Political Designs: Nuclear Reactors and National Policy in Postwar France

Abstract

Political Designs: Nuclear Reactors and National Policy in Postwar France GABRIELLE HECHT The image of technology marching forward to the beat of its own drum, sending repercussions throughout society, has been repeatedly and successfully challenged in the past decade. We have yet to persuade wider audiences, but at least in the general field of science and technology studies, technological determinism is dead. The demise of technological determinism means that studies of technological design and development must now do more than just show how political, social, economic, and cultural considerations shape and become part of technology. We are presently poised to use technological artifacts as lenses through which to view broader historical questions, to understand how the process of shaping technology can also be the process of shaping politics, society, and culture. The time is ripe for the history of technological design and development to become a more integral part of mainstream history.1 This article delineates one way in which a close examination of technological design can contribute to broader historical questions. By Dr. Hecht is assistant professor in the history department at Stanford University. This work was funded in part by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Institute ofElectrical and Electronics Engineers. An earlier version of the article was awarded the Levinson Prize by the Society for the History of Technology and was presented at the 1991 SHOT meeting in Madison, Wisconsin, and several other locations. The author thanks Thomas P. Hughes, Robert Frost, Nina Lerman, Eric Schatzberg, David Shearer, and a Technology and Culture reviewer for their comments on previous drafts of this article. 'Works that have implicitly or explicitly made this point recently include (but are by no means limited to) Thomas P. Hughes, American Genesis: A Century of Invention and TechnologicalEnthusiasm, 1870-1970 (New York, 1989); andJudith McGaw, Most Wonderful Machine: Mechanization and Social Change in Berkshire Paper Making, 1801— 1885 (Princeton, N.J., 1987). I do not wish to imply that mainstream historians have ignored works in the history of technology or that these works have not contributed to other areas of historical scholarship—they have done so most fruitfully. But, studies of technological design have tended to concentrate on deconstructing the processes of invention, development, and diffusion, thereby speaking primarily to audiences already interested in technology. Such analyses have many virtues, but contributing to broader historical debates is not among them.© 1994 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X,/94/3504-0001$01.00 657 658 Gabrielle Hecht placing the design of two nuclear reactors in the political framework of postwar France, I show that these reactors were more than technological artifacts. Engineers and managers inscribed their political agendas into the design of their reactors, and for a variety of reasons, including the instability of government leadership in the 1950s, these designs in turn became part ofFrench political discourse. Each reactor came to embody a particular vision of the French state, and each became a powerful tool in shaping both nuclear and industrial policy in postwar France.2 The article begins with a quick sketch of postwar France and an outline of the creation of the two institutions that made up the core of the French nuclear program: the Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique (CEA)—the atomic energy commission—and Électricité de France (EDF)—the nationalized electric utility company. Through the early 1950s, the nuclear program rested solely in the hands of CEAleaders, so I next discuss how these men picked the gas-graphite reactor design over other choices. Finally, the bulk of this article compares the designs of two early gas-graphite reactors, one financed by the CEA, the other by EDF. The two institutions collaborated on the design and construction of both reactors: France did not have the financial, human, or political resources to sustain separate programs. But, even though each institu­ tion needed the other in order to build a nuclear program, they had different, sometimes conflicting, political, industrial, and technological agendas. Each reactor thus became a distinct political, industrial, and technological statement. France after the Second World War World War II left France both economically and psychologically devastated. The German...