Contaminated Futures: Caring for the Future and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation

Contaminated Futures: Caring for the Future and the Hanford Nuclear

Reservation

Pedro de la Torre III4/26/2013

Experiments in

Method

[email protected]

Overview Hanford Nuclear

Reservation (WA) began as a plutonium production facility for U.S. nuclear weapons complex during WWII

Seventy year legacy of toxic and radioactive contamination, including intentional release of dangerous radionuclides

Overview Investigate the

politics, history, and ethical reasoning surrounding site

Explore environmental and intergenerational justice issues surrounding nuclear waste & contamination

Overview Complex

stakeholder process involved in governing Hanford cleanup

Given the degree of soil and groundwater contamination and the long half-lives of the contaminants, ethical obligations to current and future generations are negotiated implicitly or explicitly in Hanford cleanup

Overview

Research Problems1. How are future imaginaries

generated in the present, and how do they affect the politics and governance of nuclear waste and remediation?

2. How are intergenerational ethics negotiated in debates about environmental remediation and nuclear waste?

OverviewSo, what is a ‘future Imaginary’ anyway?

Connotes formation of ‘mental (& sociocultural) images,’ not ‘unreal’

Ethics: Obligation? "Discount?" Philosophy

(e.g., utilitarian)

Basis for Recognition

Specificity Scale:

Temporal Geographical Specificity

Analogies (spaces of experience): Scale (time and

space) Events Narratives References

Continuities: Technoscientific Sociocultural Territorial Government/

political Ecological Of Knowledge

Discontinuities: Technoscientific

Sociocultural Territorial Government/

political Ecological Of Knowledge

Representations: Subject

positioning? (e.g., "generations")

Media (e.g., images, tables, imagined scenarios, etc.)

Rhetorical strategies

Specificity Stake

innoculation Speaking for or

about future generations?

Dissemination Method (e.g.,

prediction based on extrapolation of current statistical trends): Nature of truth

claim: Procedures

(e.g., experimentation)

Data Political/power/

governance implications: Authority Regulatory/

Legal tie-in What

controversies is it implicated in?

How does it connect/challenge dominant discourses/consensuses?

How does it construct the present? Implicate

change of priorities/areas of concern

"Type?" (e.g., security, transition, development, risk, etc.)     

OverviewThis work will interact with at least three key literatures in the social sciences:

Social temporalities

Environment, Nature, & Risk

Subjects: Ethics, Rights, and Representation

Social TemporalitiesThis work explores the complex relationships between history, memory, the “present,” expectations, and prediction in governance and the making of spaces.

OverviewThis work will interact with at least three key literatures in the social sciences:

Social temporalities

Environment, Nature, & Risk

Subjects: Ethics, Rights, and Representation

Environment, Nature, & RiskWritings in this category explore the often dangerous aspects of sociotechnical systems, the distribution of “environmental” risks, the concepts through which “nature” or the “environment” is or should be understood, and the ways that these topics shape various socialities, knowledges, and politics.

OverviewThis work will interact with at least three key literatures in the social sciences:

Social temporalities

Environment, Nature, & Risk

Subjects: Ethics, Rights, and Representation

Subjects: Ethics, Rights, and RepresentationThese works explore not only the study of ethical practice and imaginaries, but also the relation between the ethical, political, and legal; the recognition and representation of subjects, particularly “distant” ones; and the recognition of injury, harm, or suffering.

Continuing problems and controversies over threats that the site presents, including: Leaking radwaste tanks Threat of tank explosions Ecological costs of remediation activities Pace of cleanup Vitrification plant

“Downwinders” are still in litigation for compensation, and the link between their exposures and their illnesses is controversial

Current & future remediation efforts

Why Study H

anford Now

?

Context of austerity and “late industrialism”

Broader controversies over nuclear waste & nuclear energy

Widening gap between sustainability discourse, and the intergenerational ethics it implies, and ecological legacies

Why Study H

anford Now

Method Field Sites

Ethnography Semi-structured

interviews Participant observation Attending events Purposive & snowball

sampling

Richland, WA Primary site of fieldwork, borders

the Hanford Nuclear Reservation Host to most stakeholder meetings

and similar events Near the Pacific Northwest

National Laboratory Other sites of interests, such as

implicated American Indian reservation, relatively close by

Washington, DC Short visits Interviews with NGO, Policy, and

Regulatory actors Access to relevant events

Study Components

Method Texts

Discourse Analysis Critical discourse analysis Subject formation Constructions of time,

place, and space Forms of recognition Issues of representation (Counter)hegemonic

discourses Universality, generality,

specificity

Interview transcriptsOfficial documentsPhotographs, films, and

visual art projectsPress releases & speechesMeeting notes & agendasEmail listsNews reportsMuseum exhibits & toursScientific studies

Study Components

Study Components

Attending Hanford Advisory Board MeetingsSemi-structured interviewsAttend meetings of relevant organizations &

movementsExamine archivesHanford site toursAttend community meetings & eventsAttend relevant hearings and events in

Washington, DC and beyond

Activities and Questions

Study Components

Environmental Groups

Scientists and Engineers

Federal Government Officials

First Nations Government

Officials & ActivistsDownwinders &

AlliesLabor Unions &

Related GroupsState Government

OfficialsContractors

Kinds of Subjects

Plan of Work

When What

Current / Ongoing Basic research and project design

Summer 2013 Transcription, grant applications, basic research

Early June Preliminary field site visit to Richland & regional sites of interests

July/August Interviews in Washington, DCSpring 2014 Dissertation ProposalFall 2014 – Summer

2015Fieldwork

Fall 2015 - Spring 2016 Dissertation writing / defense

Schedule

Plan of Work

Academic Community

Journal articles

Book

Conferences

General Public

Magazine / blog articles

Interviews

Events (e.g., Hanford photo

and/or visual arts show)

ResearchSubjects

Conferences

Internal presentations

Participation in campaigns &

events

Dissemination

About MeI am a first year PhD student at RPI’s Science and Technology Studies Department. Before that, I completed an M.A. in Anthropology at the New School for Social Research. My areas of interest include nuclear waste and politics, disaster studies, social theory, and temporality.

Email: [email protected]

Credits &

Bio

Image credits: stopnewnukes, EMSL, PNNL - Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, & idyllopus