Alicia Gutting is a PhD candidate in the ERC-project Nuclearwaters at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment. In her thesis „The Nuclear Rhine“ Alicia is researching transnational nuclear risk perception in Austria, Switzerland, France and Germany from the 1960s to 2018. In January Alicia was published in Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy with the article What is good drinking water?: 41 Years of risk perception on water quality in the vicinity of the Nuclear Research Centre Karlsruhe, 1956–1997. Follow the link below for open access!
In: Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy, ISSN 1944-4079, E-ISSN 1944-4079, p. 1-23Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
This article traces the historical evolution of risk perception around the Nuclear Research Centre Karlsruhe, Germany, from 1956 to 1997. It does so by targeting the evolution of water-related risks. Federal hopes in the postwar era that the Nuclear Research Centre would bring progress and prosperity clashed with local values and local perception of nuclear engineering as dangerous to health and the environment. Various conflicts arose and opponents made use of their past lived-knowledge to foster their arguments against future decision-making, mobilizing stories from the past to shape the future. The conflict culminated in the 1990s, when the municipality decided to lease the Centre’s waterworks for future drinking water supply. The main argument of the article is that even though the public discourse shifted over the years from water pollution toward greater risks such as nuclear meltdowns, the local risk perception stayed with the water-related risks. The article shows how the locals perceived and narrated their risk perception against the decision-making of authorities as well as against the reasoning of scientists and experts.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Hoboken: Wiley , 2023. p. 1-23
Keywords [en]
drinking water, Rhine river, risk narratives, risk perception, water quality
Welcome to join a mid-seminar in doctoral education on zoom!
FEBRUARY 10, 2023, at 13.15-15.00 CET Between Internationalism and Nationalism HIV/AIDS response in Mozambique, 1986-2020 Araújo Domingos, PhD Student
Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Supervisors: Nina Wormbs, Urban Lundberg and Sandra Manuel
Opponent: Henrik Ernstson
Araújo came to the Division in 2018, as a doctoral student in the collaborative project CHEPIS – Strengthening African higher education research and expertise, where the Division has a part. Read more on the project homepage!
Araújo’s main focus is to understand how Mozambique has responded to HIV/AIDS from 1986 to 2020. Email history@abe.kth.se for the zoom link to the seminar!
We are very glad to announce that Lize-Marié Hansen van der Watt is the next Head of the Division History of Science, Technology and Environment as Sabine Höhler stepped down at the end of the year.
After six and a half years, Sabine Höhler stepped down as the head of the Division and leaves the position to Lize-Marié Hansen van der Watt. Lize-Marié has her doctorate from Stellenbosch university, South Africa and came to Sweden and the Division in 2012. Her research is within histories of polar pasts and polar futures, with a focus on the intersection between the environment, science, cultural heritage and critical geopolitics in the Arctic and Antarctica. Currently she leads the project Decay Without Mourning, Future Thinking Heritage Practices, an international research project with three teams based in Sweden, South Africa and Brazil. The project explores foregrounding decay as a central concern of heritage studies.
Lize-Marié Hansen van der Watt, private picture
Lize-Marie has not only received external grants and published as single author and in collaboration with others during her time with us, but also held several commissions of trust at KTH. She has a good experience of our major tasks and the workings of Swedish academia.
A thing that sometimes causes confusion is that she publishes as Lize-Marié van der Watt, which is also her de facto name, but is often listed as Susanna Hansen van der Watt.
– Some things do not translate well in countries with highly digitalized bureaucracies, Lize-Marié says.
Lina Rahm, private picture
The appointment as head of division reaches from January 1st 2023 to December 31 in 2026. However, since Lize-Marié is expecting and will go on parental leave in March and for the rest of 2023, we are glad to announce Lina Rahm as the one to fill this position the first year. Lina arrived at the Division on a Ragnar Holm post doc during the pandemic and is now assistant professor with us since January 2022. Lina got her PhD in Linköping in 2019. Before that she worked within the cultural sector, where her focus was to make art and culture accessible to children and young people in small municipalities and regions. Lina’s research is focused on sociotechnical and educational imaginaries and she is currently activ in the Wallenberg (WASP HS) funded project AI Futures and Pasts: Educational and Ecotechnological Imaginaries.
