The Times of Caring in a Nuclear World: Sculpture, Contamination and Stillness

Care takes time. Caring, whether with, for, or about a living being or entity that is more-than-human, disrupts expectations of how a linear, human time should progress. To practice care for the contaminated, the lands, waters, and animate life altered by human industry, is to extend that indeterminacy into distant, deeper time. Aesthetic representation of the affective and ethical dimensions of care, in this extreme, offers an experience that can transfer the arguments about nuclear contamination into more nuanced and sensed responses and contributes to current thinking about care in the arts worlds. I was commissioned to make a sculpture exhibition in 2020 as part of an anthropological study into the future of the Sellafield nuclear site in West Cumbria, UK. The exhibition, ‘x = 2140. In the coming 120 years, how can humans decide to dismantle, remember and repair the lands called Sellafield?’, consisted of three sculptural ‘fonts’ which engaged with ideas of knowledge production, nuclear technologies, and the affective dimensions of care about/for/with the contaminated lands and waters. This article presents my intentions for the sculptures in their context of a nuclear-dependent locale: to engage with the experience of nuclear futures without adversarial positioning; to explore the agential qualities of the more-than-human; and to create a stillness expressive of the relationality of the human and the contaminated through which one could fathom what care might feel like. These intentions are alongside theories of time, aesthetics, and care across disciplines: care and relational ethics, science and technology studies, and nuclear culture.

Detecting the relations between meteorological elements and alpha and beta activity concentration at Al-Tuwaitha site, Baghdad

In this study, 50 samples of air particulates collected from different places in- and outside the Al-Tuwaitha nuclear site, south of Baghdad were used to measure daily gross alpha and beta activity concentrations (AAC and BAC) for the period from 28 January 2015 to 13 April 2017. At the same time, several meteorological factors such as air temperature, wind speed, wind direction, air pressure, relative humidity, and solar radiation, were also measured. Air stability classes were also derived from wind speed and solar radiation. AAC/BAC variations in the surface air layer were discussed in relation to these factors. The results show that there are inverse relations between AAC/BAC and wind speed and temperature, linear relations between AAC/ABC and air pressure and weak relations between AAC/BAC and relative humidity and solar radiation. Lastly, AAC/BAC measurements in unstable air are as large as in neutral air.

Bayesian validation of the seismic source models using the Wylfa Newydd site in the UK as a case study

In probabilistic seismic hazard assessment, the development of the seismic source characterization, especially the geometry of the seismic source models (SSMs), is controversial because it often relies on expert judgment with different interpretations of the available data from seismology, tectonics, and geology. Based on the same input datasets, different teams of experts may derive different SSMs. In this context, the verification of the models through the comparison against a set of observations is a crucial step. We present a statistical tool to compare the SSMs with the observed seismicity and rank these SSMs based on their ability to replicate the past seismicity. We simulate many synthetic catalogues derived from candidate SSMs and compare them with the observed catalogue of mainshocks using the Metropolis-Hastings Algorithm to select those that fit the observed catalogue. The candidate SSMs are then expressed by a probability density function (pdf) using the set of synthetic catalogues accepted by the Metropolis-Hastings Algorithm and the Bayesian inference. To help practitioners in earthquake and civil engineering understand how this tool works in practice, the proposed approach is applied to a proposed new nuclear site in the United Kingdom, Wylfa Newydd.

Compact Multi-Element Ultrasonic Transducer for Inspecting Split Pins in Nuclear Power Plants

A compact five-element integrated ultrasonic transducer was designed and manufactured for the inspection of defects in the split pins of control rod guide tubes in nuclear power plants. The transducer consists of three types of ultrasonic elements to detect cracks in the entire volume of the split pins. In the transducer design, two main factors were investigated: the coupling of elements in confined space and measurement sensitivity. The experimental results demonstrated that the developed transducer has good acoustic performance and defect response capabilities and can detect 10 mm × 2 mm × 0.5 mm notches in the three areas of the split pins. This work provides a foundation for applications in nuclear site inspections.

Probabilistic Safety Analysis for Loss of Offsite Power Accident in Dual-units Nuclear Power Plant

In order to explore the risk assessment method of the multi-unit nuclear power plant site, this paper selects the dual-unit plant nuclear site to analyze lose off-site power accident. By combining and improving the single-unit ET/FT model, to establish the dual-unit ET/FT model. From the analysis of the accident sequence, it can be concluded that the common cause failure of equipment is the main challenge faced by the dual-units. Especially the RPC sub-channel in the reactor protection system and the failure of emergency diesel engine circuit breaker. As can be seen from the high proportion of core CD occurring simultaneously in both uints, it has a great significance to study the risk of mult-units sites.

Dialogical and situated accountability to the public. The reporting of nuclear incidents

PurposeThe paper aims to investigate how far the pragmatist concept of inquiry (Dewey, 1916, 1938) makes it possible to develop a processual and relational approach to accountability, moving the focus away from a representational conception of truth and subjectivist/individualist views on meaning-making, toward collective exploration and understanding of an issue by stakeholders with the aim of transforming social practices. The paper studies an accountability process in action, namely nuclear incident reporting, and its role in the construction of a community of inquiry investigating nuclear safety.Design/methodology/approachThis research opts for a case study methodology including 36 in-depth interviews, field observation and document analyses. The data are drawn from a three-year field study of a “Local Information Commission”, a body set up to represent the public living near a nuclear site.FindingsThe object of accountability needs to be constructed through a joint exploratory inquiry by accountors and accountees into reports of incidents as originally presented, to advance their understanding and capacity for action.Research limitations/implicationsIt will be important to test this processual and relational approach to accountability in other types of situation, involving different governance issues than nuclear safety.Practical implicationsTo turn theoretical stakeholders such as the public into real stakeholders (e.g. in the studied case, active participants in safety inquiries), specific social and managerial conditions must be fulfilled (concerning time, resources, commitment to open, taboo-free dialogue and legitimacy).Originality/valueThe paper argues that Dewey's concept of inquiry makes a valuable contribution to the processual and dialogical view of accountability.