History of Nuclear Power Research Papers (original) (raw)

Straddling the genres of travelogue and critical essay, As We Used to Float explores Bikini Atoll as a space of fantasy and trauma. Situated in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean, between 1946 and 1958 its ‘paradise’ islands were subjected to twenty-three of the most powerful explosions in history—during Operation Crossroads, the U.S. nuclear testing program. Since then, their fate has been largely ignored. While toggling between a personal account of a sea journey, above and below water, and a critical investigation of postcolonial geography, As We Used to Float develops broader reflections on place and subjectivity. These spring from a series of narrative immersions, variously, taking on the psychological and aesthetic parameters of ultra-deep scuba diving, the abject poetics of sea craft, and the stakes of subaquatic image-making. Through its vivid account of concrete bunkers on white sand beaches, the decaying "Ghost Fleet" of World War II battleships, irradiated coconuts, and more, As We Used to Float is a sea-story for our times.

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- Pacific Island Studies, Post-Colonialism, History of Nuclear Weapons, Micronesian Cultures

Nükleer enerji neticede politik bir tercihtir ve asıl tartışma siyasi bir tartışmadır. Ayrıca nükleer felaketlerin yarattığı büyük insani trajediler nedeniyle, tartışma ahlaki ve vicdani bir çerçevede de yürür. Ama yine de konuyu meselenin teknik yanlarından ve ekonomisinden tamamen ayırarak tartışma imkânı pek yoktur. Bu nedenle nükleer enerjiyle ilgili sağlıklı, bilimsel verilere dayalı ve ayrıntılı bilgi sağlayan kaynaklar çok önemlidir.
Avustralya doğumlu olan ve halen ABD’de yaşayan yazar ve aktivist Helen Caldicott’un kitabı bu yönüyle önemlidir. ABD’nin en saygın nükleer karşıtı aktivistlerinden biri olan Helen Caldicott, çocuk sağlığı ve hastalıkları uzmanı bir hekim olarak konunun başta sağlık boyutu olmak üzere bütün alanlarında kendini yetiştirmiş çok yetkin bir isim. 1985’te Nobel ödülü almış olan Uluslararası Nükleere Karşı Hekimler Birliği’nin 1978’de kurulan ABD örgütü Sosyal Sorumluluk Sahibi Hekimler’in ve Nükleer Politikalar Araştırma Enstitüsü’nün kurucu başkanı olan, 1979’da ABD’de meydana gelen Three Mile Island nükleer kazasının ardından bölgede incelemeler yapan, ağırlıklı olarak ABD ve Avustralya’yı ve dünyanın başka yerlerini (Türkiye dahil) dolaşarak konuşmalar yapıp yazılar yazarak nükleer enerjinin tehlikelerine karşı kamuoyunu uyarmaya çalışan Caldicott’un yaptığı tartışmalar Türkiye için önemli argümanlar sunuyor.
Nükleer enerjinin bütün yönlerini çok sayıda kaynağa dayanarak inceleyen ve hem Three Mile Island, hem de Çernobil kazalarını detaylı olarak anlatan kitap, tabii ki 2011’de meydana gelen Fukushima nükleer kazasını ele alamıyor. Öte yandan rakamların sürekli değiştiği (daha doğrusu nükleer reaktör sayısının ve enerji üretimindeki payının sürekli düştüğü), nükleer enerjinin mevcut durumuyla ilgili bilgilerin, hızla büyüyen yenilenebilir enerjiyle ilgili rakamların ve nükleer silahlanmayla ilgili bazı gelişmelerin güncellenmesi gerekiyor.
Bu nedenle kitabı çevirmekle yetinmeyerek eskimiş veya tartışmalı görülen bilgileri editör notlarıyla güncelleme yolunu seçtik. Ayrıca Caldicott’un büyük bir öngörüyle Fukushima felaketinden 5 yıl önce tahmin ettiği deprem ve tsunami tehlikesinin ve kullanılmış atık havuzu felaketinin Fukushima’da nasıl gerçek hale geldiğini de yine notlarımızda hatırlatmaya çalıştık.
Ülkemizde neredeyse kırk yılı bulan santral kuracağız – kurdurmayacağız mücadelesine, Caldicott’un elinizdeki kitabının ışık tutacağını ve ufuk açacağını düşünüyoruz.

- by Yeni İnsan Yayınevi
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- Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Energy, Enerji, History of Nuclear Power

Abstract: In a government search for uranium in 1944–1946, uneconomic deposits of radioactive minerals were found concentrated in dredge tailings on the West Coast. In 1954 a new search was initiated, leading to the 1955 discovery of uranium in the Buller Gorge. In the 25-year investigation programme that followed, prospectors were assisted by staff from the Mines Department and the Geological Survey and were funded by grants from the New Zealand and UK governments. The prospecting continued unchallenged by the media or peace or environmental movements until 1979 when it ended for economic rather than philosophical reasons.

