Emplacement Concept Research Articles

Before amplification: the role of experts in the dynamics of the social attenuation and amplification of risk

In this article, we use system/network theory together with the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) to show how expert actors over time and across multiple events can contribute to social risk amplification and attenuation. The framework and the theory, in particular the concepts of risk emplacement and displacement, are employed in the analysis of an illustrative case related to the use of the feed additive, narasin, and provide explanations of how risks are part of continuously ongoing and dynamic social processes. By emphasizing the role of experts in such developments, connecting what happens in expert communities with the processing of risks and effects on the outside, the analysis shows the larger context within which social risk attenuation and amplification happen. Showing the value of integrating different theories and perspectives, this article lays the foundations for further studies of risk amplification and attenuation dynamics. Based on the results of the analysis, we indicate opportunities to update and further develop the SARF. We also present some implications for public policy and risk management practices including addressing the positive contributions of risk amplification and how this relates to adaptive risk management approaches.

Domain dichotomy and sociolinguistic inequality in Philippine museum spaces

Abstract The prevailing notion on the scholastic domains of English and Filipino is that the former is used for science, whereas the latter is reserved for the social sciences. Despite its questionable veracity, this domain dichotomy has nevertheless been adopted in Philippine education, particularly in the 1974 Bilingual Education Policy (Sibayan, 1978; Gonzalez, 1990). Using Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) concept of emplacement and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996) information value as theoretical points of departure and Tupas’ (2008, 2015a) ‘Unequal Englishes’ paradigm as an analytical framework, this paper investigates whether this dichotomy has permeated into the Linguistic Landscapes of two national museums in Manila. It finds that there is a strong tendency for the natural history museum to privilege English in bilingual signs and the anthropological museum to privilege Filipino, thereby suggesting that this split has already been reified in language practices outside the realm of education policy making and politics.

Applicability of multi-criteria decision analysis in the site selection procedure for high-level radioactive waste final disposal: robustness-oriented comparison of emplacement concepts

Abstract. The verbal and argumentative approach predominantly practiced in previous repository projects is only comprehensible to the general public to a limited extent (FKT, 2021; Blattman et al., 2023). One option to improve the transparency and the comprehensibility of decision-making processes is to supplement verbal and argumentative approaches with multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) (Geldermann and Lerche, 2014; Frieling et al., 2020; Blattman et al., 2023). In nuclear waste management, MCDA has been used sporadically with respect to disposal strategies and site selection procedures (Achillas et al., 2013; Frieling et al., 2020). For the German site selection procedure, Frieling et al. (2020) identified the potential suitability as well as the development and testing needs of MCDA. Collaborators of the Chair of Repository Safety at RWTH Aachen University are investigating the applicability of MCDA for specific decision problems in the German site selection procedure. One decision problem is the emplacement of high-level radioactive waste (HLW) packages, which is being researched in the context of a doctoral thesis. For this decision problem, influencing factors and interdependencies between decision criteria, for example operational and long-term safety, and between other decision processes in the site selection procedure need to be considered. In the research project presented here, the emplacement of radioactive waste packages is categorized into three concepts: (1) drift emplacement and (2) horizontal and (3) vertical borehole emplacement. All concepts are tracked internationally. In principle, the Bundesgesellschaft für Endlagerung (BGE) evaluates the three concepts as feasible. However, for the performance of the representative preliminary safety investigation (rvSU), the drift emplacement concept is preferred, which is verbally and argumentatively weighed in BGE (2022). In this present research, the applicability of MCDA to the decision of the emplacement concept with respect to the German site selection process is explored in four main iterative steps based on Belton and Stewart (2003): (1) decision problem definition, (2) problem structuring, (3) decision model creation, and (4) verification. Currently the decision problem is being structured. Preliminarily, testing of the applicability of the sequential MCDA methods Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE) I and II is planned, although the method selection has not been finalized (Brans, 1982; Brans and de Smet, 2016). Furthermore, the combination of different MCDA methods will be elicited. The expected outcome of the research project is a basic decision model for robustness-based comparisons of disposal concepts of HLW. The decision model has the potential to provide decision support and to identify areas for further research regarding safety investigations as well as an increase in transparency, understanding, and acceptance in the site selection procedure. When MCDA methods are adequately applied by the decision maker, benefits are possible in terms of problem structuring, information processing, integration of qualitative and quantitative factors, deeper insights into relevant factors, and identification of compromises (Geldermann and Lerche, 2014; Frieling et al., 2020). Furthermore, the research results are particularly significant for international site selection procedures that are at the beginning of the selection procedure or at a comparable level in the German procedure.

