MSU faculty’s research—science and technology studies—finds significance in era of renewed nuclear energy efforts

by Sam Kealhofer, Intern on the A&S Research Support Team

Policy makers and commentators in the U.S. now predict that nuclear energy is set to have a resurgence in America as both major political parties give their endorsement for the first time in more than 40 years. With research in science and technology studies—particularly regarding nuclear security, nuclear decommissioning and waste disposal, radioecology and technopolitics—Mississippi State University’s Department of History Assistant Professor Davide Orsini provides expert insight into the renewed nuclear energy efforts.

In late August, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a design for a first-ever small modular reactor by Portland-based NuScale Power. The project calls for the construction of 12 reactors, with the first to be built in eastern Idaho in 2029.

Orsini’s research demonstrates that certain technologies, like nuclear power plants, can have profound impacts on the environment, societies and politics. The emplacement and displacement of nuclear power plants have deep and long-term socio-ecological implications, which Orsini said should be taken into account when discussing the possibility of a nuclear renaissance as a strategy to curb carbon emissions due to climate change.

Orsini’s book manuscript, “Life in the Nuclear Archipelago: Cold War Technopolitics and U.S. Nuclear Submarines in Italy,” is based on years of multi-sited archival and ethnographic research in Italy. His work highlights the ecological, public health, and political consequences following the installation of a U.S. Navy base for nuclear submarines in the archipelago of La Maddalena (Sardinia) between 1972 and 2008.

Orsini’s forthcoming article, “Taking samples: an envirotechnical account of radioecology in the Mediterranean Sea during the Cold War,” explores how Italian biologists, geologists, meteorologists and mathematicians developed a set of methods to study the environmental effects of the nuclear Navy base, explaining that these efforts contributed to establish a new multidisciplinary field of science called radioecology.

In his recent article, “Signs of risk: Materiality, History, and Meaning in Cold War Controversies over Nuclear Contamination,” Orsini explains how non-experts use environmental and bodily signs as evidence of nuclear contamination—or lack thereof. Given the sensorial disorientation caused by the imperceptibility of radiation, both experts and non-experts need tangible evidence to objectify radiological risk, Orsini said.

Orsini said similar insight might be applied to understand risk perceptions during the current pandemic, as the virus, like invisible radiation, constitutes a challenge for the conduct of everyday activities. Orsini’s current article research explores the ethical affordances of wearing masks. He argues that masks are not simply personal protective equipment, but signs of risk that help humans frame the contexts in which they move and live as risky, and therefore invite individuals to behave safely. At the same time, wearing masks—or not wearing them—is a sign of the inner beliefs of individuals and afford others to make ethical and political judgements based on a set of assumptions. Orsini’s research suggests masks are protective devices, but also are objects saturated with political and ethical implications.  

Orsini’s next book-length project, tentatively titled “Half-lives/Afterlives: Labor, Technology, Nature, and the Nuclear Decommissioning Business,” explores the still missing history of the nuclear decommissioning industry. The project investigates the efforts involved in dismantling a nuclear plant and all the resulting issues, such as national and international safety regulations, environmental restoration, waste storage, spent fuel reprocessing, transportation of hazardous materials and international security. 

As the nation looks to new and environmentally-conscious modes of energy, Orsini’s experience in the relatively new field of science and technology studies provides expert analyzation of the complex interactions between scientific knowledge and ethics, culture and politics, as well as public and environmental policy. 

In an effort to contribute solutions to the various challenges facing the nation, as well as insight into other points of interest, the College of Arts & Sciences will continue to highlight faculty research in our “Research in the Headlines” series each Monday and Wednesday. For more research in the headlines, visit https://www.cas.msstate.edu/research/researchintheheadlines/; and for information about the College of Arts & Sciences or the Department of History visit https://www.cas.msstate.edu/ or https://www.history.msstate.edu/.