As part of the division’s Higher Seminar schedule for the upcoming spring term, Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science at Göteborg University Johan Söderberg will present his new book “Resistance to the Current. The Dialectics of Hacking” (MIT Press, Nov. 2022). Together with his co-author Maxigas, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Media at Amsterdam University, our visitor investigated four historical case studies of hacker movements and their role in shaping a connected 21st century society.
Johan will visit us on 30 January, presenting at the higher seminar at 1.15-2.45pm, Stockholm time. The event is hosted in the seminar room at the division (Teknikringen 74 D, level 5). If you are interested, please come by and visit us!
Text: Alicia Gutting, doctoral student at the Division
The fun thing about writing a PhD thesis on the nuclear Rhine in Sweden is that it is actually necessary for me to visit the nuclear sites on the Rhine as well as local archives. My three supervisors and I therefore decided that it would be an enriching experience to spend some time at the Section of Economic, Social and Environmental History of the History Department at the University of Bern. In this rather fast-paced academic world, I wanted to get the most out of my stay as well as get to know fellow historians in Bern. Therefore, a three months visit from the beginning of October until the end of December sounded suitable. Having all the archives and the nuclear sites at my doorstep was also a major motivation to stay a little bit longer.
My plan was to use the time to focus on finishing two articles. Both these articles deal partially with the Swiss nuclear development as well as cooling water negotiations between Switzerland and Germany and the accompanying risks. I dreamt of being in Switzerland, taking the good air of Bern in and the articles would magically write themselves. This clearly did not happen. However, through a presentation of my work at the history department I received valuable input from Swiss colleagues. Some critical, which I very much appreciated, but mostly very positive and insightful. The discussion showed me that I am on the right track and that my work is still a research desideratum, even in Switzerland.
The second-last week of my stay in Switzerland was the absolute highlight of the whole three months. My main supervisor Per Högselius took the time to visit me for five days. We started with a day at the state archive in Aarau, where we looked at maps of the Beznau nuclear power plant. Beznau, built in 1969, is an especially interesting case as it is the first Swiss nuclear power plant. It is also the oldest operative nuclear power plant up until today. Apart from that it uses a freshwater cooling system and therefore does not cool the water down with the help of cooling towers. Per and I could take a close look at the significantly warmer water that was led back into the considerably small river Aare.
The NPP Beznau and one of its cooling water outlets
Before we visited Beznau, we went to see the newest nuclear power plant Leibstadt, built in 1984. When we just got out of the car, Per received a call from a journalist from the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. His expertise was requested on the Swedish nuclear power plant Ringhals and the current electricity prices in Sweden. This turned our field trip into a much more current issue than we had originally anticipated.
Per on the phone while looking at Leibstadt’s cooling tower
On our last day we went to see the Mühleberg nuclear power plant, which was decommissioned in 2019. Mühleberg was built from 1967-1971 also without a cooling tower. For builders of nuclear power plants this was the last chance to build without a cooling tower as Switzerland made them compulsory in 1971. What is also interesting is that Mühleberg is located above Lake Biel and the planners roughly calculated with the lake being able to diffuse the warm cooling water. The hope was that Mühleberg’s cooling water would not interfere with the cooling capacity of the Aare further downstream.
Mühleberg NPP with the hydro power plant Mühleberg upstream, which secured the cooling water supply
Apart from looking at nuclear power plants and maps of the area, Per and I had also the chance to present our work during a workshop on the nuclear renaissance by the Research Network Sustainable Future at the University of Basel. During the workshop different researchers from all kind of fields presented their findings on nuclear power and its potential future. We got to hear about the ethical side of nuclear power, in what way nuclear power plants are megaprojects and about the entanglement of the industry with the military concerning nuclear in the UK. With our presentation on the risk of warming rivers in a warming climate, we rounded up the theoretical discussions from the morning with case studies from the Rhine, the Elbe and the Danube.