Evaluation of retrieval concepts for high-level radioactive waste from a deep geological disposal in operation

Abstract. This research project evaluates retrieval concepts. For this purpose, an evaluation method for assessing retrieval concepts is developed. Safety-relevant criteria for the evaluation of individual retrieval measures and the technically necessary components have to be identified. The criteria are developed on the basis of generic, host-rock-specific concepts. Different national and international retrieval concepts are considered. Different repository concepts (host rocks and technical concepts) require different retrieval concepts. The influences and effects of implementing the requirement for retrievability must already be identified and evaluated in the scope of the representative preliminary safety assessment (rvSU) included in the site selection procedure in Germany. This requires a suitable evaluation method that facilitates an assessment and classification of the different concepts, based on their measures for retrievability and their safety-related impacts. Both host-rock-specific requirements and different emplacement concepts (borehole and drift emplacement) must be considered. The BASE (German Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management) research project “Evaluation of Retrieval Concepts” (BeRK) addresses the following research questions: how could different retrievability measures and specific retrieval concepts be comparatively evaluated? How can measures for implementing and optimising retrievability be assessed in terms of their safety significance? How can trade-offs be reconstructed? The criteria to be developed and their derivation are to be presented in a comprehensible manner and are compiled in a criteria catalogue. The research project contributes to a better understanding of the repository designs with regard to a possible retrievability and allows for better assessments regarding the preliminary safety assessments.

Forced Emplacement

Abstract As intensifying floods and other climate extremes proliferate, narratives of unidirectional climate migration have become ubiquitous in media coverage and policy debates. This article reviews new scholarship that attends to an underreported dimension of climate change impact exposure. Emerging conversations in Indigenous climate justice research, mobility studies, and critical urban adaptation scholarship seek to understand why so many marginalized communities find themselves immobilized in the face of climate extremes. I argue that these scholars are building a concept of forced emplacement to politicize and historicize the uneven distribution of climate harms. Drawing on this scholarship and brief ethnographic sketches from my work in Peru and the Maldives, I follow forced emplacement across diverse case studies that root devastating immobilizations from flooding in local histories of colonial confinement, unevenly policed mobility, and varied efforts to control marginalized populations. I also illuminate how climate-exposed communities contest adaptation projects that reproduce their immobilization.

Impact of the compaction behavior of crushed salt on the thermo-hydro-mechanical response of a generic salt repository for heat-generating nuclear waste

Salt formations are a promising host rock for the disposal of heat-emitting nuclear waste due to their ability to heal fractures, high thermal conductivity, and near-zero permeability. This study investigates the concept of waste emplacement in salt formations by placing waste packages in drifts and backfilling them with crushed salt. The aim is to minimize fracturing and restore the initial properties of the host rock.One of the key issues in assessing the safety and performance of nuclear waste repositories in salt is determining the reconsolidation rate of the crushed salt backfill, which has been traditionally predicted using the C-WIPP model. However, this model was calibrated using data from uniaxial oedometer lab tests, where specimens with high initial porosity values have been compacted to medium porosity values. The observed compaction behavior has then been extrapolated to the low porosity range, leading to a prediction of rapid full reconsolidation of the backfill in less than 20 years. In contrast, the new C-WIPP/TUC model used in this study was calibrated for the medium porosity range, between 17% and 8%, based on more suitable triaxial lab tests. Using coupled Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical (THM) simulations with the TOUGH-FLAC simulator, it was found that the C-WIPP/TUC model predicts a slower reconsolidation rate of the backfill compared to the C-WIPP model, with an average porosity of the backfill remaining roughly 10 times that of natural salt after 10,000 years. The effects of the relatively slow reconsolidation of the crushed salt backfill on the THM behavior of the repository are also examined, highlighting the importance of accurately capturing the behavior of crushed salt for the study of the long-term integrity of a nuclear waste repository in salt.

