Siegfried Evens (Stockholm): Streams, Steams, and Steels: The Governance of Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Risks

Zeit: 19-21 Uhr

Vortrag von Siegfried Evens (Stockholm) im Berlin-Brandenburger Colloquium (BBC) für Umweltgeschichte im Sommersemester 2022

Veranstalter des BBC für Umweltgeschichte:
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU Berlin) in Kooperation mit dem Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung (ZZF Potsdam)
Organisation: Dr. Jan-Henrik Meyer (ZZF Potsdam), Dr. Astrid M. Kirchhof (HU Berlin)

Abstract:
As light water reactors are increasingly seen as a solution to achieving a sustainable energy transition and battling the climate crisis, it is more important than ever to study what the risks of using water for nuclear power production are. However, the technologies that manage all that water (and steam) have not enjoyed much attention from historians. Therefore, my PhD research project ‘Streams, Steams, and Steels’ aims to study the governance of risk of these crucial reactor components and materials by national and international actors from a historical perspective. Relying on archival sources from the U.S., Sweden, France, and multiple international organisations, as well as interviews, this dissertation attempts to write a new, longue durée history of nuclear safety, going back to the origins of water and steam risk management. In such a history, it becomes clear that a hybrid nuclear safety regime was shaped between the 1950s and 1980s – by a multitude of ‘nuclear’ and ‘non-nuclear’ actors – which was the result of a confrontation between older ‘non-nuclear’ steam safety regimes and newer ‘nuclear’ risk prevention measures.

Short Bio:
Siegfried Evens specialises in the history of risk and disaster. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. In his PhD thesis entitled Streams, Steams, and Steels: The Governance of ‘Nuclear’ and ‘Non-Nuclear’ Risks, he researches the history of nuclear safety governance with a focus on water and cooling systems. His project is a part of the ERC-funded NUCLEARWATERS-project, under the supervision of Per Högselius, which attempts to rewrite the history of nuclear energy with a focus on water.

Recent publications: Evens, Siegfried. «Les risques de refroidissment : l’eau comme frontière spatiale et temporelle de l’énergie nucléaire ». In: Enquêter dans le nucléaire. Rennes : Presses Universitaires de Rennes. 2022; (with Lindström, Kati et al.) “How Should History of Technology Be Written? Some Lessons from an Ongoing Research Project on the Global History of Nuclear Energy”. Technikgeschichte 88 (2021); “The Seeds of a European Risk Society: Marcinelle and the European Coal and Steel Community”. European Review of History 28, nr. 3 (2021); “A Complicated Way of Boiling Water: Nuclear Safety in Water History”. Water History 12 (2020).