This year is soon coming to an end and we are looking back on many memorable happenings, publications and events at the Division. Many you can find in the four newsletters that have been sent throughout the year: Division Newsletters
But as always, in parallel with wrapping up the old year – the new year is also in planning. In 2023 we look forward to some big changes. New projects on Carbon Transnationalism, The EHL will become a KTH Centre and the Division will get a new head. On top of that the administration at KTH is merging into a new organization and we have a new President! Luckily some things are kept as they have been though and one of those is our Higher Seminar series.
This coming spring we look forward to learn more about Nuclear-Water, political ecology and the research seminar as a community of practice. We have four doctoral students that are planning for their final seminars, and three additional that plan for their mid-seminars. Some of the seminars will be held on zoom, but most of them are on site in our own environment. Check out to full schedule here – some updates will come to it – and please drop by if you are in the neighborhood: Higher Seminar Spring 2023
Join us for a joyous celebration of the Environmental Humanities Laboratory’s past decade of activities and the launch of its new start as a KTH centre. The afternoon will consist of recapping the many activities of the EHL since its start in 2011/2012 under the leadership of Director Marco Armiero (“Wasteocene“) and hosting a roundtable on the purpose, importance, and future of environmental humanities research, in Sweden, Europe, and worldwide.
If you are interested who was involved during the last decade in the EHL’s activities, check out this list.
Join us for an afternoon of reflections, sharing, and discussions, followed by a mingle. Mark your calendars!
Katarina Larsen, researcher at the division, has recently been on a field trip to Colombia. While being in Guapi, a fishing town on the westcoast of the country, Katarina was interviewed by the Facultad de Minas de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia about the work of the Swedish delegation of the Econavipesca project (Sida funded) on-site. According to delegation member and KTH-student Gauri Salunkhe “The project aims to empower and uplift fishing communities in the municipality of Guapi by developing and implementing more sustainable artisanal fishing practices throughout the value chain.” Co-creation between locals and researchers as well as the role of women for change were prominent topics discussed both during the visit and in the interview.
Did you miss Rob Nixon and the Archipelago Lecture on November 10th? No worries! The recording is now up and can be watched below, with or without subtitles.
Abstract
Why have millions of readers and viewers become magnetized by the hitherto arcane field of plant communication? Since the great recession of 2008, we have witnessed an upsurge in public science writing that has popularized research into forest sentience, forest suffering and the forest as collective intelligence.
This talk roots the current appeal of forest communication in a widespread discontent with neoliberalism’s antipathy to cooperative ways of being. Nixon argues that the science of forest dynamics offers a counter-narrative of flourishing, an allegory for what George Monbiot has called “private sufficiency and public wealth.
About Rob Nixon
Rob Nixon is the Barron Family Professor in Environment and Humanities at Princeton University. His books include, most recently, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Nixon is currently completing a book entitled Blood at the Root. Environmental Martyrs and the Defense of Life.
Nixon writes frequently for the New York Times. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Guardian, The Nation, London Review of Books, The Village Voice, Aeon, Orion, Critical Inquiry and elsewhere.
Environmental justice struggles in the global South are central to Nixon’s work. He is a particularly fascinated by the animating role that artists can play in relation to social movements.
The Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment is extremely proud to present our colleague Nina Wormbs, who became Professor of History of Technology. This was in late 2019 but our festivities for the occasion were crossed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, finally, the time has come to applaud!
We meet at KTH in the lecture hall V3 on Teknikringen 72, floor 5, on Thursday 24 November from 2-3pm. Afterwards, we will celebrate and mingle at the division.
Nina’s lecture is titled “Without a title”. It may speak to Nina’s specialization, the history of information infrastructure, but no promises are made other than that this is going to be extremely interesting.
Author
What is good drinking water?: 41 Years of risk perception on water quality in the vicinity of the Nuclear Research Centre Karlsruhe, 1956–1997
