. To define peace from any larger social perspective is to lose sight of the highly important individual concept of conscience. Yet political-economic incentive and bias must be assessed with attention to larger social structures, identifying the complicated ways in which institutions will influence individual perceptions. We must recognize the inherent imbalance between corporations and individuals in terms of authority, political-economic influence, and social accountability. Many aspects of authoritative written knowledge have been undermined by an internet media culture, but it is interesting to note that terms of authority for the institution over the individual have, if anything, grown stronger and more absolute – where institutional affiliation is an emblem of commitment and resolve. Moreover, public disputes favour the institution over the individual as a result of legal action being costly, time-consuming, and a question of resolve, where institutions capable of employing effective lawyers and appealing or prolonging court determinations have a distinct advantage. Such institutions not only have the most to gain but also the least to loose, as they can easily restructure and reform following any legal or moral defeat. On the other side of the coin, any individual “whistleblower” is likely to face traumatic and irreversible loss in both his personal and professional life. As Oliver-Smith emphasizes, the stress of immediate health threats can draw from and precipitate issues involving much deeper social divisions.84 Inequalities in class and views of social morality become less important than inequalities associated with individual and institutionmotivated behaviour. These are fundamental inequalities of social power and agency of voice. Yet, in the context of contamination controversy,

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people are not simply waiting to gather more information or to become more convinced by stronger data. More likely people are constantly moderating their behaviours in accordance with information they already have, or in accordance with information they are trying to avoid. While social expositions of contamination often begin with the premise that an action or decision must be made, this review of controversy tied to Port Hope ends with the assertion that choices have already been made. These are the choices of agency: agency of writing and remembering history, and agency of pursuing and representing approaches to science. Finally, all choices are made within a social context. In partial defence, contamination concerns associated with present-day Cameco and Zircatec in Port Hope can be paired with a veiled apologetic statement made by 1980s Eldorado Chief Executive Officer Nicholas Ediger, who requested that the Eldorado legacy “be judged by readers in the context of the issues, the events, and the values of that era.”85 Importantly, such value-laden eras are not simply products of the past, but remain very real influences on current and present thinking: no scientist or community activist can claim exemption from societal demands and cultural assumptions. Yet at the same time, while paradigms for risk alarm and interpretation may change, such fluctuation does not relinquish either individual or corporate accountability. The need for some balance including accountability for both agency and societal contextualization should be recognized as a primary struggle in science, where science carried out as a result of political-economic or social-moral stake must be identified and devalued as a science of convenience. NOTES 1 Sanger, Blind Faith. 2 Voted by TV Ontario for “Best Preserved Main Street in Ontario” in reference to Walton Street, awarded and aired 13 May 2003. As cited by Northumberland News. 3 See Kelsey, “Small Towns, Big Hearts.” 4 While the legend of El Dorado reflects the Spanish conquistador obsession with finding gold in South America in the sixteenth century either in the form of a gold-clad person, city, or empire, it has also come to be used as a general myth and metaphor in popular culture. Two semantic issues within popular use are worth elaboration: representation of “Eldorado” as opposed to “El Dorado”, and attention to “trail/quest” as opposed to “legend/myth.”

266  David Elijah Bell and Marissa Zappora Bell   As for the first issue, the more common usage is likely the Spanish version, where the definite article is separated beforehand: El Dorado, meaning “The Golden.” Importantly, the popularity of this use from an English-speaking perspective is likely to be less an issue of origin and more a product of the Spanish conveying a sense of foreignness, and therefore exotic mystery appropriate to the legend: it involves a “foreign” destination, which is then able to be filled with wealth and treasure only appropriate to the imagination. This makes it linguistically convenient to maintain the original Spanish as an assumed location when referencing the general myth or legend. The anglicized version of “Eldorado” emphasizes more of a metaphorical component appropriate to contemporary English-speaking culture, where a foreign destination is not prerequisite. Where we use “Eldorado,” it is to reinforce not only the local application of this legend, but also to be consistent with the Anglicized use observed in the town of Eldorado, Saskatchewan, and associated companies of Eldorado Mining and Refining Ltd. and Eldorado Nuclear Ltd.   A related and parallel issue can be seen with “legend/myth” and “trail/ quest.” Rather than emphasize mythic history, our intention in the title for this chapter is to express contemporary relevance involving continuity of the same theme into a new form, hence emphasis to a “trail,” which shares a set goal or destination despite traversing potentially varied terrain. It is the metaphorical element involving a quest for unbelievable riches, despite potential tragic consequences for others aligned with this path, which is ultimately of greatest interest to this chapter connected to observed corporate use of the name “Eldorado.” 5 Zonabend, The Nuclear Peninsula. 6 Gusterson, “Review.” 7 Fitchen, “When Toxic Chemicals Pollute Residential Environments.” 8 Statistics Canada, “Census Profile: Port Hope, Ontario.” 9 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “Radioactive Waste Management Programmes.” 10 Advokaat and Johnson, “The Port Hope Area Initiative.” 11 McNamara, “Nuclear Genocide in Canada.” 12 Tammemagi and Jackson, Half-Lives. 13 Ibid. 14 Zimmerman, Primer in the Art of Deception. 15 Weyman (deputy director of UMRC), “Public Letter”; joint PHCHCC/ UMRC statements made in “Health Canada Suppresses Study Findings.” 16 World Nuclear Association, “World Uranium Mining Production.”

Port Hope Burning  267 17 Cameco Corporation, “Cameco Announces Completion of Centerra Common Share Sale.” 18 Bothwell, Eldorado, 5. 19 Clark, Radium Girls. 20 Bothwell, Eldorado, 60. 21 Sanger, Blind Faith. 22 In 1933, Ernest Rutherford published The Artificial Transmutation of Elements, describing his artificial split of atoms conducted in collaboration with James Chadwick. Leo Szilard, who had just immigrated to London from Nazi Germany, en route to the United States, was strongly influenced by Rutherford’s 1933 paper presentation. While Rutherford conceived of no practical way to harness power from the breakdown of the atom, Szilard envisioned the potential for sustained reactions and patented the idea of “neutron induced chain reactions to create explosions.” This idea would be realized independently in 1938 by German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman, as well as Austrian physicist Lise Meitner, building off of work performed by Italian-American Enrico Fermi and critiqued by German chemist Ida Noddack, thus commencing the nuclear age. 23 Bothwell, Eldorado, 59. 24 Lisa Jardine, “A Point of View.” 25 Bratt, The Politics of CANDU Exports. 26 Bothwell, Eldorado, 77. 27 Ibid., 147, 152. 28 Sanger, Blind Faith. 29 Bothwell, Eldorado, 57. 30 Sanger, Blind Faith. 31 Bothwell, Eldorado, 95. 32 Ibid., 153. 33 McNamara, “Nuclear Genocide in Canada.” 34 Ibid. 35 Tracy, Prantl, and Quinn, “Transfer of 226Ra, 210Pb and Uranium.” 36 Tracy and Meyerhof, “Uranium Concentrations.” 37 Ahier and Tracy, “Evaluating the Radiological Impact of Uranium Emissions.” Hindcast is a way of testing a mathematical model; known or closely estimated inputs for past events are entered into the model to see how well the output matches the known results. 38 Ahier and Tracy, “Radionuclides in the Great Lakes Basin.” 39 International Joint Commission, Report on Great Lakes Water Quality; Health Canada, Great Lakes Health Effects Program, Port Hope Harbour Area of Concern.

268  David Elijah Bell and Marissa Zappora Bell 4 0 Jovanovic, Pan, and Wong, “Bioaccessibility.” 41 Nathwani and Phillips, “Rates of Leaching of Radium from Contaminated Soils.” 42 SENES Consultants Limited, “Port Hope Conversion Facility.” 43 Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Understanding Health Studies and Risk Assessments. 44 Hill, “The Environment and Disease,” 300. 45 “Doubt is our product” is a slogan reportedly taken from an internal memo dated 1969 from the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company. For more information, see Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product, or Oreskes and Conway, Merchants of Doubt. 46 Petition and response available at the Office of the Auditor General, “Radioactive Waste Cleanup in Port Hope.” 47 Two studies were conducted by Health Canada: Health Canada, Cancer Incidence in Port Hope, 1971–1996; Health Canada, Cancer and General Mortality in Port Hope, 1956–1997. 48 Mintz, Critique of the Mortality Study for Port Hope 2002, as quoted in Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee, “Written Submission,” 4. 49 Ibid. 50 The “Draft Minutes of the Committee of the Whole, Municipality of Port Hope” for 13 April 2004 show that this report is on file with the municipality: https://porthope.civicweb.net/document/1108. 51 Harries, “Nuclear Reaction,” 2. 52 McNamara, “Nuclear Genocide in Canada.” 53 Harries, “Nuclear Reaction,” 4. 54 Ibid., 3. 55 Ibid., see comment of 11 December 2010. 56 Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee, About PHCHCC, 2013. 57 Harries, “Nuclear Reaction,” 3. 58 Durakovic, Gerdes, and Zimmerman, “Quantitative Analysis of Uranium Isotopes.” 59 PHCHCC/UMRC, “Radio-Biological Study Findings for Port Hope.” 60 Cameco Corporation, “Clearing the Air.” 61 Finkelstein, “Review.” 62 Cornett, “Uranium in the Urine.” 63 Oreskes and Conway, Merchants of Doubt. 64 Cassin, “Health Canada Says UMRC Verifies Its Studies.” 65 PHCHCC/UMRC, “Health Canada Suppresses Study Findings.” 66 Holton, “The Importance of Community Trust.”

Port Hope Burning  269 6 7 Harries, “Nuclear Reaction,” 8. 68 Norlock, “Health Canada Confirms No Panic Needed.” 69 Auyero and Swistun, Flammable. 70 Sjӧberg, “Factors in Risk Perception.” 71 Hill, “The Environment and Disease.” 72 Harries, “Nuclear Reaction,” 8. 73 Neild, “Backlash.” 74 Harries, “Nuclear Reaction,” comment, 4 May 2008. 75 Harries, “Nuclear Reaction,” 8. 76 Harries, “Nuclear Reaction,” see comment by John Moran, 2 October 2008. 77 Wladyka, “Fears for Safety?” 78 Sjӧberg, “Explaining Individual Risk Perception.” 79 Hoffman and Oliver-Smith, Catastrophe and Culture, 26. 80 Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying. 81 Slovic, “Perceived Risk, Trust and Democracy.” 82 Slovic, “Perception of Risk from Radiation.” 83 Foucault, Power/Knowledge. 84 Oliver-Smith, “Theorizing Disasters.” 85 Ediger, forward to Eldorado.

REFERENCES Advokaat, Eric, and Cassandra Johnson. “The Port Hope Area Initiative: Addressing the Socio-Economic Impacts of a Large Low-Level Radioactive Waste Clean-Up Project in Canada.” Presentation, Conference Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference of the International Association of Impact Assessments, Perth, Australia, 4–10 May 2008. Ahier, Brian, and Bliss L. Tracy. “Evaluating the Radiological Impact of Uranium Emissions in Port Hope, Ontario – A Comparison of Monitoring and Modelling Results.” Journal of Environmental Radioactivity 34, no. 2 (1997): 187–205. –  “Radionuclides in the Great Lakes Basin.” Environmental Health Perspectives 103, no. 9 (1995): 89–101. Auyero, Javier, and Debora A. Swistun. Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009. Bothwell, Robert. Eldorado: Canada’s National Uranium Company. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984. Bratt, Duane. The Politics of CANDU Exports. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.

270  David Elijah Bell and Marissa Zappora Bell Cameco Corporation. “Cameco Announces Completion of Centerra Common Share Sale.” Press release, 30 December 2009. https://www.cameco.com/ media/news/cameco-announces-completion-of-centerra-common-sharesale. –  “Clearing the Air: What the Recent UMRC Report Really Means.” Statement issued by Cameco, 20 November 2007. https://www.cameco.com/fuel_ services/news/?id=29. Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). Understanding Health Studies and Risk Assessments Conducted in the Port Hope Community from the 1950s to the Present (INFO-0781). Ottawa, ON: CNSC, 2009. http://www.cnsc-ccsn. gc.ca/eng/pdfs/Info-0781-en.pdf. Cassin, Joyce. “Health Canada Says UMRC Verifies Its Studies.” Northumberland News, 30 April 2008. Clark, Claudia. Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910–1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Cornett, Jack, Health Canada. “Uranium in the Urine of Port Hope Residents Fact Sheet.” Distributed by Health Canada at Port Hope Municipal Council Meeting. 20 November 2007. www.porthope.ca/file-download/id/o_ q3W0Olv1ZUuOTLmJYyXQ. Durakovic, Asaf, Axel Gerdes, and Isaac Zimmerman. “The Quantitative Analysis of Uranium Isotopes in the Population of Port Hope, Ontario Canada.” Poster presented at the Annual Meeting for European Association of Nuclear Medicine. Copenhagen, Denmark, 13–17 October 2007. Ediger, Nicholas. Forward to Eldorado: Canada’s National Uranium Company, by Robert Bothwell, ix–x. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984. Finkelstein, Murray. “A Review of the Document: ‘The Quantitative Analysis of Uranium Isotopes in the Population of Port Hope, Ontario Canada’ authored by Durakovic, Gerdes, and Zimmerman.” Prepared for Port Hope Municipality, 13 December 2007. www.porthope.ca/file-download/id/ vGV_UKW1NYWbpNw00BRIPA. Fitchen, Janet M. “When Toxic Chemicals Pollute Residential Environments: The Cultural Meanings of Home and Home Ownership.” Human Organization 48, no. 4 (1989): 313–24. Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Translated by C. Gordon. New York: Random House, 1977. Gusterson, Hugh. “Review: ‘The Nuclear Peninsula’ by Françoise Zonabend.” American Ethnologist 24, no. 1 (1997): 247. Harries, Katie. “Nuclear Reaction: Accusations of Cancerous Fallout Divide a Small Ontario Town.” The Walrus Magazine. 12 March 2008. https:// thewalrus.ca/nuclear-reaction/.

