Description
Communities which become home to nuclear facilities are subject to fundamental change. This is experienced when they are first constructed, often accompanied by a population influx and a new built environment. Change of a different kind, however, occurs when nuclear facilities reach the end of their working lives and enter decommissioning, with job losses and associated social instability: both arrival and departure are state-mandated processes.
For communities around such sites, ‘the nuclear’ is part of the everyday, and has been since they were constructed up to 60 or 70 years ago. Rather than something unusual, nuclear facilities become part of a way-of-life. ‘Everyday nuclearity’ (Hecht 2012), is one aspect that differentiates nuclear sites from other locations of deindustrialisation, with them identified as different from common case studies: thus, the histories and consequences of decommissioning have rarely been discussed in academic work on deindustrialisation. As a relatively recent occurrence, this is perhaps unsurprising. Yet a growing body of scholarship is focusing attention on decommissioning communities, showing how public engagement, heritage activities and creative practices can help navigate disruption caused by what is, at heart, a political act.
This paper will use examples drawn from nuclear energy sites in Lithuania, Sweden and the UK to show how this current form of deindustrialisation presents researchers, practitioners and industry representatives with a unique chance to shape legacies whilst change is underway, rather than after the industry has gone.
