A Global Nuclear Environmental History

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This research project is a study of global nuclear environmental history focused on North America, Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Far East. The PI will develop a cross national comparison of the environment in relation to military and civilian nuclear enterprises. In doing so, he will examine how understandings of the human-nature atom interface have changed since the dawn of the nuclear age. The project will produce a stand-alone global environmental history of the development of the nuclear enterprise in cross-national comparison that includes the conceptual, technological, socio-political and environmental impacts that have accompanied that development. The research takes place within the fields of history of science and technology, environmental history, and history of technology; results are to be disseminated as original research papers and a book manuscript pertinent to these areas. The PI also plans to disseminate results beyond scientific publications through editorials and through contact with various interested NGOs with interests in nuclear history, and through a dedicated webpage with links to extant and new research materials and teaching guides. This research project will bring STS and environmental history methods to bear on the study of the nuclear world to enable better understanding of the rise and functioning of state-sponsored big science and technology for military and peaceful purposes. The PI will use recently available primary sources in English, French, Russian, Swedish, Korean and other languages. He will also make extensive use of published and archival documents and studies on the nature of human-nuclear interactions in the domain of nuclear science and technology for different groups, languages and ethnicities, and across geographic and climatic areas; as a result, this research will produce societally relevant outcomes in its analyses of the role of women, children, underrepresented minorities including indigenes in postwar nuclear worlds. This history is valuable because of the vast expanse of the nuclear enterprise, its transborder and international ramifications, and the nature and kinds of landscapes and peoples whose lives have been affected by peaceful and military programs – and who have shaped its development. It will have the potential to contribute to policy debates about the costs, benefits and consequences of nuclear technologies over time, and to facilitate analysis of nuclear power as an effective way to address climate change in the twenty-first century.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.