Anti-nuclear Movement Research Articles

Opposition to Nuclear Power as a Driver of Austrian State Policy

The article deals with the impact of opposition to nuclear power on Austria’s foreign and economic policy as well as the evolution of this political driver. Beyond rejecting the use of nuclear power domestically Austria conducts active anti-nuclear foreign policy primarily towards neighboring countries running NPPs, ultimately aiming at nuclear phase out of the whole EU. As a part of this anti-nuclear policy Austria refuses to procure electricity produced by NPPs in other countries. Moreover, the opposition to nuclear power determined the clean energy transition model for Austria. The country has reached a high level of renewables share in electricity production and strives for a non-carbon energy system by 2030. The article shows that Austria has made a long way to its anti-nuclear stance, driven by social movements. Its turning point was the referendum on the use of nuclear power held in 1978, when diverse activist groups managed to overcome the pro-nuclear government supported lobby. The anti-nuclear movement continued to exert influence on the political agenda of the federal government via local communities and states authorities. With the time, their efforts have led to common acceptance of the anti-nuclear stance as an important driver of the Austrian policy.

Verdinglichung und Zerstörung. Günther Anders und der Begriff der Geschichte im Jahr 1941

Abstract The article discusses the transformation of the concept of History as it can be traced in the writings of Günther Anders. Anders is primarily known as a critique of modern technology specifically of the atomic bomb, which made him a mentor for the first anti-nuclear movement in West-Germany in the late 1950s. His historical thinking was therefore mainly perceived in its post-historic and apocalyptic dimensions. A closer look at his earlier writings reveals not only that his questioning of the modern concept of History began long before the “ontological cesura” of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The article discusses two unpublished philosophical manuscripts as well as passages from his Californian diaries, both dating from 1940/41 and focussing the concept of progress. To follow his thoughts from two different angles – historical philosophical inquiry (however fragmented) and the literary form of his diary – gives us insight in his specific methodology of writing coined “Gelegenheitsphilosophie”. This specific form between “journalism and metaphysics” enables Anders to review abstract philosophical concepts on the basis of everyday observation. In the crucial year 1941 Anders reviews progress-thought from the perspective of a Hollywood film studio, raising questions of tradition, authenticity and technological progress in cultural production.

Networks and Mobilization Processes: The Case of the Japanese Anti-Nuclear Movement after Fukushima

Networks and Mobilization Processes: The Case of the Japanese Anti-Nuclear Movement after Fukushima

L’ Energiewende de 2011 : reconfigurations horizontales et verticales du système d’acteurs dans la géopolitique de l’énergie en Allemagne

L’accélération de la fermeture du parc électronucléaire allemand à la suite de la catastrophe de Fukushima apparaît comme la décision la plus emblématique du train de réformes énergétiques engagé en 2011 par la chancelière Angela Merkel. Condamnée comme une stratégie électoraliste de la part des conservateurs, cette nouvelle étape de l’ Energiewende relève en réalité d’une double reconfiguration des rapports de force dans le système géopolitique d’acteurs de l’énergie outre-Rhin. D’une part, le déploiement des sources renouvelables à partir de 1990 et la réunification des deux Allemagnes ont modifié la répartition des soutiens aux différentes sources d’énergies en défaveur du nucléaire. D’autre part, l’influence grandissante des municipalités, parfois influencées par des militants antinucléaires, a déconcentré le contrôle des moyens de production et de distribution d’électricité depuis quelques grands groupes exploitant des centrales jusqu’à une multitude d’acteurs locaux.

Anti-Nuclear Activism and Electoral Politics in the 1963 Test Ban Treaty

“We used to say that we had four fights on our hands for each new measure of arms control suggested—the Pentagon, Congress, the public and, also, I suppose, the Russians.” Jerome Wiesner, 19701 In the summer of 1961, President John F. Kennedy was sailing his yacht, the Honey Fitz, in the waters off Hyannis Port. His guests on-board that day included Adlai Stevenson and Harlan Cleveland, both of whom were there to discuss the United States’ position on disarmament ahead of the reopening of the United Nations General Assembly. On the campaign trail the previous year, then-Senator Kennedy had repeatedly championed a new, more earnest approach to disarmament. Kennedy attacked President Eisenhower for his “lack of a concrete plan for disarmament,” while telling the annual conference of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) that arms control would be “an obligation of the highest priority in the next administration.”2 Speaking candidly to his guests that summer day, as president rather than candidate, Kennedy shocked both Stevenson and Cleveland by declaring, “Oh this disarmament. Well, that’s really just a propaganda thing, isn’t it?”3

