Uneasy endings: pasts and futures of nuclear infrastructures in France and Austria

Uneasy endings: pasts and futures of nuclear infrastructures in France and Austria

In the uncertain context of the war in Ukraine, many countries are faced with important decisions about what to do with their nuclear infrastructures, whether to repair and modernize old facilities, replace them with new ones, or continue to dismantle them. Considering “decay” as a mundane process that needs to be considered from the beginning to the end of the infrastructure life, we propose to compare and contrast the different endings of nuclear facilities in order to advance theoretical developments on decay processes and their management.

We hypothesize that the decay of nuclear infrastructures - and what is done about it - reveals socio-technical relationships between past choices and visions of the future that are otherwise black-boxed. A focus on decay management practices opens up a fertile space for thinking about technological and social futures with or without nuclear power plants. To demonstrate this, we will use semi-structured interviews, archival and document analysis, and site visits to contrast two cases of nuclear infrastructures facing their end: the reprocessing plant at La Hague in France as a future ending, and the Zwentendorf plant in Austria as a past ending. La Hague is a cornerstone of French nuclear policy; although it is threatened with closure, its inevitable end is never publicly discussed. Most importantly, it must be maintained in order to be closed. Zwentendorf was closed before it was nuclearized: it remains as a witness to a non-nuclear policy that must be maintained long after its closure.