Doctoral Dissertation Research: Public and Expert Understandings of Nuclear Risk in Italy

博士论文研究：专家和公众对意大利核风险的理解了解公众如何看待技术风险并采取行动对于技术管理和确保其公正治理非常重要。鉴于核技术在全球的重要性，了解公众如何看待核技术的价值和危险是至关重要的。周期性的核事故会影响公众的态度和政府的政策，但这并不足以解释不同群体对核风险认知的显著差异。为了更充分地认识这些风险，本研究考察了团体关于核污染的主张如何成为地方、国家和国际层面政治辩论和争论的对象。为了解释核风险是如何对专家和非专家可见或不可见的，本研究分析了风险感知的三种来源：相互竞争的科学、军事和政治认识论和评估风险的方法；政治动员的形式；以及日常活动。档案和民族志研究将在1972年至2008年期间部署在意大利拉马达莱纳群岛的美国海军核潜艇基地进行，以评估政治监督和军事保密对专家的具体作用。对核风险的评估，以及冷战期间和冷战后不同形式的政治动员如何塑造了核能的意义。这项研究将有助于研究核专家和外行人如何评估和理解核能的性质和影响；关于核污染和核事故对健康影响的说法如何改变了人们对核能的日常认知，并使核危险变得显而易见；以及这些不同的因素如何在特定的地方相互作用，当有核污染的危险时。这项研究解决了意大利和其他地方的专家、决策者、非政府组织和环保团体感兴趣的问题。研究数据以数字方式提供给公众，包括La Maddalena当地社区，以及对风险沟通、核风险感知、风险评估和管理以及美国军事基地政策和实践感兴趣的专家和非专家。

Doctoral Dissertation Research: Expert and Public Understandings of Nuclear Risk in ItalyUnderstanding how publics perceive and act on technological risks is important for the management of technologies and for ensuring their just governance. Given the global importance of nuclear technologies, understanding how publics perceive their value and danger is critical. Periodic nuclear accidents influence both public attitudes and government policies, but they are not sufficient to explain significant differences in how different groups perceive nuclear risks. To more adequately these risk perceptions, this research examines how groups' claims of nuclear contamination become objects of political debate and contestation at the local, national, and international levels. To explain how nuclear risks come be visible or invisible to experts and non-experts, this study analyzes three sources of risk perception: competing scientific, military, and political epistemologies and methods for assessing risk; forms of political mobilization; and everyday activities. Archival and ethnographic research will be carried out at a U.S. Navy base for nuclear submarines that were installed in the Archipelago of La Maddalena (Italy) between 1972 and 2008 to assess the specific role of political supervision and military secrecy on experts? assessments of nuclear risks, and how meanings of nuclear power were shaped by different forms of political mobilization took place both during and after the cold war. The research will contribute to theories of how nuclear experts and laypeople assess and understand the nature and the effects of nuclear power; how claims of health effects from nuclear contamination and accidents alter everyday perceptions of nuclear power and make nuclear danger visible; and how these different factors interact in specific localities, when there is a perceived danger of nuclear contamination. This study addresses problems of interest to experts, policy-makers, NGOs, and environmentalist groups in Italy and elsewhere. Research data is digitally available to publics, including the local community of La Maddalena and to experts and non-experts interested in risk communication, nuclear risk perceptions, risk assessment and management, and U.S. military basing policies and practices.