- by Robert Lifset
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- American History, Energy history, Nuclear power, History of Nuclear Power

Birds and aircraft have a fundamental problem: their range and endurance are limited. To remain aloft requires the expenditure of energy. Eventually, birds must land and rest, and aircraft must refuel. The invention of nuclear power in the 1940s appeared to offer a way to cut this Gordian knot. A nuclear-powered aircraft could, it seemed, provide dramatically improved range and endurance compared to chemically fuelled powered aircraft.

- by Peter Layton
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- Aerospace Engineering, Military Science, Nuclear Weapons, Aircraft Design
- by Tapio Litmanen
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- Energy Policy, Nuclear power, History of Nuclear Power

This paper discusses the increasing role of nuclear history in public history, the reasons for this development, the challenges and changes this involves.

- by Jan-Henrik Meyer and +1
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- Public Administration, Twentieth Century Germany, History of Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Wastes Management

Nuclear power has been a constant subject of intense enquiry and misinformation. This paper explores two main tenets of this enquire, reactor safety & waste disposal, and how contribution to reducing these factors compare to the overall benefit of lowering CO2 emissions. There is both key analysis of the current and future reactor technology as well as an assessment of the true dangers of nuclear waste, and it is the finding of this paper that the potential hazards and risks by use of increased nuclear power are far outweighed by the benefits.

- by Jack Alexandrovics
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- Nuclear Physics, Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Climate Change Adaptation

Based on a retrospective study of the French Fast-breeder Reactor (FBR) programme, this paper aims to show the dynamics of FBR demonstrator evaluation, with methodological inputs from the “Science and Technology Studies” branch of sociology. Such a reactor has to demonstrate the feasibility - including safety, technical and economic viability - of a promising technology regarded as a potentially inexhaustible energy source for the future. Until the mid-seventies, the need for an FBR fleet was regarded as urgent, entailing a focus on demonstration reactors to prove “technical” feasibility. But after the mid-seventies, the purpose of evaluating FBR projects was to prove the technical and economic viability of the programme, as well as its safety. The analysis of the Superphénix case is used to illustrate the difficulty of reconciling the three elements of assessment in a changing context, where the respective weights of the various criteria evolve in a dynamic fashion: it calls for an examination of the implicit specifications of demonstrators.

- by Yelena Popova
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- History of Nuclear Power, Culture and the Anthropocene

At the beginning of the industrial atomic age, launched by President Dwight Eisenhower's speech on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy (“Atoms for Peace”, addressed to the United Nations General Assembly, New York, 8 December 1953), and after the birth of the first atomic agencies in France (Commissariat a l'Énergie Atomique, 1945) and the United States (the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1946), the Comitato Nazionale per le Ricerche Nucleari (National Committee for Nuclear Research–CNRN) was also established in Italy (1952). The new institution, in 1960 became a self-governing organization with a modified name, Comitato Nazionale per l'Energia Nucleare (National Committee for Nuclear Energy–CNEN). Its mission was to promote and develop Italian research in nuclear science and technology. Mining and mineral exploration were among the early activities that the National Committee undertook beginning in 1954, when the Divisione Geomineraria (Geology and Mining Division) was established. A regional-scale geochemical and geophysical prospecting survey for U-Th bearing ores involved different Italian regions both in northern and in southern Italy. Geological surveys, for instance, were systematically carried out in the Alps beginning in 1954. They were run by three main teams of geologists. The paper aims to analyze the key factors that contributed to fostering the emergence of a new field of research about uranium and nuclear geology in Italy during the years immediately after WWII.

Nuclear and Energy from the perspective of Social Sciences and Humanities
within the project:
Building a platform for enhanced societal research related to nuclear
energy in Central and Eastern Europe
(PLATENSO, Fission-2013-6.0.1)
April 7th, 2016
Collegium Civitas, Warsaw
Programme
Through a series of seminar talks and a group discussion, the workshop aims to present some examples of nuclear and energy research in social sciences and humanities. The idea is to organize a research network mostly within New Member States countries and share analysis and results, integrating as well international researchers and also different fields and disciplines addressing nuclear and society.

