From military surveillance to citizen counter-expertise: radioactivity monitoring in a nuclear world

Abstract

To be aware of living in a nuclear world largely depends on realising the ubiquitous presence of anthropogenic environmental radioactivity. Measured by Geiger-Muller counters and other detectors, radiation is always perceived by the mediation of instruments, which are generally integrated in monitoring networks. The origin of these infrastructures can be found in military surveillance of nuclear programs in the late 1940s. In the 1950s, controversies regarding nuclear testing enlarged the scope and led to the first international programs for the monitoring of specific fallout-produced radioisotopes. More recently, nuclear accidents and risk management of nuclear power provided an additional motivation for the development of monitoring networks, either by national and international programs or citizen initiatives promoting environmental counter-expertise. In either case, the act of measuring has never been a politically neutral action and has strategically framed past and ongoing nuclear debates.