History of Nuclear Power in Britain

This paper draws general insights into the public reception of scientific knowledge from a case study of Cumbrian sheep farmers' responses to scientific advice about the restrictions introduced after the Chernobyl radioactive fallout. The analysis identifies several substantive factors which influence the credibility of scientific communication. Starting from the now-accepted point that public uptake of science depends primarily upon the trust and credibility public groups are prepared to invest in scientific institutions and representatives, the paper observes that these are contingent upon the social relationships and identities which people feel to be affected by scientific knowledge, which never comes free of social interests or implications. The case study shows laypeople capable of extensive informal reflection upon their social relationships towards scientific experts, and on the epistemological status of their own `local' knowledge in relation to `outside' knowle...

This chapter takes as its focus one very specific example of public interaction with sci ence-the case of the hill sheep-farmers of the Lake District of northern England. They experienced radioactive fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl accident which contaminated their sheep flocks and upland pastures. In an area dominated by a traditional and demanding hill-farming economy, they were restricted from selling their sheep freely (almost 100 farms are still under restriction). They also received intensive expert advice about the environmental hazards from the radiocaesium deposits, and the relationship of these to other such deposits from the nearby Windscale-Sellafield nuclear facilities and 1950s weapons testing fallout. Fieldvvork comprising mainly in-depth interviews with affected farmers and others provided data for analysis of the factors influencing the reception of scientific expertise by this sub-population. In analysing the farmers' understanding of the science, it was immediately apparent that it would have been meaningless and utterly misleading to treat their response to its cognitive content-for example, the claim that radiocaesium from Chernobyl was clearly distinguishable from Sellafield emissions of the same radio-isotopes-as if separ ate from its social and institutional form. Examining how the scientific institutions framed the issue and the knowledge they articulated as science, identified certain com mitments which were institutionalised and taken for granted, thus not deliberately introduced. They constituted the very culture of science as institutionalised and prac tised as public knowledge. These assumptions shaped the scientific knowledge, they were not extra to it; and they were built in as social prescriptions in the way the science was institutionalised and deployed. These were elements of cultural prescription posing, albeit innocently, as objective knowledge. They included the assumptions: • that the natural (and achievable) purpose of knowledge was control and prediction; • that standardisation of environmental measurements and concepts over given areas and social units was natural even though it imposed standardisation on the social units too;

Sir-Although Dummer et a/. 1 report a highly significant increase of stillbirth rates in the 15-20 km zone north of Sellafield between 1950 and 1959, they concluded that there is no evidence that proximity to Sellafield increases the risk of stillbirth. The authors must know that there was a severe accident at this nuclear installation in 1957. Radioactive emissions from the plant are released into the Irish Sea 2 miles offshore via a long pipeline. From there the prevailing currents Qow northerly, and so radioactivity from the plant is likely to be washed ashore some distance north of Sellafield. The prevailing winds from Wlnzerestr.

In its 1992 assessment of "The safety of Nuclear Powered Ships", the government's Special Committee on Nuclear  ropulsion estimated how hazardous it would be for nuclear  ships to use New Zealand ports. Unfortunately, the Special Committee failed to evaluate the hazards in terms of the  product of risk and impact and thus failed to recognize that the day-by-day hazard of nuclear accidents accrues from rare catastrophes--almost Chernobyl-sized accidents.

The nuclear engineer emerged as a new form of recognised technical professional between 1940 and the early 1960s as nuclear fission, the chain reaction and their applications were explored. The institutionalization of nuclear engineering channelled into new national laboratories and corporate design offices during the decade after the war, and hurried into academic venues thereafter proved unusually dependent on government definition and support. This paper contrasts the distinct histories of the new discipline in the USA and UK (and, more briefly, Canada). In the segregated and influential environments of institutional laboratories and factories, historical actors such as physicist Walter Zinn in the USA and industrial chemist Christopher Hinton in the UK proved influential in shaping the roles and perceptions of nuclear specialists. More broadly, I argue that the State-managed implantation of the new subject within further and higher education curricula was shaped strongly by distinct political and economic contexts in which secrecy, postwar prestige and differing industrial cultures were decisive factors.