Taking on Technocracy: Nuclear Power in Germany, 1945 to the Present. Dolores L. Augustine. New York: Berghahn Books, 2018. xiv + 289 pp. Illustrations, graphs, notes, bibliography, and index. Cloth $120, e-book $110.16.

<i> Taking on Technocracy: Nuclear Power in Germany, 1945 to the Present. </i> Dolores L. Augustine. New York: Berghahn Books, 2018. xiv + 289 pp. Illustrations, graphs, notes, bibliography, and index. Cloth $120, e-book $110.16.

Политика государств постсоветской Центральной Азии в отношении Договора о запрещении ядерного оружия

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) was introduced in the United Nations’ agenda in 2017. Since then, it remains a corner stone in the discussions on the perspectives of the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The Treaty has already divided the community of non-nuclear states and stipulated the rise of anti-nuclear activism around the world. This paper is aimed at the analysis of the position of post-Soviet Central Asian states towards TPNW. The author consequently analyses the reaction of the governments of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, with the special focus on Kazakhstan’s policy, as this country supports TPNW and demonstrates an example of the most consistent anti-nuclear policy course. The review of the Central Asian states’ positions towards TPNW is worth studying in particular due to their partnership with Russia, and the specific feature of combining the partnership and sometimes different views on the international issues.

Local Identities in Ukrainian Polesia and their Transformation under the (Post-) Soviet Nuclear Economy

The essay deals with the transformation of local identities between 1965 and 2015 in three regions in rural Ukrainian Polesia where the USSR built nuclear power plants, each with its own satellite city. These included the Chernobyl NPP and the city of Pripyat (1970-1986) in Kyiiv Polesia, the Rivne NPP and the city of Kuznetsovsk (since 1973)/Varash (since 2016) in West or Great Polesia, and the Khmelnitskiy NPP and the city of Netishyn (since 1980) in so-called Little Polesia. The essay is based on data from field work carried out in these regions from 2016 to 2018, which primarily involved interviewing eyewitnesses and experts and doing research in local museums, archives and libraries within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and in Kyiv, Varash and Netishyn. The author analyzes the local identities in these three regions during the early stages of nuclear industrialization and their transformation during the nuclear modernization. She also looks at the formation of new urban identities in the monoindustrial cities, which were situated in rural areas, and at the construction of new self-images and images of others among the new urban and old rural local populations. The common history of these three regions came to an end with the Chernobyl catastrophe. The author examines the impact of the catastrophe, the trauma of the following involuntary resettlement and how it affected local identities in Polesia after 1986. The essay also deals with the impact of the Ukrainian post-Chernobyl anti-nuclear movement, the following moratorium on the construction of new nuclear power plants, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the role of Ukrainian independence in the transformation of urban identities in Kuznetsovsk/Varash and Netishyn, where the nuclear power stations are still in operation. Lastly, the author investigates how new identity-forming factors as Ukrainization, Decommunization, and social inequality, have played an important role in post-Soviet identity building.

“They’ve Got a Bomb”: Sounding Anti-nuclearism in the Anarcho-punk Movement in Britain, 1978–84

ABSTRACTThis article explores the links and tensions in Britain between a musical subculture at its height of creative energy – anarcho-punk – and the anti-nuclear movement, including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It identifies and interrogates the anti-nuclear elements of anarcho-punk, looking at its leading band, Crass. At the center is an exploration of the sounds of Crass’ music and singing voices – termed Crassonics – in the context of anti-nuclearism: if the bomb changed music and art, what did the new music sound like?