- by HoNESt History of Nuclear Energy and Society and +1
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- Social Sciences, Environmental History, Energy and Environment, Environmental Sustainability

Journal of Modern History
Vol. 88 No. 4 (2016) pp 995-7

- by Sean F Johnston
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- Nuclear Engineering, History, History of Science and Technology, Soviet History
- by Jan-Friedrich Missfelder and +3
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- Modern History, Perception, Art History, Media Studies

The nuclear engineer emerged as a new form of recognised technical professional between 1940 and the early 1960s as nuclear fission, the chain reaction and their applications were explored. The institutionalization of nuclear engineering channelled into new national laboratories and corporate design offices during the decade after the war, and hurried into academic venues thereafter proved unusually dependent on government definition and support. This paper contrasts the distinct histories of the new discipline in the USA and UK (and, more briefly, Canada). In the segregated and influential environments of institutional laboratories and factories, historical actors such as physicist Walter Zinn in the USA and industrial chemist Christopher Hinton in the UK proved influential in shaping the roles and perceptions of nuclear specialists. More broadly, I argue that the State-managed implantation of the new subject within further and higher education curricula was shaped strongly by distinct political and economic contexts in which secrecy, postwar prestige and differing industrial cultures were decisive factors.

In late 2011 The Japanese Diet ratified four civil nuclear cooperation treaties, with Vietnam, Russia, Korea, and Jordan, adding them to the seven already in place with other countries, including China. The move was significant not only because of
the identity of the four nations concerned, but because it took place less than one year after the Fukushima nuclear incident, with a “cold shutdown” just announced and Japan still struggling to decide the fate of its nuclear industry. On the other and, Japan and India still have not managed to reach a nuclear civil cooperation agreement, which would be the last nail in the coffin of the 'Nuclear Apartheid' so bitterly denounced for years by Indian observers.

- by Alex Calvo
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- Japanese Studies, Energy Economics, International Relations, Energy

Tschernobyl – Wendepunkt
oder Katalysator?
Umweltpolitische Praxen, Strukturen,
Wahrnehmungen im Wandel
(1970er – 1990er Jahre)
Am 26. April 1986 kam es im Atomkraftwerk Tschernobyl zu
einem Super-GAU. In der Folgezeit wurden die Risiken der Atomenergie
breit diskutiert, bekam die Anti-Atom-Bewegung enormen
Zulauf, mussten sich die AKW-Betreiber viele Fragen und neue
Regelungen gefallen lassen.
In der Bundesrepublik reagierte die Regierung auf die Katastrophe
in der Sowjetunion. Sie richtete ein eigenständiges Umweltministerium
ein, das erstmals die Kompetenzen für Umwelt, Naturschutz
und Reaktorsicherheit bündelte.
Die Konferenz zielt darauf ab, Tschernobyl in den Kontext der
Umweltpolitik einzubetten, die sich seit den 1970er Jahren entwickelte.
Die Beiträge nehmen verschiedene Akteure in den Blick,
die diese Politik maßgeblich gestaltet haben: die Zivilgesellschaft,
die Umweltverbände, die Wirtschaft, die Medien.
Stellt das Reaktorunglück einen Wendepunkt in der Geschichte der
Umweltpolitik dar mit gravierenden Einschnitten? Oder beschleunigte
die Katastrophe nur vorhandene und absehbare Entwicklungen?
Rückte der Unfall umweltpolitische Ziele verstärkt in den Vordergrund
der politischen Debatte? Stärkte dies die Umweltpolitik
wirklich nachhaltig? Veränderten sich die Wahrnehmungen von
Umweltproblemen, politischer Mobilisierung, politischem Handeln
und politischen Strukturen? Welche Rückwirkungen hatte die
Reaktorkatastrophe auf die westdeutsche Parteienlandschaft,
insbesondere auf die SPD und die Grünen?
Welche marktkonformen Lösungen diskutierten Politik und Wirtschaft,
wie kamen nach 1986 die ökologische Modernisierung und
die Energiewende voran? Welchen Anteil daran hatte die Explosion
im ukrainischen Reaktor wirklich? Die Wirkung von Tschernobyl
war grenzüberschreitend. Mit Beiträgen aus westeuropäischen
Ländern (Schweden, Italien. Frankreich, Großbritannien, Belgien)
und einem besonderen Schwerpunkt auf die Entwicklung in den
ehemaligen Ostblockländern (die ehemalige Sowjetunion, Ukraine,
DDR, Polen Litauen, Rumänien und Bulgarien) öffnet die Konferenz
die Perspektive auf die transnationale Wirkungsgeschichte von
Tschernobyl.