Port Hope Burning  271 Health Canada. Cancer and General Mortality in Port Hope, 1956–1997. INFO0734. Ottawa, ON: Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, June 2002. –  Cancer Incidence in Port Hope, 1971–1996. INFO-0716. Ottawa, ON: Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, August 2000. Health Canada, Great Lakes Health Effects Program. Port Hope Harbour Area of Concern: Health Data and Statistics for the Population of the Region (1986–1992). Ottawa, ON: Health Canada, 1998. Hill, Austin Bradford. “The Environment and Disease: Association of Causation?” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 58 (1965): 295–300. Hoffman, Susanna, and Anthony Oliver-Smith. Catastrophe and Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press, 2002. Holton, Blake. “The Importance of Community Trust in Advancing Solutions to the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Problem in the Port Hope Ontario Area.” In Public Confidence in the Management of Radioactive Waste: The Canadian Context. Workshop Proceedings, Ottawa, Canada, 14–18 October 2002, 99–102. Paris: NEA and OECD, 2003. doi:10.1787/9789264103979-en. International Joint Commission. Report on Great Lakes Water Quality. Windsor, CA: International Joint Commission, 1987. Jardine, Lisa. “A Point of View: The Man Who Dreamed of the Atom Bomb.” British Broadcasting Company. 4 October 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ magazine-24395740. Jovanovic, Slobodan, Pujing Pan, and Larry Wong. “Bioaccessibility of Uranium in Soil Samples from Port Hope, Ontario.” Environmental Science and Technology 46, no. 16 (2012): 9012−18. Kelsey, Sarah. “Small Towns, Big Hearts: Port Hope and Cobourg Give Young and Old a Big Welcome.” National Post. 2 August 2013. http://news. nationalpost.com/neighbourhoods/small-towns-big-hearts-port-hope-andcobourg-give-young-and-old-a-big-welcome. Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying. New York: Touchtone, 1969. McNamara, Pat. “Nuclear Genocide in Canada.” 22 March 2009. http://www. porthopehistory.com/nucleargenocide/nucleargenocide_index.htm. Michaels, David. Doubt Is Their Product. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Mintz, Eric. A Critique of the Mortality Study for Port Hope 2002. February 2004. Municipality of Port Hope. “Draft Minutes of the Committee of the Whole of the Municipality of Port Hope.” 13 April 2004. https://porthope.civicweb. net/document/1108. Nathwani, Jatin S., and Colin R. Phillips, “Rates of Leaching of Radium from Contaminated Soils: An Experimental Investigation of Radium-bearing

272  David Elijah Bell and Marissa Zappora Bell Soils from Port Hope, Ontario.” Water, Air, and Soil Pollution 9, no. 4, (1978): 453–65. Neild, Dylan. “Backlash: The Risks of Speaking Out.” Lake Ontario Waterkeeper blog, 3 December 2007. http://www.waterkeeper.ca/ blog/5719. Norlock, Richard. “Health Canada Confirms No Panic Needed in Port Hope Uranium Study.” Office of Rick Norlock, MP Northumberland/Quinte West. 21 November 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20130911185926/ http://www.ricknorlock.ca/releases/rel_q4_07.htm. Northumberland News. “Port Hope Gets Plaque for Best Preserved Street.” northumberlandnews.com. 16 May 2003. www.northumberlandnews.com/ sports-story/3775272-port-hope-gets-plaque-for-best-preserved-street/. Office of the Auditor General of Canada. “CAO Radioactive Waste Cleanup in Port Hope, Ontario.” Petition No. 232. Filed by Pat McNamara, 4 January 2008. http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/pet_232_e_30304.html. Oliver-Smith, Anthony. “Theorizing Disasters: Nature, Power, and Culture.” In Catastrophe and Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster, edited by Susanna Hoffman and Anthony Oliver-Smith, 23–47. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press, 2002. Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. “Radioactive Waste Management Programmes in OECD/NEA Member Countries – Canada 2015.” http://www.oecd-nea.org/rwm/profiles/Canada_profile_ web.pdf. Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee (PHCHCC). “Written submission from the Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee.” Darlington New Nuclear Power Plant Project Joint Review Panel. 28 February 2011. http://ceaa-acee.gc.ca/050/documents/48314/48314E.pdf. Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee and Uranium Medical Research Centre (PHCHCC & UMRC). “Health Canada Suppresses Study Findings: ‘Top Radiation Scientist’ Says Port Hope’s Uranium Contamination ‘Typical of . . . Canadians.’” Press release. 3 December 2007. UMRC website. http://umrc.net/projects/port-hope-biological-studies/. –  “Radio-Biological Study Findings for Port Hope, Ontario.” Presented at the Port Hope Municipal Council meeting, Port Hope, Ontario, 13 November 2007. Rutherford, Ernest. The Artificial Transmutation of Elements. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1933.

Port Hope Burning  273 Sanger, Penny. Blind Faith: The Nuclear Industry in One Small Town. Toronto: Ryerson Limited, 1981. http://www.porthopehistory.com/blindfaith/ blindfaith.htm. SENES Consultants Limited. “Port Hope Conversion Facility Site-Wide Risk Assessment: Human Health and Ecological Risk Assessment.” Prepared for Cameco Corporation, June 2009. https://www.cameco.com/fuel_services/ pdf/documents/Cameco_-_Port_Hope_Conversion_Facility_Site-Wide_ Risk_Assessment_Hu.pdf. Sjӧberg, Lennart. “Explaining Individual Risk Perception: The Case of Nuclear Waste.” Risk Management 6, no. 1 (2007): 51–64. –  “Factors in Risk Perception.” Risk Analysis 20, no.1 (2007): 1–11. Slovic, Paul. “Perceived Risk, Trust and Democracy.” Risk Analysis 13, no. 6 (1993): 675–82. –  “Perception of Risk from Radiation.” In Radiation Protection Today: The NCRP at Sixty Years. Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements held on 4–5 April 1989, edited by W.K. Sinclair, 73–97. Bethesda, MD: NCRP, 1990. Statistics Canada. “Census Profile: Port Hope, Ontario.” Code 3514020. 2011 Census. Tammemagi, Hans, and David Jackson. Half-Lives: The Canadian Guide to Nuclear Technology in Canada. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Tracy, Bliss L., and Dorothy P. Meyerhof. “Uranium Concentrations in Air near a Canadian Uranium Refinery.” Atmospheric Environment 21, no. 1 (1987): 165–72. Tracy, Bliss L., F.A. Prantl, and J.M. Quinn. “Transfer of 226Ra, 210Pb and Uranium from Soil to Garden Produce: Assessment of Risk.” Health Physics 44, no. 5 (1983): 469–77. Weyman, Tedd. “Public Letter from UMRC to the Hon. Tony Clement, Minister of Health.” 1 March 2008. UMRC website. http://umrc.net/ projects/port-hope-biological-studies/. Wladyka, Mike. “Fears for Safety? Port Hope Citizens Are Not Uncontrolled Mob.” Northumberland Today, 23 November 2007. World Nuclear Association. “World Uranium Mining Production.” July 2016. http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/ mining-of-uranium/world-uranium-mining-production.aspx. Zimmerman, Paul. A Primer in the Art of Deception: The Cult of Nuclearists, Uranium Weapons and Fraudulent Science. New York: Zimmerman, 2009. Zonabend, Françoise. The Nuclear Peninsula. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

9 “Nuclear Gypsies” in Fukushima before and after 3/11 pa u l j o b i n

During the first weeks of the nuclear crisis that struck Japan in March 2011 (hereafter called 3/11), Japanese and world media reports focused on the action of the “50 heroes.” Then some attention was devoted to those thousands of temporary workers employed in the rescue operations and the cleanup of the devastated site. In 2013, a realistic documentary manga titled Ichi Efu (or “One F” for Fukushima Daiichi) was written by one of the cleanup workers and even received a manga award.1 Yet, as emphasized by Jones and colleagues, these workers have remained relatively marginal to the dominant narrative of the disaster.2 Before presenting the situation of cleanup workers after 3/11, this chapter reviews the situation that prevailed before the nuclear disaster, or what might be called the disaster before the disaster, when important segments of maintenance tasks were performed by itinerant workers. Their life conditions reflect what has become the case for a much larger population after 3/11. The worsening of working

Acknowledgements: My research conducted in 2002 benefitted from a grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciences and the support of Professor Teranishi Shun’ichi at the National University of Hitotsubashi (Tokyo). The research conducted after 3/11 was aided by grants from the Conseil National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Programme NEEDS (Nucléaire, énergie, environnement, déchets, société). I am deeply indebted to the following people: Mikiko Watanabe (CNIC), Satoshi Kamata, Kenji Higuchi, Akihiko Kataoka, Sugio Furuya, Dr Saburo Murata, and all those who kindly agreed to be interviewed. Thanks to Laura Centemeri, Barbara Allen, Christelle Gramaglia, and Pascal Marichalar for their comments on a draft of this chapter presented at ICMESA (Marseille). A section of this chapter was edited by Mark Selden for publication in The Asia-Pacific Journal (2013). This chapter additionally benefitted from the valuable suggestions of David Malinas, Tommaso Vitale, and anonymous reviewers, and a fine-grained editing by Laurel MacDowell and Rebecca Fite.

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conditions for employees in Japan’s nuclear industry before and after Fukushima reflects the complexities of employer-employee relations in the nuclear industry in Japan. Their deteriorating conditions may also explain in part why the disaster occurred, and why the cleanup has been slow and difficult. The changing conditions of work and the shifting hierarchy of job categories in Japan’s nuclear industry have always been complex, as investigative journalists have sometimes revealed. In 1979, a young and unknown journalist named Kunio Horie published a book about nuclear power plant workers titled Genpatsu jipushī (Nuclear Plant Gypsies).3 It was a vivid report of his working experience as a radiation cleaner – at the bottom of the pyramid of maintenance jobs – in several plants including Fukushima Daiichi (hereafter F1). It was published six years before the publication of Ganz unten (Lowest of the Low) by German non-fiction writer Günter Wallraff, which described similar conditions for migrant workers in West German nuclear plants and other industries.4 To get an inside view, Wallraff had darkened his skin with make-up to disguise himself as a Turkish migrant worker. It was unnecessary for Horie to do so, since foreign workers remain a tiny portion of the Japanese proletariat, and nuclear plants are no exception.5 Horie’s book followed a famous work published five years before by Satoshi Kamata, who was hired in 1974 at a Toyota factory as a seasonal rank-and-file worker (kisetsu rōdōsha).6 Expressions such as kisetsu rōdōsha or dekasegi (working far from home) were common during the period of high economic growth in the 1960s, and were first introduced in the 1950s by the economist Kazuō Ōkōchi to analyse the history of Japanese labour from the Meiji era.7 As used by Horie, the Japanese word for gypsy (jipushī), a phonetic transcription from English, was then an unfamiliar term to describe a labour population. In contrast with kisetsu rōdōsha or dekasegi, workers who moved from rural to industrial areas during the off-season at the farm and worked mostly in a single industrial area, the “nuclear gypsies” that Horie described were roaming from one nuclear plant to another, depending on the maintenance periods, like the hobos described by the famous sociologist Nels Anderson in 1920s America, or like many of today’s Greyhound bus users as sketched by anthropologist Kath Weston.8 But among their working partners in the nuclear power plants were also local farmers and fishermen who got hired periodically to supplement their incomes. In their case, the work consisted of “demanding, dirty and dangerous” low-paid jobs (the three Ks: kitsui, kitanai, kiken) in the nuclear industry, all attributes that contrasted sharply with the

