Agnes VILLETTE, University of Southampton , United Kingdom
Kyveli MAVROKORDOPOULOU, EHESS Paris, France
Forming an eclectic nuclear geography on the shores of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands lie three nuclear installations, all built on polders: Gravelines, Doel and Borssele nuclear power stations started operating in the same decade, in the 1970s, on the unstable marsh soils of reclaimed land. Today, rising sea levels due to global warming imminently threaten the three nuclear plants, requiring the construction of dykes and elevated buffers, which are currently being implemented. In this paper, we will consider these swampy geographies as places where the future-oriented temporality of the nuclear sector crumbles. Both nuclear reactors, as the cathedrals of the XXth century (Hecht, 1998) and polders, as the epitome of hydraulic geo-engineering, are archetypal figures of progress and modernity. Both symbolize the conquest of natural environments and consolidate national identities. Yet, despite their apparent solidity, the mere existence of the 3 nuclear infrastructures is currently under threat; e.g. for the case of Gravelines, the time-span discussed is that of five years for the elevation of a buffer. Such examples confirm the importance of countering progress and linear historical narratives of nuclear advance and understand how nuclear technologies permeate current times (Wallace, 2016), rather than an undefined deep future; thus, they should still lie at the forefront of contemporary environmentalist thought, along with biochemical threats usually associated with the immediate present (Hurley, 2020). Thus, shying away from discussions around the deep future of nuclear materials, these nuclearised polders offer an unprecedented opportunity to consider the urgent stake of apprehending the water flooding consequences of nuclear infrastructures.
Mots clés : nuclear landscape|slow violence|nuclearity|polder nuclear landscape|risk society
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