Cicle: Energy. Past & Present
Seminari impartit per Tatiana Kasperski, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona
Dimecres 28 de setembre de 2022 a les 18 hores
El cicle “Energy: Past & Present” és organitzat conjuntament per la Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i la Tècnica (SCHCT) i l’Institut Interuniversitari López Piñero-UV i coordinat pels professors José Ramón Bertomeu Sánchez (bertomeu@uv.es) i Ignacio Suay Matallana (ignacio.suay@uv.es). Els seminaris tindran lloc a les 18 h. tots els darrers dimecres de la tardor de 2022 amb format bé en línea o híbrid, és a dir, presencial al saló d’actes del Palau Cerveró (IILP-UV) i en línia amb l’enllaç que serà comunicat cada setmana. Tots els seminaris són d’assistència lliure i les persones interessades poden contactar amb els organitzadors per tal d’obtenir dades complementàries o proposar altres activitats relacionades.
"Is nuclear energy green and equitable? Radioactive waste policies and controversies in historical perspective"
In this time of climate emergency, nuclear energy has been increasingly touted as a clean and green technology able to produce ever more needed amounts of electricity. At the same, toxic residues from that nuclear industry that have accumulated since the dawn of the nuclear age remain a serious, controversial and largely unsolved problem. To understand this contradiction
I will give an overview of the history, politics and technical controversies surrounding radioactive waste (RW), its production, disposition, and the challenges in managing it safely based on the examples from major nuclear powers.
First, I will analyze the shift in the treatment of RW from a technical one that could be addressed at some future point to public controversies that arose over it; efforts to determine how and where to site it in the 1970s and 1980s; to the end of the Cold War in the 1990s that led to openness about its extent; and ongoing efforts to manage RW. I will then explore the ways in which technical definitions and classifications of waste – and the national and international institutions that helped to develop them – have evolved, enabling the producers of RW to keep the largest quantities and most dangerous waste away from public discussions about environmental and health risks of the nuclear technology. For example, nuclear institutions in some countries do not considered spent nuclear fuel, or leftovers from uranium mining and reprocessing, as RW. They have framed nuclear accidents as problems of reactor safety and not a large source of RW, and suggested forcefully that peaceful and civilian waste can be and must be treated separately. This has left significant part of the world’s RW without proper disposal and storage. In the last part of my talk I will focus on one of the examples of such inadequately managed waste, the so-called “legacy waste” produced in the world’s weapons establishment, and that either remains in temporary storage, or was simply dumped without adequate safety and environmental measures.
DURADA: 105 min
