This open panel explores what is being called “the nuclear U-turn”: the recent move by states, activists, industry, and others towards backing nuclear energy as a mainstream solution to our current energy predicament. With some climate activists vocally supporting nuclear as a low carbon energy source, across the world old questions (i.e., about the safety and longevity of nuclear infrastructures and waste) join with new questions (i.e., about whether nuclear energy belongs in a post-carbon world, who are the key stakeholders in nuclear landscapes, and how or which countries are positioning themselves to join this nuclear energy club). the panellists are interested in research broadly engaging with the politics of science, knowledge, and “truth” in the nuclear world. We are also keen to examine the multiple temporalities that mark and orient nuclearised landscapes – timescales that can be stretched and extended, whilst also shortened and urgent. Also, we invite contributions interrogating how people build livelihoods in nuclearised areas, and if it matters to them whether or not these areas are nuclearised. 

Panel organisers welcome contributions that attend to or put into dialogue various scales of transformation: the intimate and the personal, and the structural and systemic. This could mean, for instance, looking at (inter)national nuclear policies and aspirations for the nuclear sector, or intergenerational differences in historically nuclearised areas and how this might now be shifting. They encourage individual and collective submissions from a range of disciplines. Submissions can be experimental, alternative, participatory, speculative, and in non-traditional paper formats, such as multimedia and performance.

If you have questions, please feel free to contact the panel organisers:

Stephanie Postar ([email protected]) or

Sarah O’Brien ([email protected]) 

. This open panel will be presented as part of 4S/EASST in Amsterdam (June 16 – 19). It explores the social, political, and ecological ramifications of what we call “the nuclear u-turn”: the recent move by states, activists, industry, and others towards backing nuclear energy as a mainstream solution to our current energy predicament. 

Deadline for submissions is 12 February 2024.
For more information and to submit your abstracts: https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easst-4s2024/p/14103