- by Jan-Henrik Meyer and +2
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- Social Movements, Environmental policy, Environmental History, Political History

Russia is building Turkey's very first nuclear power plant, after Turkey's unrelenting 40-year quest, and with a history of nuclear weapons, radioactive fallout and waste on its territory, as well as a 40-year old anti-nuclear movement. Nuclear alla Turca is a feature length documentary film-in-development about the sometimes unsettling, sometimes tragicomical, and most of the time absurd history of the “nuclear” in Turkey. (For more info: http://nuclearallaturca.com/)

- by Robert Bud and +1
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- History of Nuclear Power

Despite economic debacles, recurring “accidents”, reactor core meltdowns in Chernobyl and Fukushima and the cautious academic reflection it has engendered, civilian nuclear power continues to enjoy legitimacy in energy policy discourse. This may not be the case in all countries. But it is so in a number of influential states, such as, prominently, all the permanent members of the UN Security Council. Why does nuclear power persist in these and other key countries, such as India or Iran and Japan? How is it that economic costs, technology risks and weapons proliferation concerns point in one direction while energy policy and technology choice moves in the other? We suggest that for an important set of select countries this divergence can be ascribed to a “discourse of power” that is pegged to domestic concerns
and, more importantly, to international relations. This discursive process constructs energy and material abundance as the cornerstone of social stability, political power and ultimately national sovereignty and geopolitical influence. The atom’s energy remains prominent in such imaginaries of abundance, more so in contexts of fossil energy insecurity and climate change. The questioning then of nuclear power by environmental and social concerns has to also question this discourse of power. The latter’s sanguinity vis-a-vis abundant energy needs to be problematised. This is not the case today in international relations. Practitioners focus on the consequences of environmental deterioration. The problem of climate refugees, for example. This paper argues that realist frames of power and self-interest in international relations be acknowledged explicitly as drivers of the discourse of power and in turn the socio-ecological consequences that ensue from this pursuit of cheap and abundant energy. To challenge nuclear power ultimately is to also challenge this medieval yet dominant norm of power play that pervades large swathes of international relations.

- by Manu V . Mathai
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- International Relations, Critical Geopolitics, Energy Policy, Sustainable Energy
- by francesca nemore
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- Archival Studies, Contemporary History, Energy, Archives
- by Mar Rubio
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- History of Nuclear Power

This paper explores aspects of early British atomic exhibitions by tracing the movement of a display model of Britain's first atomic pile (nuclear reactor) GLEEP. Following the model's journey through a variety of exhibitions aimed at different audiences—commercial fairs, displays staged for communities near the site of the new Windscale reactor, the national museum, and a Commonwealth exhibition—we can see how exhibition organisers adopted a variety of banalizing and obscuring tactics to promote the benign atom while maintaining secrecy over the wider atomic programme.
[This article is part of the Special Issue 'Fun and Fear: The banalization of nuclear technologies through display' with Jaume Sastre‐Juan and Jaume Valentines‐Álvarez as the guest editors]

- by Alison Boyle
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- History of Museums, History of Nuclear Power, Nuclear History

A paper given to the Boiling Water Reactor Research Hub and Network Annual Conference, 12-14th December 2018

Alvin Martin Weinberg (1915-2006) played a leading role both in
the Manhattan Project (working with Eugene Wigner in Chicago on the design
of the first nuclear reactors to produce plutonium) and in the development
of nuclear energy (his research was fundamental for the realization of
pressurized water reactors used for the propulsion of US submarines and
subsequently for the construction of civil nuclear power plants). He was Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 1955 to 1973 and was an influential promoter of the nuclear option. He came to propose a “Faustian bargain” to the whole society, which could benefit from almost inexhaustible nuclear energy but in exchange would have to accept and prevent risks associated with it ensuring political stability and institutions particularly appropriate for this worldwide goal. We remember Weinberg nowadays because he guessed that the tragedy of Hiroshima was an event of immense value in human history. In the years to come his memory could help to prevent the threat of a nuclear conflict establishing a tradition of non-use of nuclear weapons or generating a real taboo. On the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the drop of the bomb, he wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists about the sanctification of Hiroshima attributing to the event, with its hundred thousand or more martyrs, a deep mystical significance, almost sacred, with a inherent strength comparable to that of a biblical event. The theme of the refusal of the atomic bomb after the demonstration of its devastating effects is not entirely new but the intuition of Weinberg has its originality and gives an important meaning to the work of historians, educators and more generally of the scientific popularisers because they manage to give Hiroshima its rightful place in the collective consciousness of all human beings

This article seeks to explain how, given Japan's “nuclear allergy” following World War II, a small coastal town not far from Hiroshima volunteered to host a nuclear power plant in the early 1980s. Where standard explanations of contentious nuclear power siting decisions have focused on the regional power utilities and the central government, this paper instead examines the importance of historical change and civil society at a local level. Using a microhistorical approach based on interviews and archival materials, and framing our discussion with a popular Japanese television show known as Hatoko's Sea, we illustrate the agency of municipal actors in the decision-making process. In this way, we highlight the significance of long-term economic transformations, demographic decline, and vertical social networks in local invitations to controversial facilities. These perspectives are particularly important in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima crisis, as the outside world seeks to understand how and why Japan embraced atomic energy.

- by Martin Dusinberre
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- Japanese Studies, Microhistory, Civil Society, History of Nuclear Power