Doctoral Dissertation Research: Rocks and Reactors: The Origins of Radiation Exposure Disparity, 1941-1979
This research investigates how different standards for contamination became acceptable norms at different organizational settings and stages in the nuclear fuel chain. It compares radiation safety as practiced at Atoms for Peace research reactor laboratories and at southwestern United States uranium mines. Archival and secondary literature is used to investigate how radiation safety was instituted internationally at academic research reactors, but not extended to those most directly affected by radiation pollution?indigenous subsistence communities located where a high proportion of the nuclear fuel chain activities (mining, milling, production, use, and storage of nuclear materials) occur worldwide.
It advances scholarship on the inclusion, exclusion, and exchange of scientific knowledge and practice between diverse cultures at research reactors and mining sites. It demonstrates how the differential regulation of the same technological product can occur, and finally, it fills an important gap in the history of nuclear technologies, by placing the regulation of nuclear reactors at the center of analysis.
This research explains the complex history of radiation standard setting so that a broader public can participate and contribute to discussions and decisions on environmental justice and nuclear history. In addition, it develops new teaching tools, and disseminates and builds knowledge through workshops on radiation exposure in which indigenous groups, research scientists and historians are active participants.
The NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant supported research to expand the global and holistic view of the history of radiation health safety for Linda Richards’ dissertation "Rocks and Reactors: The Origins of Radiation Exposure Disparity 1941-1979." Photographs of 24,830 pages of documents were collected during 4 months of NSF supported travel to international and North American archives and uranium mining sites. "Rocks and Reactors" examines various conceptions of safety at critical junctures during the Cold War to deepen knowledge of the social context of radiation health safety science. The expansion of nuclear science worldwide was aided by the availability of uranium and by American academics that built trust in the health physics field. This dissertation asks how markedly different levels of contamination became acceptable norms at different settings and stages in the nuclear fuel chain (the mining, milling, production, testing, use and storage of nuclear materials). To simplify an often confusing science, a comparison is made between the conduct of radiation health safety at Atoms for Peace research reactors and indigenous uranium mining sites. NSF supported European travel to several key archives for this research: the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna and in Geneva, visits to CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), the United Nations Office Geneva (UNOG), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the International Labor Organization (ILO). Records were collected in North America at the Navajo Nation Museum and Library Archives in Window Rock Arizona; the nonprofit Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque New Mexico; the nonprofit Defenders of the Black Hills in Rapid City, North Dakota; the Elliot Lake Uranium Mining Museum; the nonprofit MiningWatch Canda in Ottawa; and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Board Archives in Ottawa, Canada. Uranium mining sites were also visited on the Navajo Nation, Pine Ridge, South Dakota and Elliot Lake, Canada. In Washington DC, archival research was conducted at the National Archives and Research Center II in College Park; the National Academies of Science Archives in Washington DC; the U.S. Library of Medicine in Bethesda, MD; and the North Carolina State University (NCSU) Archives in Raleigh, North Carolina. Radiation health safety history is contested, and is disconnected from the larger narratives of human rights and nuclear history. "Rocks and Reactors" intends to contribute new knowledge and make visible how environmental injustices became embedded in inconsistent protection regimes. In addition, the work will answer the call of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in 2007 for civil society to take action to integrate the "UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples" into education and policy. The ongoing lack of attention to the implementation for equal protection under the law concerning radiation health safety amplifies the need for research which can connect studies of environmental injustice with the history of science discipline. In the present expansion of nuclear power, where non-democratic procedures have resulted in nuclear energy being promoted as a de facto energy solution to global warming, the public can only benefit from increased dialogue on nuclear history, environmental justice, and human rights. The larger issue of human sustainability is at stake. Work that incorporates previously disconnected histories informs and provides essential points of view that have often been excluded in current discussions of nuclear expansion. By utilizing formerly incongruent factors such as research reactors and indigenous mining communities within a clear narrative, the dissertation will simplify a confusing history so a broader public can engage and contribute to public policy and regulatory decisions. The product of this research, the dissertation, will be completed by September of 2014. Aspects of the research will be posted as teaching modules for the public and k-12 and college teachers before the summer of 2015.