An overview of the Canadian nuclear waste corrosion program

AbstractOver the past decade, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization has conducted a thorough proof test plan (PTP) to evaluate their novel copper‐coated used fuel container and bentonite buffer box underground emplacement concept for use in a deep geological repository (DGR). This PTP has included the development of new technologies as well as feasibility studies related to engineered barrier production, underground emplacement, and safety assessment of the technologies within a DGR. Although the PTP was winding down in 2022, many work packages continue, particularly those associated with the evaluation of the corrosion performance of the used fuel container, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO)'s copper corrosion allowance. This work evaluates the extent of corrosion that may result from oxic‐, radiolytic‐, anoxic‐, and sulfide‐induced corrosion which may occur in the Canadian DGR. Particular attention is paid to assessing the potential for localized corrosion phenomena across each project. This article provides an overview of these work packages which support a lifetime corrosion expectation of 270 µm and an extreme upper bound of corrosion of 1204 µm over one million years.

The grass versus the people: sacred roots of environmental conflict in the Chilonga communal lands in Zimbabwe

This article analyses a conflict that erupted in 2021 between the government of Zimbabwe and the people of Chilonga in the south of the country over the expropriation of their ancestral for the production of lucerne grass. The people of Chilonga resisted being displaced from land to which they are deeply attached and have a sacred connection. This conflict provides a rare opportunity to analyze the often marginalized, muted and misunderstood sacred roots of the environmental conflict that shape collective agency. The article uses the concepts of emplacement and disemplacement to comprehend the deeper and more intangible impacts of displacing people from their grazing lands, sources of water and traditional herbs and medicines, and sacred sites—natural resources they claim to be sacred. Thus, while disemplacement has been used to explain why people find themselves moving, the article uses it to show the opposite: why they resist moving and demonstrate the not easily measured losses upon which resistance to moving hinges.

The M\xf6bius strip of market spatiality: mobilizing transdisciplinary dialogues between CCT and the marketing mainstream

This paper develops the Möbius strip as an ‘ordering theory’ (Sandberg and Alvesson, 2020) that brings CCT studies into dialogue with mainstream marketing approaches. The aim is to work toward a transdisciplinary understanding of market spatiality, a topic that has become increasingly important for theorists and practitioners (Warnaby and Medway, 2013; Castilhos et al., 2016; Chatzidakis et al., 2018). Building on psychosocial interpretations of the Möbius strip as a ‘tactical’ way of thinking, a range of insights and ideas are organized along a single strip of theorization. This paper maps a continuous plane of logic between the concepts of space, place, emplacement, spatiality, implacement, and displacement. The potential applications of the Möbius strip are then demonstrated by showing how the transdisciplinary topic of ‘atmosphere’ can be theorized from multiple perspectives. The paper concludes by exploring how the Möbius strip might also be employed in other areas of marketing theory and practice, potentially generating further transdisciplinary conversations between CCT and the marketing mainstream.

An update on the copper corrosion program for the long‐term management of used nuclear fuel in Canada

AbstractIn 2012, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization developed a comprehensive proof test plan (PTP) to evaluate the feasibility and safety of their copper‐coated used fuel container and their novel bentonite buffer box emplacement concept to be employed in its proposed deep geological repository for the long‐term management of used nuclear fuel. Research within the PTP includes several programs to evaluate the possible extent of damage that may be caused by various copper corrosion mechanisms: oxic‐, radiolytic‐, anoxic‐, and sulfide‐induced, with particular attention being paid to the possibility of localization of any of these processes. Programs remain on track to support and refine a maximum copper corrosion allowance of <1.27 mm over a one million year emplacement in a deep geological repository.