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image of a high-tech industry. The metaphoric use of the word “gypsy” had no relation to the travelling communities of Europe or the stigma attached to this word there.9 For more than twenty years, between 1977 and 1988, photo reporter Kenji Higuchi described these workers as “nuclear plant hibakusha.”10 This allusion to the hibakusha, the victims of the atomic bombs, blatantly linked the trauma of the postwar psyche with the contemporary pride of technocratic policymakers in a country that was at the peak of economic recovery and ambitiously leading the world with its techno-science.11 Higuchi found that many temporary workers in Japanese nuclear power plants were former coal miners from Kyūshū or Hokkaidō, unemployed after many mine closures in the 1960s resulting from a state energy policy that shifted from coal to petrol and nuclear energy. Higuchi also highlighted another source of supply for nuclear maintenance, day labourers recruited from the yoseba, which are districts located on the periphery of Tokyo, Osaka, and Fukuoka. These districts have represented a characteristic of the Japanese labour market since the Meiji period, particularly for the construction industry, as they were a dead end for the dekasegi who had cut ties with the family farm. From time to time, recruiters in the yoseba also provided job opportunities for the outcast burakumin who had difficulty finding regular jobs except in the restricted occupations, such as butchery and leatherwork, as imposed by Buddhist beliefs and social stigmatization.12 Apart from the exotic fixation by some foreign media on the eventual recruitment of burakumin for the cleanup of F1 after 3/11, it is true that the yoseba offered the nuclear power plants and other industries a labour reserve for all sorts of dirty and dangerous jobs, a situation that remains after 3/11. Both Higuchi’s “nuclear plant hibakusha” and Horie’s “nuclear plant gypsies” publicized the tough working and living conditions of the workforce employed in the maintenance of Japanese nuclear power plants. They both suggested that these workers might become the first victims if a disaster occurred, which would also affect many more people. They also illustrated the economic dependency of local communities that had been compelled to host nuclear plants. Non-fiction writer Satoshi Kamata in 1982 analysed this problem further.13 All this critical literature, based on strong evidence about the harsh reality, permeated Japanese society in the 1980s thanks to the political left and a vigorous movement against nuclear power plants led by a national group, the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Centre (CNIC), which was founded around 1975.14

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After the complicated start in the 1970s at Fukushima Daiichi of an experimental reactor bought from the British General Electric Company, new reactors were launched one after the other with the help of American General Electric (GE, distinct from GEC).15 Two decades later, Japan had thirty-four nuclear power plants constituting the third largest nuclear power industry in the world after the United States and France. Meanwhile, following the collapse of the political left wing, the Japanese anti-nuclear movement was reduced to local pockets of resistance and two national centres with limited resources (the CNIC and the No Nukes Plaza Tokyo [Tanpoposya], founded in 1989). In 1999, a criticality accident16 occurred at the uranium reprocessing facility of Tōkaimura – the town that hosted Japan’s first experimental nuclear reactor in the 1960s – causing the death of three workers and the contamination of the locality. In 2001, Tokyo Electric Company (Tepco) and Kansai Electric Company (Kepco) were exposed in a national scandal concerning fake or neglected maintenance tasks that were crucial for the safety of nuclear reactors. In 2004, an accident killed four subcontracted workers at Kepco’s Mihama plant. In 2007, despite the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a strong earthquake provoked an important fire at Tepco’s plant at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa. Despite all these “incidents,” the Japanese anti-nuclear movement did not receive significant public support. Compared to other countries with nuclear plants, the organizational structure of the labour force in the Japanese nuclear industry contains many more layers of subcontractors and temporary workers, who constitute the majority of the forces performing maintenance tasks. If this state of affairs has become a reality in many countries (such as France and the United States) as a way to reduce labour costs, Japan was probably the first to make it a strong and generalized pattern.17 From the end of the nineteenth century, the shipyard industry developed numerous layers of subcontractors; when it joined the nuclear program with firms such as Mitsubishi and Ishikawajima (IHI), it reproduced the same type of labour organization. Every industry has its share of migrant workers; what is unique to migrant workers involved in nuclear work is that they may be exposed to radiation, which necessitates biological monitoring by the electric company and state agencies, who determine the thresholds of exposure permitted or forbidden, and therefore access to the jobs. Such control, however, does not eliminate the health risks or uncertainties for those involved, but rather contributes to making these risks less visible.18 Outside of Japan, following on the influential seminal work of French sociologist Annie Thébaud-Mony and colleagues, a 1996 documentary

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film by Catherine Pozzo di Borgo depicted the situation of the temporary workers performing maintenance tasks in Électricité de France’s (EDF) nuclear power plants.19 As they spent most of their lives in mobile homes moving from one plant to another, the film termed these workers “trimardeurs,” an old and informal French word for hobos roaming from town to town in search of jobs. The film described their difficult working and living conditions, pointing out the hazards to their health as well as the potential threat to the safety of the reactor. More recently, a 2009 documentary film by Alain de Halleux and a 2010 novel by Elisabeth Filhol received prizes and some public recognition. But this was not enough to overshadow the “radiance of France” analysed by Gabrielle Hecht in her book of the same name, that is, the powerful political affiliations held by the French nuclear industry technocracy, which the French environmentalist party Les Verts did not challenge or transform as did Die Grünen in Germany.20 Despite the huge threat to national safety, the French trimardeurs (or gitans du nucléaire) were like the Japanese nuclear plant gypsies: whistleblowers without any influence on public opinion. In Japan, the situation changed dramatically after 3/11: media reports on cleanup workers at Fukushima Daiichi contributed to the debate about what to do with the remaining nuclear plants. This debate has divided the Japanese political right wing, with figures like former premier Koizumi advocating a complete and immediate abandonment. At F1, most workers who have been struggling to contain contaminated waters and remove debris and fuel rods have come from all over Japan, as have those who perform the decontamination (josen) on the hotspots of Fukushima prefecture. Media reports about these workers oscillate between labelling them “liquidators,” in reference to Chernobyl, or “gypsies,” in reference to Horie’s book. These reports tend, however, to minimize the role of the local workers. After 3/11, while another wave of nuclear gypsy workers entered the disaster zone, entire communities were expelled and dispersed miles away because of the disaster. More than 80,000 people were forced to evacuate the areas closest to Fukushima Daiichi, and at least another 80,000 have “voluntarily” fled their homes (jishu hinan) out of fear of radiation.21 Thus, around 160,000 people have been deprived of their living and working environments, including local fishermen and farmers. Under pressure from the Ministry of Reconstruction to return to their former homes, but still likely to be exposed to relatively high radiation, families are torn by the health uncertainties resulting from chronic exposure to radioactive surroundings that remain higher than before the disaster.22 A similar dilemma was observed after Chernobyl,

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but there were sharp contrasts in the reactions of Ukraine and Belarus (following their independence from the Soviet Union). In Ukraine, the authorities launched a compensation system; despite many gaps and the dependent links of what Adriana Petryna has described as a “biocitizenship,” the authorities did not impede independent research on the effects of radiation. In Belarus, the authoritarian regime imposed silence on independent researchers and actively worked to produce the scientific invisibility on radiation risk favoured by international organizations such as the IAEA.23 Both tendencies can be observed in post 3/11 Japan, and the health status of the cleanup workers plays a significant role in the debate on radiation risk.24 Scientific controversy concerning radiation risk is also a key component in describing the sociopolitical outcomes of nuclear disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima; this chapter, however, focuses on the specific meanings of migration related to nuclear work before and after the disaster. In a cross-movement of people, similar to civilians fleeing a war zone as soldiers enter it, the citizens ran away from radiation, while tens of thousands workers from other provinces came in to do cleanup work at F1 or on decontamination sites. Some of them knew the place before 3/11, as “nuclear gypsies.” Now they have become “zone workers,” similar to their Soviet counterparts in the Chernobyl case. While the state tries to control the flow of people, at F1 a new generation of nuclear gypsies has been struggling to block a different type of migration, the escape of billions of becquerels of radionuclides from the meltdown reactors into the ocean, by using thousands of containers and various technological devices, such as an underground ice wall. Outside the plant, thousands of workers are employed in the decontamination (josen) of houses and gardens, perceived by many as nothing but a simple transfer (isen) of radionuclides from one place to another. This work has become a business opportunity for construction companies and a pretext to force the former inhabitants to return. The former inhabitants displaced by the disaster may, to some extent, also be considered a new form of “nuclear gypsy.” Though the displaced population of Fukushima and other prefectures are not the focus of this article, I must explain what I mean by this risky comparison. Among the forced evacuees and those who have voluntarily left their homes, there is a large disparity of social, economic, and psychological consequences, depending on the location, age, and gender of people, whether the families had young children, the length of time they lived in their former community, and whether they owned or rented their home. There are tensions among those who are eligible for compensation and

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those who are not; communities are scattered; family ties are weakened or cut by different perceptions of risk, a drastic reduction in income, and prolonged separation (for example, if the father remains near the former home, while his wife is away with the children). Many do not trust the state and the scientific establishment anymore, which is not necessarily a bad reaction, but it generates a reluctance to be categorized under trendy catchwords. As in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Minamata, where similar patterns were observed, the boundaries are now blurring between sociological typologies and potentially stigmatizing expressions that have emerged since the disaster; these include “nuclear refugees” (genpatsu nanmin) – a reference to a folksong by an anti-nuclear artist before 3/11 – or “rejected people” (kimin) and “hidden evacuees” (kakure hinanmin), which are reminiscence of a pre-industrial past. But even words like “evacuees” (hinansha) and “victims” (hisaisha) have caused discussion.25 In this context, it is difficult to introduce another category like nuclear gypsies as an analytical concept, particularly since in Europe the word “gypsy” has extremely problematic connotations and epistemic challenges.26 I will thereafter use the neologism of “gypseity” to explore a local community hosting a hazardous industry such as a nuclear plant and the workers engaged in that facility at different times and in shifting hierarchical positions, before and after the disaster. The first part of this article is the result of my research conducted near Fukushima Daini (hereafter F2) in 2002, and the second part consists of research conducted on several field trips in Iwaki (30 kilometres south of F2) and in Tokyo after 3/11. The portraits presented here are not necessarily candidates for universal archetypes, but they have been selected for their heuristic value in regard to the post-3/11 context and the dialectic between locality and migration; they portray the precarious living conditions, labour, and exposure to nuclear radiation. Nuclear Gypseity before 3/11 In June 2002, I was conducting research on Japanese nuclear plant workers from a comparative perspective with the situation of France as described by Thébaud-Mony. Reporters Satoshi Kamata and Kenji Higuchi encouraged me to meet with Koshirō Ishimaru in Tomioka, a small town near Tepco’s Fukushima Daini power plant. A longtime opponent of the nuclear plants, Ishimaru had been attentive to the maintenance workers. His primary concern was for the reactor’s safety; as a member of the Social-Democratic Party, he also worried about this

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exploited working class. Originally from Niigata, in northwestern Japan, Ishimaru had married a woman from Tomioka whose family had no male heir; following the Japanese custom (mukoyōshi), he took his spouse’s family name to continue the lineage. At the time I visited them, Ishimaru and his wife lived in a nice house; they had two children and five grandchildren. Aware of the risks posed by the nuclear power plants, they were opposed from the beginning to the invasion of Tepco’s nuclear plants into the region. But as an employee of the post office and a member of the Social-Democratic Party (Shamintō), Ishimaru was also concerned about labour rights for workers inside the Tepco nuclear plants. When the Futaba Region Alliance against Nuclear Plants (Futaba chihō genpatsu hantai dōmei) was created in the early 1970s, although it had few members, at least Ishimaru was not alone in his David versus Goliath fight. Gradually, though, as Tepco imposed its rule on the region, with four reactors in F2 (the closest to Tomioka) and six at F1 (30 kilometres north), all of his fellow activists left the alliance. Yet, Ishimaru was not embittered but determined. Thanks to his well-tempered wife and a network of sympathizers such as the CNIC in Tokyo and members of Kokurō, the Japanese National Railway Workers’ Union (which was defeated by the privatization of the company in 1986), Ishimaru was encouraged to contradict Tepco’s local propaganda. Ishimaru has survived to 3/11. The last time we met (in June 2013), he was less cheerful than ten years ago. His wife died; then the 3/11 tsunami destroyed downtown Tomioka, and the radiation plume made his house uninhabitable for his grandchildren. His children fled to Koriyama and Niigata, while he, alone, has moved into a two-room apartment in Iwaki, a city located 30 kilometres south of Tomioka. He sometimes drives to Koriyama (in the west of Fukushima prefecture) or takes the shinkansen to Niigata to spend time with his family. But he moved alone to Iwaki at age 68 because, with the help of labour activists from Tokyo, he has been trying to launch a centre to provide legal and medical advice to the workers engaged in the cleanup and dismantlement of F1 or doing decontamination work in the region. After 3/11, Iwaki has become a base camp for these workers. Before 3/11, Ishimaru was well established economically and socially, and was not dependent on the power plant. Though he was not born in Fukushima, and was not a local farmer but a post office employee, he nevertheless became attached to the place. His forty years of struggle against Tepco has reinforced this attachment to such an extent that after 3/11, instead of going back to his home in Niigata with his children and