A Study of Mexican Anti Nuclear Plant Environment Movement: Focusing on the Laguna Verde Case

A Study of Mexican Anti Nuclear Plant Environment Movement: Focusing on the Laguna Verde Case

Nuclear Humanitarianism

Abstract In recent years, humanitarianism has been portrayed as a revolutionary new force in the anti-nuclear movement. This article challenges this progressive understanding of humanitarianism’s role in nuclear affairs by exploring how the language and concept of humanitarianism have been deployed by two states that have been deeply involved in international nuclear law projects over the last 50 years: Australia and New Zealand. It argues that contrary to popular perceptions about the radical potential of humanitarianism in nuclear affairs, the phenomenon’s track record in Australia and New Zealand is chequered. Indeed, in certain key respects, humanitarianism has impeded anti-nuclear agendas in Australia and New Zealand: first, the ambiguity inherent in the language of humanitarianism has allowed it to be deployed to support the maintenance of nuclear weapons; and secondly, humanitarianism has generated outcomes that often support and reinforce the status quo legally and structurally. The article also offers some reflections on the relationship between humanitarianism and international law in the nuclear context. Specifically, it shows how the Australian and New Zealand case studies reveal contradictory approaches to, and understandings of, humanitarianism as law.

'We got the power!': the political potential of street choirs Campaign Choirs Writing Collective

This article champions the power of song and looks at the activities of 'street choirs'- groups that sing together with collective political intent in public space, as a form of cultural activism. In addition to a socialist core, street choirs in the UK coalesce around feminism, the peace and anti-nuclear movements and, more recently, environmentalism and LGBTQ activism. The authors discuss the emotions that song and singing release, and the connections and solidarities that may then be created between people. They also explore the wider context of music and emotion, and look at the relationship between words and music and between music and place. They argue that social movements can both learn from and educate through song, and that choirs can engage in acts of citizenship by following up on the emotions released by their performances, and engaging in debate on the issues raised. The article includes excerpts from interviews with choir members.

Influence of some etiological factors on development of gynecological patholo-gy and infertility of cats

The article provides an overview of professional literature on reproductive studies of cats, the definition of the main factors influencing the development of infertility in cats: hormonal changes, lack of sufficient stimulus during pairing, leading to ovulation, inability to fuse, ovarian cyst, chronic inflammatory processes in reproductive organs systems, infections, some parasites or the simplest, hereditary problems, including chromosomal abnormalities (genetic or congenital defects such as pseudoharmophioditis, true hermaphroditism, mosaicism, infantilism, freemantry) described congenital aplasia of the ovaries, trauma affecting the reproductive organs. The conditions of detention that considerably affect the reproductive system are considered. It has been established that insufficient stimulation is one of the most common causes of infertility, which is relevant for cats because they are characterized by induced ovulation. Most animals with an abnormal set of sex chromosomes are infertile, treatment methods have not been developed. Inadequate feeding is perhaps the most important cause of infertility in cats. The connection between lack and (or) excess in the diet of Calcium, Phosphorus, Iodine, Cobalt, Cuprum, Manganese, other macro-and micro elements, and inability to reproduce is established. The role of microorganisms in the emergence of infertility of cats of infectious diseases (leukemia, infectious peritonitis, panleukopenia, chlamydia, toxoplasmosis) is considered. Extension of the intraperitoneal period arises from the stage of the anestrus. Such clinical picture is observed in cats older than 8 years with hypothyroidism and hyperadrenocorticism, obesity and cachexia, the appointment of drugs with antinuclear activity. Among gynecological diseases in cats, the most common diseases are pyometra, endometritis and vaginitis. It has been established that the most frequently diagnosed diseases of the uterus of female dogs and cats are cystular hyperplasia of the endometrium in combination with the pythometer, data on the etiopathogenesis of these diseases is given. The scientific data on the application of ultrasound diagnostics, hormonal level studies, vaginal cytology, the use of hysterosalpingography, x-ray for more accurate diagnostics of causes of infertility of cats are given.

