UNESCO

Cornelius Holtorf presented a paper entitled “Before it is too late? Narrating Nuclear Legacies Beyond Risk” in a session on “Nuclear Narratives” at the STREAMS – Transformative Environmental Humanities conference, organized by KTH, Stockholm (4 August 2021)

Nuclear narratives are most commonly stories of risk, whether that is the risk of radioactive contamination of the environment or, increasingly, the risk of loss of nuclear cultural heritage.

In his paper, Holtorf asked what it could mean to tell nuclear narratives and stories about nuclear cultural heritage that do not feature notions of risk. Such alternative nuclear narratives may be exemplified by pioneering nuclear artist James Acord’s explorations of practices of transmutation and alchemy and by the current political rehabilitation of nuclear energy for mitigating climate change, e.g. in the context of “Greens for nuclear energy“.