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grandchildren, he moved to Iwaki for an uncertain project devoted to nuclear gypsies. It would be an exaggeration to say that 3/11 has turned him into an anti-nuclear gypsy, but the loss of his home and his frequent travelling makes him feel increasing sympathy for the nuclear gypsies. Looking for “Nuclear Gypsies” In 2002, I was in Tomioka to visit the Fukushima Daini power plant and meet the Tepco manager in charge of labour safety and radiation protection. We had a frank discussion, but I was not permitted to meet with workers engaged in the maintenance: “You see, those workers are not Tepco employees but those of our partners’ companies, so it is difficult to ask them.” Faced with the impossibility of conducting a regular sociological survey, I thought of imitating Higuchi’s tactic of reportage, and asked for advice from Ishimaru. He suggested that I try the cheap hotels in Tomioka, where I might meet nuclear gypsies. Ishimaru gave me access to his abundant documentation, detailing his thirty years of activity and critical observation of safety matters at Tepco’s plants in Fukushima and a health survey of maintenance workers conducted with Dr Saburō Murata, a physician from Osaka. I looked for a place near Ishimaru’s office, the Social Labour Assembly Hall, which was a humble one-floor wooden barrack. The first two hotels were full, but I found a room nearby at the Happy Guesthouse (Happi sō), a two-floor building with forty rooms. Ishimaru later commented: “Oh, I see. That must be the Hilton! The name was changed.” The owner of Happy Guesthouse was a friendly woman; the tatami room was small but clean, and it cost only 4,500 yen a night, including dinner and breakfast. She did not ask me why I was in Tomioka, although I feared my presence in such a non-touristy place might be regarded with suspicion. Perhaps she thought I was a foreign trainee (gaikokujin kenshūsei), another form of nuclear gypsy employed by large companies like Tepco, GE, or Tōshiba for technical training, or by small and medium-sized companies as a complementary task force of cheaply paid technicians. In the 1990s, there were rumours at Fukushima Daiichi of these young people being sent to do dangerous maintenance tasks in zones exposed to high radiation. At dinner, one man was eating while watching the soccer World Cup, which that year was co-organized by Japan and Korea. The team from Argentina was housed at the now famous J-Village (J for Japan), not far from Tomioka and F2, and sponsored by Tepco. This man also did not

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inquire why I was there and seemed glad I was French (France had won the 1998 World Cup against Brazil but was doing poorly in Japan). While chatting about soccer, I began to ask him questions and was surprised that he told me about his situation. He was a technician specializing in pumps; his company was based in Kōbe but he often travelled all over Japan, depending on the maintenance schedule for nuclear and thermal power plants. He had been doing this job for eight years. He even spoke freely about sensitive topics like radiation and safety matters. A group of eight men came in, and they also worked at F2. The six young men and two veterans were employed by a subcontractor from Kyūshū. After the man from Kōbe left the dining room, I also gathered some information about their jobs. They soon left as they had to wake up early the next day. Again I was surprised that none of them asked why I was there, and none were reluctant to talk about their situation. Despite the secrecy policy enforced by the nuclear industry after the publication of Horie’s and Higuchi’s books, it seemed to be relatively easy to speak with nuclear gypsies, as if the industry had regained the confidence of the general population and was putting less pressure on the workers about the secrecy rule. The next day, I made it clear to the man from Kōbe that I wished to learn from his veteran knowledge of nuclear plants. I invited him to my room, so we could speak more freely. When I gave him my name card, he was surprised: “Oh! You’re a university researcher!” He agreed to have me record our discussion. Let’s call him Yabe. His company – let’s call it Kōbe Pump – had contracts with various reactor makers, companies like Tōshiba and Hitachi, and power plant companies like Tepco. Yabe was often on the road, so on average, he only spent ten days a month with his family in Kōbe. He estimated that his cumulative dose of radiation was around 25 millisieverts a year, which was significant as compared to the data disclosed by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) that reported only a few workers were over 20 millisieverts a year.27 In 1991, the International Commission on Radiation Protection recommended reducing the previous standards of exposure for workers from 50 millisieverts to 20 millisieverts a year, averaged over five years, with a limit of 50 millisieverts in any one year, a policy that Japan adopted with some revisions in 2001. Yabe explained that this measure had obliged power plants to increase their maintenance task force, which made the organization and the necessary safety work more complex. Another factor, which put more pressure on the workers, was the shortening of the maintenance periods. When Yabe started this job in the

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1990s, the reactor ran for one year and then stopped for six months for the removal of the nuclear fuel rods and regular maintenance – teiki tenken. This period of shutdown has been reduced to less than three months, so that for reactor 3 at F2 where he then worked, the target was only forty-five days. This change had occurred by 2000 due to influence from the French nuclear industry. In addition, the parts and components previously used for a maximum of ten years were extended for another five to ten years. Yabe commented: “Despite triple checks for each part, this might be dangerous.” So the reduction of the maintenance period and the prolonged use of the materials put the whole plant at risk. It increased the burden for the workers, which was already complicated by their exposure to radiation. Yabe explained that maintenance of the pump controlling the cooling system required between five and ten workers. Before entering the controlled zone (kanri kuiki) with high radiation, each worker had to wear a protective suit, a full mask, and two pairs of gloves fixed to the protective suit with adhesive tape. They had to help each other. If one person had to go to the toilet, he could not remove his clothes alone; someone else had to leave the job to help him. Then he had to take a shower, look at the alarm meter to check his external radiation, and if everything was fine, he could go to the toilet. The workers therefore made a difficult tradeoff: drink the minimum before the job to avoid going to the toilet. But as they wear the protective suit and a full mask, they sweat a lot, so they need to drink enough to prevent dehydration. Finding the “Nuclear Locals” Yabe’s life – moving from one plant to another depending on the calendar of maintenance periods – was not dissimilar to that of the nuclear gypsies described by Horie. To address the power relationships among employees, I did not ask him if he defined himself as a nuclear gypsy, but I referred to the common expression “solo transfer” – tanshin funin – that characterizes the transfer of male employees to another city or country to work in a branch office unaccompanied by his family. This practice is common, even for managers at different points in their careers, in almost every industry and in all sorts of Japanese companies, including the largest ones. –  Are all these workers on solo transfer like you? No there are also locals. Actually most of those performing that job are locals. –  Oh really? Is this so? Why?

“Nuclear Gypsies” in Fukushima  285 Well, I guess the job is attractive, and there is the prestige of a power plant. I don’t mean to be snobbish, but you know, in this remote district, I mean such a thing is not built in highly populated areas right? So in these less populated districts, it’s a way to develop economic activity, you know. So it’s attractive for the locals. –  And between you and them, how is the … Communication? Our relationships? Well, it’s quite difficult sometimes. You know, I bear responsibility because I represent the maker, so I must ask them to check and check again. They have this sort of pride characteristic of Japanese craftsmen, so they don’t like it. –  What about your relationships with, for example, employees from Hitachi if the pump is made by Hitachi? What about Tepco and other power plant companies? There’s no problem. They trust me, so they just leave it to me, because it’s my competence; I’m an expert for this. –  Back to the radiation issue, how do you deal concretely with the maximum day limit of 0.1 millisievert? What is the division of tasks between you and them? I’m like an adviser, so I tell them to do like this or like that; then they execute the task. And if I find something strange, I notify them. So, well, they are indeed the ones who are doused the most. –  Do they use lead protection? No, we make a plastic tent, you know like a greenhouse for tomatoes, and they work inside. –  So you check them from outside the tent? No, I get in also but I check and then I go out, so I don’t stay as long as they do.

The tasks assumed by Yabe are required to ensure the safety of technical parts as important as the pump of the cooling system. After the explosion and meltdown of the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, the original design of these pumps became a topic of controversy because they could not be operated manually in the event of a power failure, but there was little debate about the question of regular maintenance. In a capitalist regime, the management of a nuclear plant is confronted with a double-bind situation: as plants age, they require more maintenance and emit more radiation that must be dealt with; however, in order to reduce labour costs, plant managers are encouraged to shorten their maintenance periods. Their solution has been to shift work from Tepco employees to subcontracted workers, distributing the collective dose of radiation through a hierarchy of subcontractors of different statuses. Those most exposed to radiation, the nuclear gypsies,

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had the lowest salaries, almost no regular health checks, and could be easily discarded. In the 1980s, the electric companies were compelled to temper the most shocking aspects of this labour organization. Twenty years later, nuclear gypsies had become a minority among rank-andfile workers; most of them had been replaced by local workers, who were also employed by a cascade of subcontractors, also working in different plants but more locally implanted.28 Yabe, a highly skilled technician, perceived himself as an outsider among the less skilled local staff. Despite the relative prestige of his position, he was nevertheless compelled to live the wandering life of a solo transfer – he did not refuse the term – spending nights at places like the Happy Guesthouse, along with nuclear gypsies. We consider therefore that Yabe represents another type of nuclear gypseity. Power relationships are complex and cannot be reduced to a simple contrast between the top of the pyramid – Tepco and the reactor makers like Hitachi and Tōshiba – and their subcontractors. The hierarchy of subcontractors has a variety of nuanced positions. Nuclear gypseity interacts with and contrasts with “nuclear locality.” The nuclear locals do not necessarily enjoy the guarantee of a stable job contract and corporate welfare (health insurance, annual bonus, seniority, and retirement pension) but nuclear gypsies like Yabe do if they are highly skilled, that is, employed by the reactor makers and their direct subcontractors. As Yabe suggested with some embarrassment, local recruitment of rankand-file workers certainly increased the commitment of the community to Tepco or other power plant companies. It explains why, after 3/11, many of these nuclear locals felt betrayed. The next portrait illustrates the precarious conditions of these nuclear locals even before the disaster. During my investigation in 2002, Mr Ishimaru introduced me to Mr Yokota, the head of a small firm hiring subcontract workers for Japan’s reactor manufacturers like General Electric and Hitachi. As his company was based near Tomioka, most of his contracts were with Tepco, but from time to time he was hired with his staff for maintenance tasks in other power plants. Yokota had severe diabetes, and was then out of work because of it, and Tepco had refused him any help. So disgusted was he by Tepco’s attitude that he explained to me in detail how he had been complicit in systematic falsification of health records, which no one, including Tepco, really believed in. He showed me the fake “no abnormality detected” stamp that he used to falsify the radiation passbooks of workers under his supervision, for example, after the regulation annual

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medical checkup if the doctor found irregularities in blood composition indicating a risk of leukemia. Two years later, Ishimaru informed me that Yokota had committed suicide. Both Yokota’s and Yabe’s testimony indicate the distribution of risks before 3/11 between locals and gypsies, depending on their position in the chain of command – the makers, the power plant companies, and their subcontractors. According to the 2009 figures from NISA (the previous Japanese Nuclear Safety Authority, placed under the authority of the Ministry of Economy, and transformed in September 2012 into the Nuclear Regulation Authority under the Ministry of the Environment), there were about 1,108 Tepco employees at Fukushima Daiichi, and some 9,195 hired by subcontracting firms. Officially, no one was exposed to over 20 millisieverts; most of the workers, both Tepco employees and subcontractors, were exposed to radiation doses below 5 millisieverts, but of those 964 exposed to between 5 and 20 millisieverts, a large majority (926) worked for subcontractors. The ratio of employees between electric companies and subcontractors was similar in other nuclear plants, and very few workers exceeded 20 millisieverts per year. But when broken down by plant, these statistics did not give the real picture for all the casual workers who move from one nuclear plant to the next, the nuclear gypsies at large. It is also unclear if this data includes those hired below the lowest level of subcontractors, that is, the numerous casual workers recruited in day labourer districts (as described by Higuchi). The organization of labour and the statistical reporting diluted the hazards resulting from exposure to radiation faced by both the floating population of nuclear gypsies and a reserve of local workers low down in the chain of command. This unequal distribution of risks would be momentarily challenged during the first weeks of the 3/11 crisis, but very quickly the situation reverted to the previous almost routine discriminatory distribution of risk. Nuclear Gypseity after 3/11 Gypsies and Locals Turned Liquidators or Evacuees According to figures Tepco released during the first weeks of the crisis, some 169 workers were exposed to a cumulative dose of over 100 millisieverts; most of these were Tepco employees, while the total workforce involved was rather evenly balanced between Tepco and “partner firms” (kyōryoku gaisha), as power plant companies call their subcontractors. Thereafter, officially, no more workers were exposed to over

