H2020Индивидуална стипендия2021–2023

NUCLEARDECOM · Half-lives/Afterlives: Labor, Technology, Nature, and the Nuclear Decommissioning Business

„Хоризонт 2020“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2021-10-01 → 2023-11-30
Финансиране от ЕС: 162 806 €
Участници: 1
Схема: MSCA-IF

Линиите свързват координатора с партньорите.

Накратко на български

Ядреното извеждане от експлоатация изследва историята и социалните последици от затварянето на стари атомни централи. Това е важно, за да се включат местните общности в дискусиите за влиянието на тези процеси върху обществото и околната среда.

Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

Half-lives/Afterlives: Labor, Technology, Nature, and the Nuclear Decommissioning Business

Half-Lives/Afterlives: Labor, Technology, Nature, and the Nuclear Decommissioning Business (NUCLEARDECOM thereafter) started from an apparently simple question: what happens to nuclear power plants and facilities after they become obsolete and cease operating? According to the World Nuclear Association, more than two hundred nuclear facilities have been retired globally, while the IAEA estimates that of the four hundred and twenty-three active reactors today, around a half will be shut down by 2050. Moving its first steps as an ill-defined field of applied engineering, since the 1970s nuclear decommissioning (the safe maintenance and disposal of obsolete nuclear facilities) has become an integral and fast developing interdisciplinary subfield within the nuclear industry, and across regulatory agencies. Despite the magnitude of the problem, debates about decommissioning nuclear facilities have been almost exclusively shaped by experts and policymakers. A few historical accounts of nuclear decommissioning exist, but they are often written by experts who describe the development of the field as a progression of technical achievements and lessons learned, paying only marginal attention to other controversial aspects, such as the socioecological implications of decommissioning projects. NUCLEARDECOM's first objective is to document and analyze the history of nuclear decommissioning and the socioecological dimensions of past and present nuclear decommissioning projects to stimulate larger public debates that include the perspectives of affected communities and consider the implications for society and the environment more broadly. The project has focused on three specific research objectives: 1) Reconstructing the history of nuclear decommissioning sociotechnical and political debates from the 1970s to the present; 2) Mapping out the emergence of global decommissioning markets and expertise; 3) Conducting fieldwork at nuclear decommissioning sites to understand the impact of decommissioning projects on local communities and the environment.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

Nuclear decommissioning is the final part in the life of nuclear power plants (NPPs) after they permanently cease to operate. Decommissioning strategies, including the management of hazardous materials, largely depend on NPPs reactor technology, operating history, and ecological context and therefore require long-term and site-specific projects, whose complexity far exceeds the commonly debated problem of waste disposal. Treated as a marginal issue until the mid-1970s, nuclear decommissioning became a crucial expert sub-field when first generation NPPs permanently shut down. Since then, it has expanded globally and is destined to grow further as countries like Italy (1991) and Germany (2011) decided to phase out nuclear energy production. While social studies of science and technology have abundantly analyzed the controversies caused by high-level waste disposal and the siting of deep geological repositories, they have substantially ignored other critical aspects of decommissioning, such as the formation of a global market of decommissioning services, workers safety and training, costs, expert knowledge management, and the fate of nuclear sites after decommissioning. Another limit of these studies is that they have examined the social implications of decommissioning disjointly from its technical dimensions, which remain exclusive technical expert territory. To overcome the above limitations, this research tackles the unexplored problems of nuclear decommissioning—beyond waste disposal—through a comparative study of decommissioning projects in Italy and in Germany. It adopts a Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspective to examine the social, technological, and ecological dimensions of nuclear decommissioning in tandem. In the pursuit of this research plan, I am seeking to establish and advance my academic career in Europe and to integrate my professional skills in view of consulting opportunities for regulatory agencies and affected local communities.

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

Участници

LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITAET MUENCHEN · PlaneggКоординаторГермания