Stedssensitive interviews

The purpose of the article is to rethink interviews methods through an attention to where the interview takes place and through this develop interview method that nuance sensory aspects of practices. Through Michel de Certeau’s anthropological understanding of everyday practices, a place-sensitive perspective, inspired by place phenomenologist Edwards Casey and anthropologist Sarah Pink's concept of emplacement, the article reflects and explore what these concepts make us achieve when it comes to constructing a deeper understanding for practices. The article analyzes empirical material of an interview situation and argues that sensory aspects of practice can be generated through a place-sensitive interview. The author points at a tendency within interview methodology where the place of the interview often is understood and treated as tabula rasa and reduced to considerations of convenience and comfort. This tendency reveals an insufficient methodological recognition of the significance of place for interview knowledge constructions. Based on an empirical material generated in an ethnographic field work, the article nuances how researchers can activate his body and senses in interview contexts, create concrete grasp of place and at the same time ask practice specific questions in situ. The article aims towards professionals who work with interviews as methodological approach and the author of the article calls for place to be the subject of reflection, on equal level with interview dimensions such as questions and ethics.

Interviews that attend to emplacement: the “walk-through” method

Within library and information studies (LIS), there is growing awareness of the role ofthe body and its surroundings in people’s information and knowledge experiences.Predominant data collection methods, such as the sit-down interview, should bereexamined in light of this awareness. This paper examines interview methodstheoretically and empirically. First, this paper introduces the concept of emplacement, theinterrelationship of body, mind, and place, as a useful lens for challenging conventionalinterviewing practices. Second, this paper delineates the “walk-through” interview, whichin a study of undergraduates’ information behaviours prompted richer detail fromparticipants than did “sit-down” interviews. **Awarded Best Overall Conference Paper **

Re-evaluation of the required thickness of the carbon steel overpack for high-level radioactive waste disposal in Japan based on the latest scientific and engineering knowledge

ABSTRACTThe required thickness of the carbon steel overpack for high-level radioactive waste geological disposal in Japan was re-evaluated based on the latest scientific and engineering knowledge. The re-evaluation of the required thickness was carried out for the concept of vertical emplacement in a hard rock system (which requires the greatest overpack thickness). The re-evaluation was carried out to meet design requirements for corrosion resistance, structural integrity and the prevention/reduction of detrimental radiation effects on corrosion resistance. The re-evaluated minimum thicknesses to assure a lifetime greater than 1000 years were 122 mm for the flat end plate and 91 mm for the cylindrical body. Therefore, the applicability of the reference thickness (190 mm) for the overpack was reconfirmed.This paper is part of a supplement on the 6th International Workshop on Long-Term Prediction of Corrosion Damage in Nuclear Waste Systems.

Education unbound? Enlivening debates with a mobilities perspective on learning

This paper contributes to recent debates on the geographies of education. I argue that research in geography over the past decade has conceptualized education principally in terms of attachment to – and boundedness within – particular (often institutional) places and spaces. Yet a productive tension has emerged in contemporary scholarship around the competing concepts of mobilities and emplacement. The paper considers what the ‘mobilities turn’ offers for understanding geographies of education and learning, with a focus on ripple effects, structures and subject positionings. Four different but related bodies of work are identified that productively engage a notion of ‘mobilities’ to challenge bounded conceptions of education through their focus on (i) community and mobility; (ii) ‘alternative’ spaces of education; (iii) student mobilities; and (iv) embedded institutional capital and internationalization. Through the lens of mobilities, the paper advances research agendas within both geography (on ‘geographies of education’) and cognate disciplines (such as sociology and education).

Still ‘migrants’ after all those years: foundational mobilities, temporal frames and emplacement of migrants

ABSTRACTThis article concentrates on the ‘post migrant’ perspective formulated by migration scholars and cultural producers in to analyse migrant subjectivities, and practices beyond the culturalising and ethnicising logics of migration scholarship and public debates. I put the spatial and temporal frameworks informing this approach to migrant dynamics under scrutiny and argue that this concept remains of limited analytical value as it denies migrants coevalness with ‘non-migrants’. I suggest an alternative perspective deploying concepts of displacement, disposession and emplacement, which might allow us to avoid the spatial and temporal impediments of the post migrant perspective and would instead facilitate us to approach migrants and non-migrants from within a common analytical lens. In the last part of the article, I situate the strategic success of the post migrant intervention in Vienna, despite its analytical fault lines, within the scalar dynamics of city making at a particular conjuncture in time.