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100 millisieverts, but the ratio between Tepco employees and employees of subcontractors shifted back to the situation before 11 March 2011, of around 10 per cent Tepco to 90 per cent subcontractors.29 The latter group includes, at the top, the reactor makers Hitachi, Tōshiba, Mitsubishi, and General Electric, which are the main contractors (moto-uke) and, under each of these, a network of seven or eight tiers of subcontractors (shita-uke). Since 3/11, men of all ages, including some who are very young, have been recruited through newspaper want ads.30 In the summer of 2011, Tomohiko Suzuki, a journalist expert in yakuza – Japanese organized crime syndicates – worked for one month at F1; he found that even before 3/11, the yakuza directly or indirectly controlled part of the recruitment of workers with the tacit agreement of the power companies.31 It is difficult to estimate the total numbers in this grey zone of the labour market, but as other reports suggest, many workers engaged in collecting the rubble from the hydrogen explosions were recruited by the yakuza or by small companies who had to pay a commission to the yakuza.32 Until 2013, the figures published by Tepco mention an average of 3,000 workers on the site every day, but this was only a rough estimate, and in 2014 that number doubled. During the first weeks of the crisis of March 2011, the “50 heroes” made the headlines. Thereafter, in an explicit reference to Chernobyl, the worldwide media used the word “liquidators” to report about the workers, soldiers, and firemen engaged in the rescue operations at F1. Despite some improvement in the protection masks and suits since the nuclear explosion of April 1986 at Chernobyl, in Fukushima, during the first weeks of the crisis, the Japanese workers experienced a situation of extreme risk and vulnerability comparable to their Soviet predecessors. The pictures of Japanese workers with flashlights in the dark buildings destroyed by the tsunami, taken not long after 3/11 and disclosed by Tepco to show the company’s efforts to restore electric lighting, were reminiscent of those famous terrifying images of the Soviet “bio-robots,” as they later called themselves, collecting debris on a roof, wearing primitive lead breastplates. The latter scene, however, was shot five months after the explosion of Chernobyl’s Unit 4, on the top of Unit 3, which the authorities pretended to restart.33 Another similarity between Fukushima and Chernobyl is that the disaster will last for decades, blurring the boundaries of emergency work (kinkyū sagyō).34 In Fukushima, to prevent the worsening of the disaster that could transform all of Japan into a ghost town, rescue task

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forces rushed to bring back power to cool the reactors. They then transferred the contaminated water into tanks that accumulated on nearby plots of land and collected the debris from the tsunami and the explosions of the three reactors. As of November 2014, all spent nuclear fuel rods have been removed from Unit 4’s pool – which is suspended in a building severely damaged by the tsunami – to a pool in a separate building at ground level. Fuel removal operations will next shift to Units 1–3, which are even more challenging because of the extremely high level of radioactivity in those units, which, unlike Unit 4, were operating at the time of the tsunami and suffered meltdowns of their fuel cores. So the dismantlement of the entire plant could take more than thirty years. Finally, thousands of workers are supposed to decontaminate the region of Fukushima. The zones to be decontaminated are very limited compared to the wide area that has been affected by a sharp increase in background radiation; this situation is not limited to some hotspots within Fukushima prefecture but extends to other prefectures. In addition, the zones under decontamination are characterized by valleys and forest-covered hills. Such topography therefore needs repeated decontamination after strong rains – a Sisyphean task. The government minimizes this problem, as well as the chronic pollution in the rivers from the oozing of contaminated soils stored in plastic bags and leaks of contaminated water from the storage tanks in F1. The meaninglessness of such decontamination affects the morale of many workers, particularly the locals attached to their region. Like their Soviet counterparts, Japanese liquidators come from all over the country but include many locals. Previously employed by Tepco’s subcontractors, some had to abandon large family homes with tiled roofs (a symbol of wealth in rural Japan), now uninhabitable because of high background radiation, to camp in cheap hotels or barracks, or small apartments for the most fortunate. Though these locals share the harsh working and living conditions of the nuclear gypsies, their experience of the disaster has gone through distinct and potentially more traumatic emotions. If the gypsies may have the possibility of going back to a relatively safe environment, most locals are condemned to live with the disaster forever as the links with their former community, their family, or business partners have been broken or devitalized. They are evacuees in their homeland. In that sense they experience a new form of gypseity: they are locals turned gypsies by the disaster. In June 2011, at a conference on radiation risks given by an expert in Iwaki, I happened to meet with T.S., a young technician from Tomioka.

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He is a skilled worker in his thirties who has been employed for the last ten years by a local contractor of Tōshiba, performing maintenance tasks on the reactor vessel in several plants, mainly for Tepco at F1, F2, and Kashiwazaki, but also at Onagawa near Sendai. He was at F1 when the tsunami rushed in on 11 March. He went away a few hours later with his colleagues, then returned one week later at the request of his employer and also because he was feeling concerned about what was going on. From April 2011 until January 2013, he worked at the site on a schedule of four days on and four days off. Compared to his solid technical knowledge regarding the plant’s safety, I was surprised that T.S. had relatively little training in radiation protection or knowledge of the risks from chronic or acute exposure to radiation. He agreed to discuss this matter with an activist engaged in the negotiations with the Ministry of Health and Labour. His attitude towards Tepco was completely transformed from devoted allegiance to radical criticism; this change started soon after 11 March, when he realized how much he had been cheated. A native of Fukushima, he not only thought that he might have to sacrifice his life in the rescue operations to avoid greater disaster, but he also realized that his birthplace could remain uninhabitable for years to come. A housewife whom I also met at the conference expressed a similar feeling of betrayal: “Tepco has cheated us for years, and we believed its lies, like our children who were impressed by Tepco’s showroom ‘House of energy’!”35 Many consumers who used to be quiescent about nuclear electricity likewise turned into radical opponents of the nuclear industry. In June 2013, when I again met with T.S. in Iwaki, he was no longer employed at F1, but was performing decontamination work outside around Tomioka. His salary was better than at F1: in addition to Fukushima prefecture’s basic wage of 6,000 yen per day, decontamination workers could get a 10,000 yen hazard allowance from the Ministry of the Environment; this compared to a maximum of 12,000 yen per day at F1 (at his level of the subcontracting chain). His cumulative external radiation had reached 70 millisieverts, and at his last check he had 10 millisieverts of internal radiation, measurements that might have caused him to be sidelined. In any event, Tepco has been trying to reduce the number of those exposed to levels of radiation above 20 millisieverts after some pressure from the ministries. During the interview, T.S. was more nervous than during our previous meetings in 2011; he seemed angry and cynical at times. He would prefer to work at F1, as his technical skills were not used in decontamination work.

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When I first met T.S., I asked him what motivated him to become a nuclear worker. For him it was a stable industry, which meant a steady job, and the name Tepco conveyed opulence, because it was often sponsoring sports or cultural events in the region. He expressed pride at doing a skilled and dangerous job at the heart of the reactor in what had been for a long time the symbol of high-tech industry. But not only had 3/11 ruined his stability and pride, the management crisis at Tepco had spoiled his expectations. In June 2011, he confessed: The Self-Defense Forces have been exposed to high doses of radiation. As they are public servants, if they die, the state will compensate their families, they will be honoured for deaths in the line of duty [nikaikyū tokushin], and perhaps be awarded medals. But we … are not public servants, so we can’t get any medals if we die, and ours won’t be recognized as lineof-duty deaths. I’m not even sure if the company will compensate our families. Those who worked at Chernobyl have received medals, but in our case, at the best, Tepco will give us a towel or a ballpoint pen! I wonder what we are we working for!36

Two years later, the lack of recognition for his contribution as a liquidator had turned his pride and tenacity into frustration. He is not the sole former nuclear local who feels betrayed by Tepco and is treated with disdain by the central government and the political elites. As Tetsuya Takahashi analysed it, Tepco in Fukushima has been devoted to producing electricity for Tokyo under a postcolonial “system of sacrifice,” but now the name of Fukushima is associated with a global source of pollution. The effects have spread beyond just the subcontracted workers. Social stigma, wage cuts, political isolation, and the risk of radiation have pushed many nuclear locals to quit their jobs, even those with the relatively stable position of Tepco employees. One of them, Akihiro Yoshikawa, represents that trend, but he has a specific goal. Now in his thirties, Yoshikawa became a Tepco employee in 1999 after getting his degree from the Tōden Gakuen, which was a Tokyo high school for training future Tepco workers. He worked at F1 until his transfer to F2 in 2008. He was there when the tsunami hit the F2 plant. He retired from Tepco in June 2012, and with the help of two high school classmates, he has launched a campaign called “Appreciate Fukushima Workers,” aiming to “bring support to the nuclear plant workers and the areas affected by the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.” He has given talks and collected funds to donate sets of underwear and heat packs

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to the workers of F1. His campaign has received media coverage.37 Yoshikawa is worried by the hemorrhage of skilled workers willing to decommission F1. Since March 2011, around 2,800 employees have left the company. While Tepco has cut salaries – by 30 per cent for the managers and 20 per cent for the workers – some received offers for better paying jobs by foreign companies in the solar industry that are in search of people with contacts in the government bureaucracy. Yoshikawa himself has received attractive offers, but when he decided to quit the company, he devoted himself to those who remain on the job at F1. Yoshikawa chose to leave the company as he hoped to play a role in the local administration in charge of nuclear safety, but this plan did not succeed; the commission members perhaps feared that a former Tepco employee would lack independence from the industry. Despite a sincere commitment to the workers and an attachment to the region of Fukushima, Yoshikawa does oscillate between loyalty to his former employer and the frustration and resentment felt by the workers still on the site. He reacted to a Japanese version of an article I wrote about Japanese nuclear plant workers by disagreeing with my description of the relationship between the Tepco employees and the subcontractors, which I conveyed as disdain of the former against the latter.38 His experience was the opposite: when he came to F1 he was a newcomer who had just finished high school, and he knew nothing about the job. So he learned everything from the veteran workers employed by the local subcontracting companies. Their relationship started with a relatively common practice in Japanese companies of transmission from senior to junior (senpai-kōhai), except for the fact that he was an employee of Tepco – which ranked among the top ten of Japanese large companies – and they were employees of small, local companies. In Japan this approach usually makes for an important asymmetry of symbolic prestige. In this transmission process of shop-floor knowledge, Yoshikawa had become close friends with these men who were older, and who invited him for meals and to play golf. The 3/11 disaster has destroyed these relationships. So Yoshikawa’s current engagement might be understood as a moral debt to pay, and an attachment to a place where he was adopted. Where Have the Skilled Workers Been? Hiroyuki Watanabe is an Iwaki city councillor and a member of the Japanese Communist Party. Like Yoshikawa, he has also organized similar symbolic donations (of bananas, for instance) for the workers

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of F1 to show his sympathy and his concern for their harsh living and working conditions. Like Yoshikawa he is very concerned by the shortage of skilled workers. But his is a much more radical line of discourse. Explaining this shortage, he says many of these workers left because they think the pay is too low for such a harsh job, while others who would like to continue are laid off because they have reached the maximum dose. Before 3/11, despite the ambiguity of the Japanese Communist Party on the issue of nuclear power plants, Watanabe had often criticized Tepco’s neglect of safety issues. After 3/11, he offered his help in getting legal advice or applying for compensation on behalf of the contract workers of F1.39 When I visited him in June 2013, after I mentioned the situation of T.S., whom he knew, Watanabe explained that at the end of 2012 many former local subcontractors like the employer of T.S. were informed that Tepco planned to reduce the workforce on the site because of “budget restrictions,” so that even level 2 or 3 subcontractors were compelled to lay off many employees. In one case, for example, a company retained only 70 people out of its former workforce of 300. This fact itself suggested that the number of skilled workers at F1 was declining.40 We have seen above with T.S. and Yoshikawa that quite a few of them were nuclear locals, and that both of them regretted this trend. What about the nuclear gypsies then? Two workers who came to work as liquidators in Fukushima after 3/11 whom I met near Tomioka in June 2013 – let’s call them Wada and Satō – had an experience that parallels the situation of T.S., but both were newcomers to nuclear work.41 Wada was a plumber in his fifties who was usually employed on construction sites. Though he had no experience in nuclear plants, since plumbing is a skill that is required for the maintenance of power plants, he was recruited from his home in Kyūshū in March 2012. He worked at F1 for one year before shifting to a decontamination job outside the plant because he was tired of the wage skimming (pin hane): though he was supposed to receive 15,000 yen per day, he never got more than 12,000. Also the living conditions were horrendous: the dormitory where he was sent had no kitchen or bathroom, and only a sleeping bag was provided. Wada was shocked to learn that only one in five workers had a particular skill applicable to working at F1; he did not mean experience with nuclear plants since he himself had none, but referred to basic skills like hammering nails or welding as required on construction sites. Satō, for example, had been a truck driver before coming to Fukushima: he worked