Common Understandings of and Consensus About Collective Action: The Transformation of Specifically Vague Proposals as a Collective Achievement

This paper asks how anti-nuclear activists form collectives that are able to act collectively. It argues that shared interests and collective identities only insufficiently explain the emergence of collective action. Alternatively, the paper investigates meeting talk of German anti-nuclear groups where activists discuss proposals for collective action. Based on audio recordings, a sequential analysis of activists’ deliberations traces the transformation of vague ideas into concrete and collectively agreed to proposals. It is shown how the process by which activists reach a common understanding about a particular protest activity—as something that is being talked about here and now—and the process of becoming an acting collectivity—a group that is ready to carry out this protest activity in the future—are interdependent. Activists make use of “indexicality” (Garfinkel) to introduce specifically vague proposals, enabling others to respond and contribute to the emerging proposal while group agency is suspended. At first, the authorship of proposals is minimized. Step by step, vague proposals are specified by meeting participants until a “change in footing” (Goffman) marks group consensus. While the group emerges as the author and principal of proposals through this process, the paper shows that implementation relies on individual principals again who take responsibility during and after the meeting.

Stephen Milder. Greening Democracy: The Anti-Nuclear Movement and Political Environmentalism in West Germany and Beyond, 1968–1983.

S<scp>tephen</scp> M<scp>ilder</scp>. <i>Greening Democracy: The Anti-Nuclear Movement and Political Environmentalism in West Germany and Beyond, 1968–1983</i>.

Contested credibility economies of nuclear power in India.

STS scholars studying anti-nuclear activism in the context of nations in the Global North have observed the critical role of science to mediate relations of domination and resistance. Through a historical examination of anti-nuclear activism in India, this article investigates the instrumentalization of science as a liberal democratic rationality. In doing so, the article shows how elite Indian activists - many of whom are scientists, engineers, journalists and academic professionals - will never be seen as scientifically knowledgeable in nuclear matters, because of their non-state educational pedigrees. If activists cannot hold the state accountable through science, they have attempted to anticipate what other kinds of arguments and modes of contention may gain traction. As such, they have deployed more 'guerilla' tactics grounded in bureaucratic rationalities in the hopes of installing themselves as alternate sources of expertise in India's nuclear landscape.

Is the postwar state melting down?: an East Asian perspective on post-Fukushima Japan

ABSTRACTPrime Minister Abe’s return to power in Japan dealt a blow to the anti-nuclear movement and returned the country to broadly pro-nuclear policies. Meanwhile, eight years on, although the effects of the Fukushima disaster are still being felt, Japan’s anti-nuclear movement has struggled to move forward or effect changes in policy. This article argues that prospects for change will not emerge until Japan’s anti-nuclear movement is able to look beyond its national borders and articulate a perspective on nuclear power that takes into account other countries within East Asia. The 3.11 Great East Japan Earthquake revealed heretofore hidden aspects of the Japanese state and society. The truth is that Japan’s postwar state (Sengo-kokka) is actually a nuclear power state (Genpatsu-kokka), a byproduct of the US-Japan alliance under the East Asian Cold War system, which insulated nuclear policy from the standard operation of democratic politics. As a product of the Cold War, the issue of nuclear power and development extends beyond Japan’s national borders and relates to the questions of US superpower sponsorship and the armistice system in East Asia that pertain broadly to the politics of East Asia. It is important to understand that Japan’s nuclear energy is a product of the Cold War in East Asia, and the armistice system that constitutes the international system in East Asia must be discarded if Japan is to become a post-nuclear energy state.

Cinema's Hot Chronology (5:29:21 Mountain War Time, July 16, 1945)