Emplacement and resistance: Social and political complexities in development‐induced displacement in Papua New Guinea

This paper argues that attending to social and political factors in development‐induced displacement is critical even for projects that involve resettlement of small populations. Taking the resettlement of two villages by the Lihir Gold Mine in Papua New Guinea as a unique case study, I analyse why one village was relatively successfully resettled, while the other has been very complicated, leading to hostility and conflict. In these cases the initial focus of all concerned in reaching a resettlement agreement was on the adequacy of compensation and housing, which mimicked the focus in the literature during the 1990s on impoverishment and compensation. From the late 1990s there have been calls for greater attention to social and political aspects of displacement and resettlement. Early attention to these factors in the Lihir case, particularly the key concepts of emplacement and disemplacement, would have highlighted flaws in the resettlement agreement and would have made it easier to avert the conflict and resistance that arose.

Migration and place

Many memories and narratives of migration foreground the concepts of movement and emplacement. In this article, the concept of emplacement relates in particular to an understanding of place as a porous space in which social relations converge, meet, clash, change and evolve. At the same time, as argued by Massey, the social relations that make a certain place unique are not all included within the place itself. This is particularly true for migrants, whose emplacement cannot be understood independently from their transnational and translocal forms of knowledge and social relations. Thus emplacement here is understood as a complex process of geographical, social and cultural reorientation and negotiation. As spaces of complex and gradual emplacement, places are not rigidly delimited and defined. Nor are they simply connected to essentialised identities — for instance, through nostalgic memories and discourse. Rather, they are constantly influenced and modified by changes in social relations within and beyond the place itself.

Emplaced writing figuring as a manifestation of an ecocentric mindset in the narrative art of Petra Müller

The human-earth connection is a sustained theme in Petra Müller’s oeuvre. The article focuses on this connection as reflected in her narrative art, specifically in accounts that have an autobiographical proclivity. The aim of this article is to outline the nature-centred disposition of Müller’s narrative art in a more definite sense. This is achieved by paying attention to the manner in which the author (the ‘I’ in accounts where the narrator can be identified as the author herself) becomes part of the natural environment – whether on a sensory, an emotive, or an intellectual level – where she finds herself and the way she responds to it. At the core of the investigation are the ways in which this reactive engagement is manifested in Müller’s prose work by the implied author and the technique ofemplaced writing. Emplaced writing, a concept created by Linda Russo, was integrated by Susan Smith with Lawrence Buell’s concept of emplacement. This term refers to the technique allowing an active awareness of self and the place physically occupied by the author, as well as how that body fits into this place, to find expression. A broader perspective and greater appreciation of Müller’s work are drawn from the insight into how her close coexistence with the earth is reflected in her narrative art by means of the technique of emplaced writing which is explored in this article as it gives voice to a strong ecocentric disposition.

Ardnamurchan 3D cone-sheet architecture explained by a single elongate magma chamber

The Palaeogene Ardnamurchan central igneous complex, NW Scotland, was a defining place for the development of the classic concepts of cone-sheet and ring-dyke emplacement and has thus fundamentally influenced our thinking on subvolcanic structures. We have used the available structural information on Ardnamurchan to project the underlying three-dimensional (3D) cone-sheet structure. Here we show that a single elongate magma chamber likely acted as the source of the cone-sheet swarm(s) instead of the traditionally accepted model of three successive centres. This proposal is supported by the ridge-like morphology of the Ardnamurchan volcano and is consistent with the depth and elongation of the gravity anomaly underlying the peninsula. Our model challenges the traditional model of cone-sheet emplacement at Ardnamurchan that involves successive but independent centres in favour of a more dynamical one that involves a single, but elongate and progressively evolving magma chamber system.

Locating migrant pathways of economic emplacement: Thinking beyond the ethnic lens

This article reinforces the calls, including those articulated by the editors of this special issue, for scholarship that does not rely on an ethnic lens to study migrant practices, socialities and identities. We offer a concept of migrant emplacement that focuses analytical attention on the relationship between the economic, political and cultural positioning of cities within broader networks of power and the ability of migrants to forge a place for themselves within a specific locality. Using the example of Halle/Saale in eastern Germany but calling for comparative research, the article notes the synergies between urban regeneration and rebranding efforts and the emplacement of migrants in that city through local situated and transnationally connected small businesses. Time is also shown to be a factor: a welcoming ambience and opportunity structure in urban regeneration at one point can be replaced by a reduction in possibilities at a later period.