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for three months during the spring of 2013 on the contaminated water tanks near the entrance to F1 before shifting to decontamination work. Until last year, the reactor and turbine makers Tōshiba and Hitachi-GE were the main employers. According to T.S. and Yoshikawa, big construction companies like Kajima, Taisei, Shimizu, and Takenaka have seized a dominant position in the recruitment chain at F1. Considering the historical ties of the yakuza to the recruitment of labour in the construction industry – as well as in coal mining and the shipyard industry – this means that at the bottom of the chain of subcontractors, the yakuza have increased their control over recruitment, taking over from the small and medium companies that had regular contracts with Tōshiba and Hitachi. When I asked the vice-chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) about the reasons for such a situation, he confessed that he himself had difficulty investigating at the site.42 To summarize, the reasons for the de-skilling process are at least threefold. First, due to a much higher radiation background, many skilled workers have reached the maximum yearly exposure limit and thus cannot be employed at F1, at least for a year or two. Second, despite promises of risk premiums by Tepco and the ministries, in practice, because of the wage skimming at each level of the subcontractors’ chain, the premiums are seldom paid, so the jobs have become less attractive. Third, when the construction companies took a greater share of the public bids for the operations at F1, the traditionally stronger role of crime syndicates in recruitment for the construction industry spread to F1, and this situation explains the persistence of wage skimming. The Dilution of Risks after 3/11 Working on a construction site is in itself quite dangerous (in Japan and many industrialized countries, the construction industry has the highest rates of death and injuries). Given the exceptional radiation levels at F1, workers must wear a full protective suit (called a “Tyvek,” after one of the brands used) and a full mask in most areas, making it difficult to perform the job well and quickly, which is essential to limit radiation exposure and avoid injury. According to a report by Tepco, occupational injuries at F1 decreased from a total of fifty-nine in 2011 to twenty-five in 2012.43 But this depends on the definition of occupational injury. The labour inspector of the Tomioka Labour Bureau, whom I visited in June 2013, refused to provide any data about claims made by workers employed at F1. This contrasted

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with the cooperative attitude of his predecessor to similar requests during my visit in 2002. After 3/11, though the office of the Labour Bureau has been relocated to Iwaki, its official name still belongs to Tomioka, as if the administration itself was experiencing gypseity. The sensitivity of the issue that has attracted the attention of worldwide media has put the office under more scrutiny from the Ministries of Health and Labour. I met with the officials who represented the ministry at meetings in Tokyo with labour non-governmental organizations (NGOs) concerned about the working conditions of Fukushima workers.44 Hiroyuki Watanabe commented sharply on the labour bureaus in Tomioka and Futaba: “I don’t think they have ever been willing to help the workers. They obviously protect Tepco and its partners.”45 On 24 March 2011, for example, in order to install electrical cables inside Unit 3, a team of six contract workers was compelled to walk through highly radiated water (another team had refused to enter when they noted emission levels of 400 millisieverts).46 Soon afterwards, all of them were laid off. With the help of Watanabe, two of them filed an action against Kōei Densetsu, the company that hires for their employer, which is a subcontractor of Tepco. As a result of that kamikaze mission, they had accumulated doses of 20 and 80 millisieverts respectively; they asked the Tomioka Labour Bureau to certify that this was a radiation accident (hibaku jiko) according to the regulation. But the Bureau responded: “So far they have not gotten sick, so we cannot decide anything.”47 As many skilled workers – either locals or gypsies – who have been employed at F1 end up doing decontamination work, let us conclude with the testimony of Masato (pseudonym), a labour activist in his twenties who, before 3/11, was organizing day labourers in the yoseba of Kamagasaki (Osaka) and who subsequently worked as a decontamination worker in Fukushima to follow the day labourers there. When he is not employed on decontamination jobs, he offers help at a local union. To protect his identity and allow him to continue this activity, he asked me to give minimal details on his union affiliation.48 The organization of labour for decontamination work shares many similarities with the yoseba. The most obvious characteristic is that the medium age of the workers is around fifty, and there is almost no female labour. There are less visible aspects to the organization of labour: • In a process similar with F1, the construction companies have gotten the biggest share of public bids for the operations to be performed. At the bottom of the organization of labour, this

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potentially increases the power of yakuza for recruitment, but this grey economy is by definition not open to external observers; • Though the Ministry of the Environment only authorizes two levels of subcontracting, in practice, the levels of subcontracting are even more numerous than at F1 and other nuclear plants. Between his own employer and Shimizu Construction, the primary contractor, Masato has counted twenty-four levels; • Wage skimming is the norm, and many workers only get a tiny portion – if any – of the 10,000 yen hazard allowance; • The majority of workers receive no health insurance benefits from their employer and for a number of reasons do not register for the national health insurance system on an individual basis. The 2012 regulations of the Ministry of the Environment stipulate that below an air emission of 2.5 microsieverts per hour, the employer has no obligation to provide protection suits (like Tyvek) to the workers. This means that decontamination work should be decided on the basis of precise radiation mapping. But in the areas of Tomioka and Iwaki where he has been working, Masato has never seen a worker wearing a Tyvek suit. Following the 2012 regulations, the workers received only a surgical mask, a pair of cotton gloves, and a helmet. The core problem is that workers have no access to the radiation mapping made before they enter the zone. Another tricky point is that the team boss or foreman (one for five or ten workers on average) is the only one equipped with an alarm pocket dosimeter. At the end of the working day, the workers write down or input into a computer the doses recorded by the team boss (between 2 and 7 microsieverts a day), as if they were the specific doses that each of them had been exposed to. Each worker does wear a film badge dosimeter to record his own individual cumulative dose of air radiation, and it is changed every month. However, since the workers don’t have alarm dosimeters, they can’t avoid individual exposure to disseminated hot spots. On first entering the decontamination zone, then once every three months, they must go through a whole-body counter check for internal radiation. They are not, however, given a copy of these results, only informed that “everything is all right, you can keep working.” The organization of decontamination work has therefore many similarities with the structure of labour at Fukushima Daiichi and other nuclear plants before 3/11. As we have seen, a major obstacle to the application of labour laws to this population of workers is the hypocrisy of the state ministries and agencies that are supposed to control the employers.

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Another obstacle is the complete disinterest of the big union confederations like Rengō; its affiliated federation, Denryoku Sōren, only protects the interests of Tepco employees and other electric companies, while the federation Denki Rengō is concerned only with the employees of reactor and turbine makers like Tōshiba, Hitachi-GE, and IHI. This is why Rengō does not send any delegate to the negotiations with the ministries. Big unions are not interested in making efforts to improve the working conditions of a labour population that is by definition unstable; if the local subcontractors were an interesting target for unionization campaigns before 3/11, in any event, the nuclear gypsies and the post-3/11 temporary liquidators – either gypsies or locals turned evacuees – are a floating population which is not the priority of big unions. Since the mid-1980s, minority unions and labour NGOs have filled the gap, providing assistance also to the migrant populations of the industrial districts of big cities.49 The triple disaster of March 2011 has brought a new challenge to these minority unions; despite their limited resources, they have at least compelled the government to disclose information about the workers involved in the rescue operations of F1 and decontamination tasks. Some of these workers, mostly gypsies, even join these roundtables, thus finding allies and open available coalitions.50 Conclusion: Nuclear Gypsies and Mobile Home Capitalism This chapter has brought together fieldwork research conducted over ten years in Fukushima both before and after 3/11. Memory of the first period is fading, and during my first visit to Tomioka in 2002, I did not expect that one day I would have to look back into these notes to compare the before and after of such a disaster. In my sketchbook dated June 2002, I drew a light blue pastel representing a megawave taking over the reactors of F2. I was probably inspired in this sort of fear by Koshirō Ishimaru or another activist in Tokyo. The portraits of people sketched in this essay offer quite distinct life trajectories from one another, but they all share in common a form of displacement caused by nuclear plants. T.S. was a local nuclear plant technician. The events of March 2011 turned him into a cleanup worker, then a decontaminator. Satō and Wada followed a similar path, but they are not locals, and they were not nuclear workers before 3/11. Yabe was a nuclear gypsy and a highly skilled technician; perhaps he still is but I could not reach him after 3/11. Yokota was a local nuclear plant worker and employer who died before 3/11. Ishimaru Koshirō was for a long time a local anti-nuclear activist and still is, but he has lost his home in

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Tomioka. Masato was a non-local labour activist before 3/11 and he still is, but the disaster has pushed him to follow the liquidators in Fukushima and to share their work experience himself. In addition to Ishimaru and Masato, we could add another interesting pattern – former nuclear gypsies who became local anti-nuclear activists. One example comes from five fishermen of Iwaishima (a little island 160 kilometres south of Hiroshima), whom I visited in the spring of 2002.51 Yamato Takashi, the son of the leader of the fishermen’s union, who is now himself a leader of that community, arranged a dinner in the sole guesthouse of the island and its lovely harbour village. While sharing sashimi and shōchū, the men related to us their working experience at nuclear power plants. In the early 1980s, when the Chugoku Electric Power Company (CEPCO) planned to build a nuclear power plant a few miles away from Iwaishima, they went on the mainland as dekasegi to supplement their earnings. They got hired as temporary workers in the nuclear power plants of Shimane and Tsuruga, but they were so horrified by the working conditions that they soon went back to Iwaishima, where they transmitted to the village folk the grim reality of a nuclear power plant, and thus boosted an opposition movement that has succeeded until now in stopping CEPCO’s project. The most salient features of what I define as nuclear gypseity before or after 3/11 are as follows. Before the catastrophe, nuclear gypseity was then synonymous with precarious labour and life conditions, in other words a hoboism that was specific to the nuclear industry. We have seen, however, with the case of Yabe, that some highly skilled technicians were also compelled to a life of itinerancy. The triple disaster of March 2011 has dramatically transformed and expanded nuclear gypseity: because people have lost their homes and their relatively stable jobs, previous nuclear locals have become refugees in their own homeland; some of them have worked for a while as liquidators at F1, before they were laid off and compelled to take less skilled jobs such as decontaminators. If the initial hierarchy of titles and positions has been more or less maintained in the rescue and dismantlement process, the panic created by the event and the destruction of previous local business links have reinforced the power of criminal organizations. Thanks to its presence in the maintenance of nuclear plants before 3/11, the construction industry has been active in responding to the demands of Tepco and the supplier companies (Tōshiba, Hitachi-GE) for emergency workforces. Then, as the government decided to allocate financial resources for the

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decontamination of the contaminated territories, the construction industry has also invested in this new niche of the labour market. This process has brought into Fukushima prefecture thousands of hobos, while more than 100,000 displaced people (both forced and voluntary evacuees) within Fukushima prefecture and around 50,000 former inhabitants displaced in other prefectures have left.52 The exodus of residents and the labour migration of new categories of temporary nuclear workers, or zone workers as they were called in Chernobyl, are the most salient pattern of nuclear gypseity, and will remain so for the decades to come unless several Japanese nuclear plants resume operating. In January 2014, T.S. wrote to me: “The future is dark, but let us light the flame of justice.” The first time we met, T.S. confessed how he used to enjoy fishing in the pretty rivers around his hometown of Tomioka. As I remembered the riversides in Tomioka where I myself used to sketch, I said that I understood his feeling. Nevertheless he softly denied that. What he has lost in the disaster is not only his pride as a high-tech industry technician, but a sophisticated attachment to place which is difficult to communicate, that is, to share in common with those who have not been familiar with it for a long period.53 The initial miscommunication between locals and gypsies is further aggravated by the catastrophe. As with Chernobyl, Bhopal, Seveso, Minamata, and other massive industrial disasters, the damage should not only be examined through the reduced format of what is commensurable, but opened to a larger set of anthropological implications that are decisive to the commonalities of the polis.54 Gypseity implies vulnerability. Like transnational migrants in search of a better life (trying to escape from wars, environmental destruction, or chronic lack of resources), post-3/11 Japanese nuclear gypsies have confronted material vulnerability. Because of the constraints of the job at F1 or at the decontamination sites, their mode of living is solitary, far away from their family when they have one. This situation can lead to even greater vulnerability. Links of camaraderie among themselves can provide some temporary moral support but this will not last long precisely because of the precarious labour contracts. Contrary to the traditional gypsies in Europe, they do not travel in motorhomes with their loved ones, but stay in motels or guesthouses.55 At least before 3/11, nuclear gypsies could develop effective links with the locals, as I noticed between them and the owner of the Happy Guesthouse, and as narrated humorously by Horie, who enjoyed many contacts with the fishermen and farmers around Tsuruga (where several nuclear plants that provide electricity to the region of Kyoto and

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Osaka are concentrated). The testimony of Yoshikawa is also striking in this regard. Such interaction has become much more difficult now that locals have come to curse the nuclear industry. Thousands of inhabitants have been evacuated or have evacuated “voluntarily” (as it is termed officially when there is no official zoning), and many of them continue to live in barracks or “temporary” apartments, expecting an improbable all-clear sign to return to their previous homes when the level of radiation is reduced by the decontamination work. In most cases, this expectation is disappointed by the results: at best, the level of radiation is reduced by one third.56 Former nuclear locals like T.S. are now condemned to a similar situation and must bear in addition the feeling of guilt or the stigma that now sticks to those who used to work in the nuclear power plants. The interactions are tense between post-3/11 nuclear gypsies and the locals who remain around the zones (in cities like Iwaki, for example). The two populations do not share the solidarity links of an imagined community, but instead look at one another suspiciously.57 If those tendencies strengthen, then nuclear gypsies could face forms of stigmatization bearing similarities with anti-gypsy opinion and policies across Europe as studied by Vitale and Claps.58 If mobility linked to nuclear labour can be seen as a form of integration into a labour market niche, it nevertheless increases exposure to risk and bears heavy personal costs. In this sense the parallel with Roma and Sinti in Europe might also be appropriate. To conclude this chapter, I will summarize how the concept of gypseity contributes to the comprehension of risk-related migration. First, I will discuss its nuance with the concepts of nomadism and deterritorialization that were elaborated by Deleuze and Guattari, and have inspired numerous works in philosophy and the social sciences. Among them, the geographer Stuart Elden has stressed that deterritorialization is a dialectic process of de- and reterritorialization. Contrary to the visions of nomads as without territory, [in A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari] emphasize how nomads, too, follow “customary paths … from one point to another,” noting water, dwelling and assembly points. But these points are reached only in order to be left behind … This is in contrast to the migrant, “for the migrant goes principally from one point to another, even if the second point is uncertain, unforeseen or not well localized” … The nomad has a territory, but it is a territory in the process of making and remaking, one in which they are always changing, without a final resting point.59

