Introduction: British nuclear culture

Abstract

In the extended introduction to this special issue on British nuclear culture, the guest editors outline the main historiographical and conceptual contours of British nuclear scholarship, and explore whether we can begin to define 'British nuclear culture' before introducing the contributors to this special issue, whose work we have organized into three broad areas. The first part is devoted to three articles that offer explicit and extended attempts to reconceptualize British nuclear culture, illuminating the complex links between nuclear science, the state and the individual citizen. The second part of this issue is devoted to three articles that concentrate on aspects of the history of nuclear science -focusing particularly on intellectuals, nuclear scientists and enthusiasts -alongside analysis of the popularization of nuclear science as well as the relationship between the state and nuclear science and its practitioners. In the third part, four articles examine the diverse ways in which 'official' narratives of the atomic age can be questioned, disrupted or enhanced by analysing the significance of journalistic, anti-nuclear and fictional narratives to the development of nuclear culture in Britain.In the last decade or so, humanities-based nuclear scholarship has expanded and diversified significantly, and there has been steady refinement of the conceptual and methodological frameworks used in the field. This applies to British nuclear scholarship too. To help explain this trend in the British context, we can look to the increased interest in cultural studies of the Cold War era, the continued release of official documentation under the Freedom of Information Act (2005), the emergence of new and varied source materials, the expansion of research possibilities opened up by digital archiving, and the influence of the imaginative and ambitious insights of nuclear scholars worldwide. Most recently, the aftermath of the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan in March 2011 saw the re-emergence of global nuclear 'motifs' such as that of Ulrich Beck's 'risk society'. 1 Aligned with continuing uncertainty over nuclear proliferation, this special issue on British nuclear culture seems especially timely in a period when nuclear debates are being revisited.But what precisely is 'British nuclear culture'? This question lies at the heart of this special issue, which brings together specialists from various fields, including the history of science and technology, cultural and social history, political and diplomatic history,

Risques invisibles et communication institutionnelle : le cas des films sur les centrales nucléaires en Grande-Bretagne (1956-1982).

“…This analysis therefore partakes in a general rise in interest in nuclear power narratives, as illustrated by the special issue of the British Society for the History of Science on the British Nuclear State. 39 This analysis of the way environmental risks were dealt with on TV helps draw several conclusions. Firstly, environmental risks are tightly intertwined with the understanding of the capacities and roles of the citizens, as opposed to official scientific expertise.…”

Fun and fear: The banalization of nuclear technologies through display

“…The literature on the cultural history of the nuclear is huge. See, among many others, Boyer, ; Josephson, ; Henriksen, ; Abraham, ; Bigg & Hennig, ; Hogg & Laucht, ; van Lente, ; Hogg, . For an overview of recent research in nuclear history, see Kalmbach, .…”