Cinema's Hot Chronology (5:29:21 Mountain War Time, July 16, 1945) Jennifer Fay (bio) In the history of film and media there are banner periods in which technology, aesthetics, and politics collide in especially striking ways. In the US context, we could rattle off years (e.g., 1896, 1927, 1946) that exemplify what James Chandler, borrowing from Claude Lévi-Strauss, calls "hot chronologies," dates that are overrepresented in historical accounts relative to both their duration and as compared with other periods that are "less eventful." The "thermometric metaphor," explains Chandler, has nothing to do with actual temperatures. In Lévi-Strauss's anthropology, hot chronologies emerge out of advanced "hot societies," those "in which time may be said to count and be counted" in the annals of world history. This is in contrast to "primitive" cultures, which are so seemingly invariable or "cold" that they "lack internal temperature deviations" and therefore appear to have an "internal environment" resistant to periodization and therefore to elucidation by history.1 [End Page 146] This essay focuses on a hot chronology of a different and perhaps more literal order that takes stock of rising temperatures and radioactive fallout and also connects a hot chronology to the first-world hot society most responsible for global warming. Yet this chronology encapsulates utterly incommensurable scales of time and space, so vast and so small that it should fall outside of what "counts" as history altogether. It also enfolds film, a particular film that hardly registers as significant in the histories of film, into an expansive geological past and an apocalyptic end of human innovation. What are cinema's hot chronologies in the Anthropocene epoch? How can we "do" film and media history against the deep time of a geological record and planetary future that far exceed humanity, much less cinema? I propose one such chronology here and consider the reading practices and aesthetic attunements that this instant summons forth. Two Epochs, One Instant The time stamp 5:29:21 Mountain War Time, July 16, 1945, is etched in both historical memory and the planet's geological record as the precise beginning of two different epochs: the nuclear and the Anthropocene, each producing a new kind of human, a different kind of world, and a peculiar relationship of humankind to both history and the future. At this moment exactly, the American military and scientific establishment detonated the most powerful weapon the world had known. The Trinity nuclear test marked the onset of a new, soon-to-be-global paradigm in which weapons of mass destruction were a reality of twentieth-century life. German-Jewish philosopher and antinuclear activist Günther Anders summed up the meaning of Trinity in 1956 when he remarked that the test had given rise to a new ontology of the human as "cosmic parvenus . . . usurpers of apocalypse," who had now replaced the godly power of "creatio ex nihilo" with its demonic other, "potestas annhiliationis" or "reductio ad nihil."2 The concentration camps, he explained, expanded the truism that "all men are mortal" into a new lethal proposition: "All men are exterminable." But nuclear weapons initiated "a new historical epoch" with an even more expansive caption: "Mankind as a whole is exterminable."3 Previous wars had destroyed "'merely' people, cities, empires or cultures," but humanity in some form always survived.4 Now humanity and everything that grants the species immortality, its history and archives, was subject to immediate and remainderless erasure. Like many midcentury philosophers, Anders envisions a future thermonuclear war so devastating that it erases time altogether, catapulting our dead planet into a cosmic no-man's-land and inhuman temporality. "All history [before Trinity] is now reduced to prehistory." In this, "the Last Age" ("even if it should last forever"), human existence is summed up in the paradox of "not yet being non-existing." Trinity marks the beginning of "the possibility of self-extinction" that "can never end, but by the end itself."5 In 2015 the Anthropocene Working Group of the International Commission on Stratigraphy returned to the Trinity time stamp as the start date for the Great Acceleration and thus also the proposed Anthropocene epoch. The fallout from...

Общественные движения как смысловые сети: построение ментальной карты кампании антиядерного движения 2012 года в Японии

Общественные движения как смысловые сети: построение ментальной карты кампании антиядерного движения 2012 года в Японии

Risques invisibles et communication institutionnelle : le cas des films sur les centrales nucléaires en Grande-Bretagne (1956-1982).

At the start of the British nuclear programmes, most technological choices were made away from public scrutiny and behind closed doors. Early nuclear decision making was backed by the rationale that British citizens lacked technical and specialised knowledge to make informed decisions on nuclear questions. The emergence of public debates on nuclear risks was thus greatly hindered by limited public communication. However, this technocratic decision-making model came under fire in the wake of the 1957 Windscale accident and the rise of environmental opposition throughout the 1960s. The environmental risks of contamination, pollution, and radiation became a source of heightened tension between industry and anti-nuclear activists. This paper aims at exploring the impact of the rise in public environmental anxiety on state-sponsored television footage released between the late 1950s and the early 1980s. Analysing television footage helps identify the institutional communication strategies used to negotiate the British public’s understanding and acceptance of nuclear-induced environmental risks between 1956 and 1982. This analysis suggests that the industry’s communication approach was only cosmetically altered by this changing context. It contends that, if these cultural productions participated in constructing a more nuanced depiction of nuclear risks, they nonetheless remained based on the idea that citizen opposition mostly reflected deficiencies in scientific literacy.