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Before 3/11, the nuclear gypsies shared similarities with the nomads as described here: their territory was constantly being remade as they could not know for sure, from one year to another, which plants they would be assigned to for maintenance; so they moved from one plant to another, without a fixed destination or time frame, not knowing how long they would be on any one site. In addition, at the end of each year, they faced a major uncertainty: would their cumulated dose allow them to continue that job the next year? But they also accumulated an experience of the nuclear plants, of their technical specificity, and their local context. They territorialized and deterritorialized the nuclear map of Japan more than the locals who were attached to one or two plants. So pre-3/11 nuclear gypsies were a subcategory of Deleuzian nomads, while nuclear locals were sedentaries or temporary migrants going from one point to another at most. Since 3/11, however, due to a comparable radiation risk, such nomadism has been extended to the former locals of Fukushima and neighbouring prefectures; as the quasi-totality of Japanese nuclear plants have been stopped, the maintenance requires many fewer workers. As cleanup workers at F1, they are treated with even less consideration than before, when they were nomads with a specific working experience. While former (pre-3/11) nuclear gypsies are no longer Deleuzian nomads, the former nuclear locals have been transformed into disaster migrants: they have had to abandon their houses if located near F1 or F2 and move, for instance, to Iwaki (30 kilometres south of F2). Other former locals are now condemned to a life of itinerancy, moving from one place to another in search of a job like the less qualified of their former gypsy colleagues at F1 or F2. Drawing also upon Hardt and Negri’s Empire, as well as David Harvey’s The New Imperialism, Elden further argues that third-millennium capitalism faces expanding frontiers, complex regimes of differentiation and homogenization, deterritorialization and reterritorialization, so that the advanced capitalist state has become a web of connections, an “ou-topia” or “non-place,” a messy geography. And so are its enemies, like Al-Qaeda for instance, a “network of networks.”60 So while the boundaries of the nation-state are necessarily exceeded by the capitalist demand for bigger and better markets, the capitalist state needs to reterritorialize its assets so as to protect itself from the various threats generated by capitalism, such as the war on terror, or, we might add, a nuclear disaster. Contrary to electronics or chemicals, a nuclear power plant is a very sedentary technology: its

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output – electricity – needs to be produced not far from the places it will be consumed; it cannot be exported over vast territories, only its technological machinery can be. However, the by-products of a nuclear power plant, like the postdisaster radiation plume and the marine contamination, are monstrous forms of Deleuzian nomads; they are transnational, uncontrolled, and uncontrollable: they force the deterritorialization of the situation. Industrialized nation-states (be it the Soviet Union after April 1986, or Japan after 3/11) in turn purport to regulate the various flows of contamination with a pathetically inadequate system of zoning, in an attempt at reterritorialization. The nuclear gypsies of post-3/11 Japan are subjected to this process of de- and reterritorialization as they try to navigate their own geographies. But, so redefined, nuclear gypseity is one of the darkest avatars of Deleuzian nomadism. The geographer and erudite expert on Japan, Augustin Berque, in response to Nishida Kitarō’s notion of basho (a common translation would be “place,” or the “betweenness” between humans), opposed the geometric abstraction of Aristotelian topos, which is transposed by lines and points, to the notion of khôra, which is home to things and beings that are intimately connected, linked for a common destiny, a common evolution.61 In his analysis of the “new spirit of capitalism,” sociologist Luc Boltanski referred to Berque’s opposition between khôra and topos, adding that “capitalism is like a mobile-home,” that is, it goes with the winds of the maximum profit; it is transferable anywhere, showing absolutely no attachment to place.62 In contrast, as we have seen with the case of T.S., the local nuclear workers are attached to the places involved, while nuclear gypsies and their advocates have a sense of shared destiny. Together they have been risking their lives to save what could be saved at F1. Those involved in the decontamination tasks hope to save as much of the land as possible, even though hectares of land have been declared improper to inhabit for a century. Even if many doubt the sustainability of what they are doing, and even if they were not born there, working there has made them care about this land, to some extent at least. In a sense, they belong to where they sweat and put their health at risk. In addition, the gravity of their situation, its dangers and urgency, unites these disparate workers in a common mission. Addressing the problem of attachment to specific spaces in the case of major industrial disasters, Laura Centemeri, following on Laurent

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Thevenot’s sociology of engagement, shows that to deal with the multiple layers of environmental tragedies, we need to shift the emphasis from strict economic measurements to the incommensurability of the damage.63 So for post-3/11 Japan – and in every country with an operating nuclear industry or nuclear waste storage – a basic question is: will the forces of nuclear capitalism continue to move from place to place, leaving behind deserted lands, contaminated air, water, and food, and a devastated khôra? If it is true that Chernobyl accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union, some signs have emerged that 3/11 could mark the end of Japan’s postwar system (as framed by the Constitution of 1947, which the current cabinet of Shinzō Abe aims to revise).64 During the first weeks of the Fukushima nuclear crisis, Prime Minister Naoto Kan mentioned that it was the worst crisis Japan has faced since the end of World War II. In contrast with Tepco managers who have been vilified for their negligence, the nuclear gypsies presented in this essay have been celebrated for their sacrifice; they now struggle not to be discarded in the dustbin of history, like the Chernobyl liquidators before them. NOTES 1 It first appeared in a manga magazine in 2013, then was published separately as Takeda Kazuto, Ichi efu: Fukushima daiichi genshiryoku hatsudensho rodoki 1. 2 Jones, Loh, and Satō, “Narrating Fukushima.” 3 Horie, Genpatsu jipushī. The book was re-edited after 3/11, as was Higuchi’s and Kamata’s (infra). 4 Wallraff, Ganz unten. 5 Despite pressure from some industry heads, Japanese politicians have remained reticent about importing cheap labour from abroad, preferring to deregulate labour laws and welfare in times of hardship. 6 Kamata, Jidōsha zetsubō kōjō. 7 See Nimura, The Ashio Riot of 1907, 154–61; Thomann, Le salarié et l’entreprise dans le Japon contemporain, 173. 8 Anderson, The Hobo; Anderson, On Hobos and Homelessness; Weston, Traveling Light. 9 On the stigmatization of gypsy people in Europe, see Vitale and Claps, “Not Always the Same Old Story.”

304  Paul Jobin 10 Higuchi and Fujisawa, “Genpatsu hibaku no fuan, inga kankei o hajimete arasou Iwasa soshō”; Higuchi, “Genpatsu hibaku rōdōsha tachi no kurushimi no hibi”; Higuchi, Yami ni kesareru genpatsu hibakusha; Higuchi, Genpatsu hibaku retto; Higuchi, Genpatsu shashinshu 1973–1995. 11 The Chinese character for hibakusha (the victims of the bomb) and hibaku rōdōsha (nuclear workers exposed to radiation) is slightly different, but the spelling is the same (hibaku) and the connotation obvious. 12 See Amos, Embodying Difference; Cangia, Performing the Buraku. 13 Kamata, Nihon no genpatsu chitai. 14 Though it has some connections, in Japan the mobilization against nuclear power plants has been distinct from the anti-nuclear movement at large, that is, the peace movement against nuclear weapons. A critical reason was that in the mid-1950s, many survivors of the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had come to adhere to the propaganda of “Atoms for Peace.” See Tetsuo Arima, Genpatsu to genbaku; Yoshimi, Yume no genshiryoku; Zwigenberg, “The Coming of a Second Sun.” 15 Arima, Genpatsu to genbaku. 16 A criticality accident is an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction. 17 Thébaud-Mony, Nuclear Servitude; Kristin Shrader-Frechette, “Workplace Pollution: Nuclear Safety, Ethics, and the Exploitation-Avoidance Argument,” Risk: Health, Safety and Environment 12 (2001): 311–34. 18 See also the case of uranium mine workers: Gabrielle Hecht, Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012). 19 Annie Thébaud-Mony et al., Salariés des entreprises extérieures intervenant dans les installations nucléaires de base; Pozzo di Borgo, Arrêt de tranche. 20 Halleux, RAS nucléaire rien à signaler; Filhol, La centrale; Hecht, The Radiance of France. 21 The official evacuation zone is divided into three different areas. In the first area, closest to F1, radiation levels are so high that the 24,700 residents have been definitely evacuated. In the second area, as the contamination remains high, there is no immediate plan to lift the ban on living there, but the government is hoping that, after decontamination work, 23,300 people will be allowed home in years to come. In the third area, supposedly the least contaminated section, the Japanese government aims to have 32,900 people return. 22 Asanuma-Brice, “Beyond Reality.” 23 Petryna, Life Exposed; Olga Kuchinskaya, “We Will Die and Become Science.” 24 Jobin, “Fukushima One Year On.” 25 Marie Augendre and Kurumi Sugita, Déplacés et indécis laissés à eux-mêmes après l’accident nucléaire, Rapport d’étape du programme NEEDS-CNRS, 2013 (Lyon: NEEDS-CNRS, 2013).

“Nuclear Gypsies” in Fukushima  305 26 On the ethical and epistemic problems related to the survey of anti-gypsy feelings in Europe, see Vitale and Claps, “Not Always the Same Old Story.” 27 This tendency would be confirmed for the next period: officially, from 2003 to 2009, only 23 workers were exposed to over 20 mSv a year; since 3/11 this number has surpassed 5,000. 28 For example, Fukushima Daiichi, Fukushima Daini, and Onagawa near Sendai. 29 The figures disclosed by TEPCO in October 2013 were as follows: in 2011, a total of 3,278 regular workers and 17,710 contract workers were exposed to doses ranging between 1 and 100 mSv, while 149 regular workers and 24 contract workers were exposed to doses over 100 mSv (maximum doses were respectively 678 and 238 mSv). In 2012, 1,622 regular and 12,117 contract workers were exposed to doses ranging between 1 and 50 mSv (one regular worker was exposed to a maximum of 54 mSv). In 2013, 1,372 regular workers and 8,640 contract workers were exposed to doses between 1 and 45 mSv; among them, 629 contract workers were exposed to doses over 20 mSv. (CNIC Newsletter no. 475, 1 January 2014: 18; no 486: 13). 30 Jobin, “Dying for TEPCO?”; Jobin, “Back to Fukushima”; Yūji, “Tōden wa rōdōsha o tsukai suteru no ka.” 31 Suzuki, Yakuza to genpatsu. 32 Itō and Yosuke, “Yakuza Labor”; Slodkowski and Saito, “Nuclear Workers”; Saito and Slodkowski, “Special Report.” 33 Petryna, Life Exposed, 30. 34 For a comparison with the different tasks conducted in Chernobyl, see Petryna, Life Exposed, and Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl. 35 Interview with Fujiko Satō (Iwaki, 19 June 2011). Mrs Satō initiated the Protect Iwaki Children Network (Iwaki no kodomo o mamoru nettowāku). 36 Takahashi, Gisei no shisetumu. 37 In English, see Takuro Negishi, “Former TEPCO Employee Seeks Donations for Downtrodden Fukushima Workers,” The Asahi Shimbun, 29 December 2013; Yuri Kageyama, “Stigma versus Green Allure: Nuke Professionals at Japan’s Fukushima Utility Quit in Droves,” Associated Press, 9 July 2014. 38 Jobin, “3/11.” 39 The newspaper Akahata has had several interviews with Watanabe and published a well-informed booklet on the issue with the photographer Higuchi (mentioned supra); Higuchi, Saitō, and Watanabe, Saisentan gijutsu no waku o tsukushita genpatsu’ o sasaeru rōdō. 40 See also Knight, “Insight.” 41 They presented their testimony at the end of a bus tour to Tomioka organized by Hibaku rōdō kangaeru kai, an NGO created after 3/11 to address the issue of the workers exposed to radiation.

