Conference's details

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Abstract

What happens to nuclear facilities when they become obsolete and need to retire? This question emerged already in the 1970s, when experts and policymakers realized that more attention had to be paid to the back-end of the nuclear energy cycle. Since then, the field of nuclear decommissioning has become one of the most relevant fields in the nuclear sector, but crucial questions have remained largely unexplored until recently: what are the socioecological implications of long and complex decommissioning projects? What happens to nuclear sites and host communities after decommissioning, and who decides? How much does it cost to decommission nuclear facilities? Who pays, and what funding schemes are in place to sustain the costs of decommissioning projects in different countries? Due to the variability of nuclear facilities’ technical, environmental, and socioeconomic characteristics, each decommissioning project presents site-specific challenges and opportunities. To capture the complexity and variety of decommissioning experiences, our project proposes a multidisciplinary and multisited research strategy that aims to offer a comprehensive view of the problem and of its concrete socioecological and economic reverberations at the community level. Our team uses a mix of research and communication tools: archival documentation, ethnographic observation, policy analysis, participatory workshops and open forums, and filmmaking. This mixed methodology enhances our ability to map out the relevant actors (both human and non-human) involved in decommissioning processes at multiple levels (international, national, regional) and to challenge current top-down expert approaches to decommissioning projects across different cultural, political, and regulatory contexts.

Brief biography

Anthropologist and historian of science and technology, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich

Helpful reading

About Davide Orsini’s recent work:

Orsini, Davide and Uwe Lübke. (2025). “(Dis)Empowered Communities: A Conversation with Davide Orsini.” Springs: The Rachel Carson Center Review, no. 8. DOI

Orsini, Davide. (2026). “Nuclear Decommissioning and the Political Economy of Waste: Exploring Nuclear Attachments in Italy,” Social Studies of Science. DOI

And to dive deeper into nuclear decommissioning:

Bärenbold, Rebekka, Bah, Muhammad Maladoh, Lordan-Perret, Rebecca, Steigerwald, Björn, Von Hirschhausen, Christian, Wealer, Ben, Weigt, Hannes, Wimmers, Alexander. (2024). “Decommissioning of commercial nuclear power plants: insights from a multiple-case study,” Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 201: 114621. DOI

Bell, Marissa. (2024). “We are a nuclear community’”: The Ethical, Political Economic, and Social Relations of Canadian Nuclear Waste Siting,” Antipode 57 (4): 1299-1319.

Blowers, Andrew and Pieter Leroy. (1994). “Power, politics and environmental inequality: A theoretical and empirical analysis of the process of ‘peripheralisation’,” Environmental Politics 3 (2):197-228.

Blowers, Andrew. (2017). The Legacy of Nuclear Power. Earthscan, Routledge.

Blowers, Andrew. (2019). “Generations of decay: the political geography of decommissioning.” In: Pasqualetti, Martin J. (Ed.), Nuclear Decommissioning and Society: Public Links to a New Technology, eighth ed. Routledge, pp. 161–173. DOI

Cram, Shannon. (2023). Unmaking the Bomb: Environmental Cleanup and the Politics of Impossibility. University of California Press.

Greco, Angelica and Daisaku Yamamoto. (2019) “Geographical political economy and nuclear power plant closures,” Geoforum, Vol. 106: 234-243.

Haller, Melissa, Michael Haines, and Daisaku Yamamoto. (2017). “The End of the Nuclear Era: Nuclear Decommissioning and Its Economic Impacts on U.S. Counties,” Growth and Change 48 (4): 640-660.

Irrek, Wolfgang. (2019). “Financing nuclear decommissioning”. In: Haas, Reinhard, Mez, Lutz, Ajanovic, Amela (Eds.), The Technological and Economic Future of Nuclear Power, Energiepolitik Und Klimaschutz. Energy Policy and Climate Protection. Springer VS, Wiesbaden, pp. 139–168. DOI

Kalshoven, Petra Tijtske. (2022). “The Fish is in the Water and the Water is in the Fish: Symbiosis in a Nuclear Whale Fall,” Cultural Anthropology 37 (2): 349-378.

Kalshoven, Petra Tijtske. (2023). “The Skyline is Changing: Editing Space and Discourse in Nuclear Decommissioning,” Visual Anthropology 36 (5): 487-514.

LaGuardia, Thomas. (2012). “Decommissioning of Nuclear Power Plants,” in Laraia, Michiele (Ed.), Nuclear decommissioning: Planning, Execution and international Experience. (Woddhead Publishing), pp. 831-888.

Laraia, Michele. (2018). Nuclear Decommissioning: Its History, Developments, and Current Status. Springer.

Orsini, Davide and Uwe Lübke. (2025). “(Dis)Empowered Communities: A Conversation with Davide Orsini.” Springs: The Rachel Carson Center Review, no. 8. DOI

Orsini, Davide. (2026). “Nuclear Decommissioning and the Political Economy of Waste: Exploring Nuclear Attachments in Italy,” Social Studies of Science. DOI

Pasqualetti, Martin (Ed.) (1991). Nuclear Decommissioning and Society: Public Links to a New Technology. (London: Routledge).

Pasqualetti, Martin et Al. (1991). Special Nuclear decommissioning Issue, The Energy Journal Vol. 12, 1991. URL

Ross, Linda. (2023). “Nuclear Cultural Heritage: From Energy Past to Heritage Future,” Heritage and Society 17 (2): 296-315.

Saraç-Lesavre, Başak. (2020). “Desire for the ‘worst’: Extending nuclear attachments in southeastern New Mexico,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 38 (4): 753-771.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Collaborative. (2020). Socioeconomic Impacts from Nuclear Power Plant Closure and decommissioning: Host Community Experiences, Best Practices and Recommendations. URL

Yamamoto, Daisaku, Julia Feikens, and Melissa Haller. (2021). “Nuclear-to-Nature Land Conversion,” Geographical Review 111 (3): 415-436.

Wimmers, Alexander and Christian von Hirshhausen. (2024). “Organizational models for the decommissioning of nuclear power plants: Lessons from the United Kingdom and the United States,” Utilities Policy 91: 101843.

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