306  Paul Jobin 4 2 Interview with Suzuki Tatsujirō​at his office in Tokyo, 2 July 2013. 43 TEPCO, Tōkyō denryoku Fukushima daiichi genshi ryoku hatsuden sho, 69. I am indebted to Suzuki Tatsujirō who brought this report to my attention. 44 On these negotiations, see Jobin, “The Roadmap for Fukushima Daiichi.” 45 Interview with Hiroyuki Watanabe (Iwaki, 27 June 2013). 46 For more details on that accident, see the newspaper Akahata, 26 October 2012. 47 Interview with Hiroyuki Watanabe (Iwaki, 27 June 2013). 48 The interviews were conducted in Iwaki in June 2013 and July 2014. 49 See Jobin, Maladies industrielles et renouveau syndical au Japon, 327–450. 50 Jobin, “The Roadmap for Fukushima Daiichi.” 51 See Jobin, “The Postwar for Labour Unionism.” 52 According to the National Evacuee Information System, administered by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, in 2014 there were 65,000 “trans-prefectural” evacuees, which consist of about 52,000 from Fukushima, 8,000 from Miyagi, and 1,600 from Iwate prefectures. See also Asanuma-Brice, “Beyond Reality.” 53 Thévenot, “At-testing, Pro-testing, Con-testing.” 54 Centemeri, “Reframing Problems of Incommensurability.” On Bhopal, see Fortun, Advocacy after Bhopal. And on Minamata, see Jobin, Maladies industrielles, and Jobin, “Beyond Uncertainty.” 55 French nuclear gypsies also spend a great deal of their time in motorhomes, but most of them without their families. 56 See, for example, the long post “Decon or Con? How Is Remediation Being Managed, and How Effective Is It?” blog.safecast.org (17 August 2013), http://blog.safecast.org/2013/08/decon-or-con-how-is-remediationbeing-managed-and-how-effective-is-it/. 57 Examples of such tensions include reports or rumours of sexual aggression committed by nuclear workers. 58 Vitale and Claps, “Not Always the Same Old Story.” 59 Elden, “The State of Territory under Globalization”; Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. 60 Hardt and Negri, Empire; Harvey, The New Imperialism. 61 Berque, Écoumène. 62 Luc Boltanski, Seminar at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris, 2004). 63 Centemeri, “Reframing Problems of Incommensurability.” See also Centemeri, “What Kind of Knowledge Is Needed?” 64 For a nuanced discussion on Chernobyl and the collapse of Soviet Union, see Schmid, “Transformation Discourse.” For a discussion of similar scenarios in the case of post-3/11 Japan, see Shirai, Eizoku haisen ron.

“Nuclear Gypsies” in Fukushima  307 REFERENCES Alexievich, Svetlana. Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster. Moscow: Ostojié, 2005 [1997]. Amos, Timothy. Embodying Difference: The Making of Burakumin in Modern Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011. Anderson, Nels. The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1923. –  On Hobos and Homelessness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Arima, Tetsuo. Genpatsu to genbaku: Nichi Bei Ei kaku buso no antō [Nuclear Power Plants and the Atomic Bomb: Japan, U.S. and U.K. Secret Strife on Nuclear Armament]. Tokyo: Bungei shunjū, 2012. Asanuma-Brice, Cécile. “Beyond Reality – or – An Illusory Ideal: Pro-nuclear Japan’s Management of Migratory Flows in a Nuclear Catastrophe.” AsiaPacific Journal 12, no. 47 (16 November 2014). http://apjjf.org/2014/12/47/ Cécile-Asanuma-Brice/4221.html. Augendre, Marie, and Kurumi Sugita. Déplacés et indécis laissés à eux-mêmes après l’accident nucléaire. Rapport d’étape du programme NEEDS-CNRS, 2013. Lyon: NEEDS-CNRS, 2013. Berque, Augustin. Écoumène: Introduction à l’étude des milieux humains. Paris: Belin, 2000. Cangia, Flavia. Performing the Buraku: Narratives on Culture and Everyday Life in Contemporary Japan. Berlin/London: LIT Verlag, 2013. Centemeri, Laura. “Reframing Problems of Incommensurability in Environmental Conflicts through Pragmatic Sociology: From Value Pluralism to the Plurality of Modes of Engagement with the Environment.” Environmental Values 24, no. 3 (2015): 229–320. –  “The Seveso Disaster’s Legacy.” In Nature and History in Modern Italy, edited by M. Armiero and M. Hall, 251–73. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press & Swallow Press, 2010. –  “What Kind of Knowledge Is Needed about Toxicant-Related Health Issues? Some Lessons Drawn from the Seveso Dioxin Case.” In Powerless Science? Science and Politics in a Toxic World, edited by Soraya Boudia and Nathalie Jas, 134–51. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, 2014. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Athlone, 1988 [1980]. Elden, Stuart. “The State of Territory under Globalization: Empire and the Politics of Reterritorialization.” Thamyris/Intersecting 12 (2006): 47–66. Filhol, Elisabeth. La centrale [The Plant]. Paris: P.O.L. 2010. Fortun, Kim. Advocacy after Bhopal: Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

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“Nuclear Gypsies” in Fukushima  309 –  “Beyond Uncertainty: Industrial Hazards and Class Actions in Taiwan & Japan.” In Environmental History in East Asia: Interdisciplinary perspectives, edited by Ts’ui-jung Liu, 339–82. London & New York: Routledge, 2013. –  “Dying for TEPCO? Fukushima Nuclear Contract Workers.” The AsiaPacific Journal 9, no. 18 (2 May 2011). http://apjjf.org/2011/9/18/PaulJobin/3523/article.html. –  “Fukushima One Year On: Nuclear Workers and Citizens at Risk.” The Asia-Pacific Journal 9, no. 18 (2 May 2011). http://apjjf.org/2012/9/18/PaulJobin/3729/article.html. –  Maladies industrielles et renouveau syndical au Japon. Paris: EHESS, 2006. –  “The Postwar for Labour Unionism and Movements against Industrial Pollution.” In Japan’s Postwar, edited by Michael Lucken, Anne BayardSakai, and Emmanuel Lozerand, 268–82. London: Routledge, 2011. (Original French edition: Arles: Philippe Picquier, 2007). –  “Radiation Protection after the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster 3/11.” Journal of Ohara Institute for Social Research 658, no. 8 (2013): 14–30 (In Japanese). –  “The Roadmap for Fukushima Daiichi and the Sacrifice of Japan’s CleanUp Workers.” The Asia-Pacific Journal 11, no. 28 (15 July 2013). http://apjjf. org/2013/11/28/Paul-Jobin/3967/article.html. Jones, Christopher F., Shih-Lin Loh, and Kyoko Satō. “Narrating Fukushima: Scales of a Nuclear Meltdown.” East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 7, no. 4 (2013): 601–23. Kamata, Satoshi. Genpatsu retto o iku [Travelling in the Nuclear Plant Archipelago]. Tokyo: Shueisha, 2001. –  Jidōsha zetsubō kōjō [The Car Factory of Despair]. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1973. –  Nihon no genpatsu chitai [Japan Nuclear Plant Zone]. Tokyo: Shio, 1982. Kazuto, Takeda [pseud.]. Ichi efu: Fukushima daiichi genshiryoku hatsudensho rodoki 1 [A Labour Report from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant]. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2014. Knight, Sophie. “Insight: Japan’s Nuclear Clean-Up: Costly, Complex and at Risk of Failing.” Reuters, 14 August 2013. http://www.reuters.com/article/ us-japan-decontamination-insight-idUSBRE97D19F20130814. Kuchinskaya, Olga. “We Will Die and Become Science: The Production of Invisibility and Public Knowledge about Chernobyl Radiation Effects in Belarus.” PhD Dissertation. San Diego: University of California, 2007. Nimura, Kazuo. The Ashio Riot of 1907: A Social History of Mining in Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997. Petryna, Adriana. Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013 [2002].

310  Paul Jobin Pozzo di Borgo, Catherine. Arrêt de tranche: les trimardeurs du nucléaire. DVD. Paris: Beka films / L’Harmattan, 1996. Saito, Mari, and Antoni Slodkowski. “Special Report: Japan’s Homeless Recruited for Murky Fukushima Clean-Up.” Reuters, 30 December 2013. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-fukushima-workersidUSBRE9BT00520131230. Schmid, Sonja D. “Transformation Discourse: Nuclear Risk as a Strategic Tool in Late Soviet Politics of Expertise.” Science, Technology & Human Values 29, no. 3 (2004): 353–76. Shirai Satoshi. Eizoku haisen ron: sengo Nihon no kakushin [The Eternal Defeat: The Reform of Postwar Japan]. Tokyo: Oda shuppan, 2013. Shrader-Frechette, Kristin. “Workplace Pollution: Nuclear Safety, Ethics, and the Exploitation-Avoidance Argument.” Risk: Health, Safety and Environment 12 (2001): 311–34. Slodkowski, Antoni, and Mari Saito. “Nuclear Workers: Down and Out in Fukushima.” Reuters, 25 October 2013. http://graphics.thomsonreuters. com/13/10/FUKUSHIMA.pdf. Suzuki, Tomohiko. Yakuza to genpatsu: Fukushima daiichi sen’nyūki [Yakuza and Nuclear Power Plants: Report of an Infiltration]. Tokyo, Bungeishunjū, 2011. Takahashi, Tetsuya. Gisei no shisetumu: Fukushima, Okinawa [A System of Sacrifice: Fukushima, Okinawa]. Tokyo: Shueisha, 2012. TEPCO. Tōkyō denryoku Fukushima daiichi genshi ryoku hatsuden sho: chūchōki rōdo mappu Tōkyōdenryoku (kabu) Fukushima daiichigenshiryoku hatsudensho 1 ~ 4-gōki no haishi sochi nado ni muketa chūchōki rōdomappu [Medium-and Long-Term Roadmap for the Decommissioning etc. of Units 1–4: Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station]. 27 June 2013. Thébaud-Mony, Annie. Nuclear Servitude: Subcontracting and Health in the French Civil Nuclear Industry. New York: Baywood, 2011 [2000]. Thébaud-Mony, Annie, Claire Rondeau du Noyer, Dominique Huez, et al. Salariés des entreprises extérieures intervenant dans les installations nucléaires de base. Enquête sur leur suivi medico-réglementaire. Document pour les médecins du travail, no. 51. Paris: INRS, 1992. Thévenot, Laurent. “At-Testing, Pro-Testing, Con-Testing: New Perspective on Politics, Oppression and Critique Raised by Environmental Concern.” Proceedings of the Conference “To Engage or Disobey?” Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, 12 October 2012. Forthcoming publication in Historical Social Research, Special issue on Conventions and Law. Thomann, Bernard. Le salarié et l’entreprise dans le Japon contemporain. Paris: Les Indes savants, 2008.

“Nuclear Gypsies” in Fukushima  311 Yoshimi, Shun’ya. Yume no genshiryoku [Atoms for Dream]. Tokyo: Chikuma, 2012. Yūji, Fuse. “Tōden wa rōdōsha o tsukai suteru no ka” [Is TEPCO Treating Workers as Disposable?]. Sekai 2 (2012): 101–11. Vitale, Tommaso, and Enrico Claps. “Not Always the Same Old Story: Spatial Segregation and Feelings of Dislike against Roma and Sinti in Large Cities and Medium-size Towns in Italy.” In Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to Romany Studies, edited by Michael Stewart and Márton Rövid, 228–53. Budapest: CEU Press, 2010. Wallraff, Günter. Ganz unten [Lowest of the Low]. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1985. Weston, Kath. Traveling Light: On the Road with America’s Poor. Boston: Beacon Press, 2009. Zwigenberg, Ran. “‘The Coming of a Second Sun’: The 1956 Atoms for Peace Exhibit in Hiroshima and Japan’s Embrace of Nuclear Power.” Asia-Pacific Journal 10, no. 6 (6 February 2012). http://apjjf.org/-RanZwigenberg/3685/article.pdf.

Contributors

Susanne Bauer is an associate professor of science and technology studies at TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo. David Elijah Bell is an assistant professor of anthropology at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York. Marissa Zappora Bell is a doctoral student in the Department of Geography, SUNY University in Buffalo, New York. James W. Feldman is an associate professor of environmental studies and history at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, and director of the Environmental Studies Program. Michael Greenberg is a professor and associate dean of the faculty at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University in New Jersey. Paul Jobin is currently associate researcher at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica in Taiwan. Karena Kalmbach is a postdoctoral researcher with the Environmental Policy Research Centre, Freie Universität Berlin. Tatiana Kasperski is a postdoctoral researcher at Centre AlexandreKoyré for History of Science and Technology in Paris.

Contributors 313

David Kosson is the principal investigator, Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP), and a professor of engineering at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Laurel Sefton MacDowell is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Toronto. Henry Mayer is the executive director of the Environmental Analysis and Communications Group at the E.J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University. Davide Orsini is a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech University. Charles W. Powers is the co-principal investigator, Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP), and a professor of engineering at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Andrew Ramey is an environmental historian with a doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he has taught courses on the US environmental movement, twentieth century US history, and world history. Tuomas Räsänen is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Turku, Finland. Fred Waage is a professor of literature and language at East Tennessee State University.