A Rhetoric of Ruins combines conceptual and theoretical frameworks to explore ghost towns, disaster sites, and environmental badlands as remnants of modernity. Methods of analysis include Jeremiadic, hauntological, psychogeographic, and heterotopian ways of reading U.S. and international sites.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nuclear Power after Fukushima 2011:Buddhist and Promethean PerspectivesGraham ParkesDuring 2010 many environmentalists previously opposed to nuclear power were deciding, in the face of anthropogenic climate change from burning fossil fuels, that the only way to prevent runaway global warming would be to build more nuclear power plants after all.1 There are risks involved—though fewer than with carbon-based sources of energy.2 When one compares the detrimental effects (...) of nuclear power with those of burning fossil fuel, it is clear that the human injury and death toll (not to mention environmental devastation) resulting from the former have been nothing compared to the damage caused by the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels, owing to mining accidents, oil spills, and so forth—not to mention the massive carbon dioxide emissions.On the other hand, the problem of how and where to store the growing amount of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants, which remains deadly for many thousands of years, has yet to be solved. Costly security measures have to be taken to guard against terrorist attacks and theft of materials usable for nuclear devices. When full safety features are included, nuclear power plants become ever more expensive to build, and the costs of insuring them against accidents are so prohibitive that governments have to subsidize them, which they are increasingly unwilling to do.Not long after the explosions and meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in March 2011, two dismal world records were announced: in 2010 we discharged a record amount of carbon dioxide (more than 30 gigatons) into the atmosphere, mainly by burning fossil fuels, and, as a direct consequence, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere (as measured at the Earth Systems Research Laboratory in Hawai'i) reached a record level of 395 parts per million. These figures suggest that we are continuing to generate a rise in global average temperatures that is already destroying the livelihoods of millions and will soon jeopardize the lives of hundreds of millions more.As a consequence of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, Japan—long a leading promoter of nuclear power—has begun to enforce some widely neglected safety regulations and is seriously reconsidering its reliance on nuclear energy. China has put construction of [End Page 89] new power plants on hold. Other nations (such as Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Thailand, and Malaysia) have decided to phase out or cancel plans to build more nuclear power stations. Yet the primary motivations remain unclear, since people's attitudes toward the dangers of nuclear radiation are anything but rational—as evidenced by the mass departure of foreigners from Japan after the catastrophe at Fukushima, when health dangers beyond the vicinity of the power station were minimal.In Europe, the reaction to the Fukushima disaster has clearly been aggravated by memories of the catastrophe at Chernobyl in 1986. While Chernobyl was a more widely destructive event than Fukushima, releasing a much greater amount of radioactivity, its effects on human health continue to generate disagreement. According to the third report on the effects of the Chernobyl catastrophe issued by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), among the 134 plant staff and emergency workers who suffered acute radiation syndrome (ARS), the condition proved fatal for twenty-eight of them. By 2006 another nineteen ARS survivors died, although their deaths were not directly attributable to the effects of ionizing radiation. Although the report attributes "a substantial fraction" of the six thousand cases of thyroid cancer in people who were children at the time of the accident to their consumption of milk contaminated with iodine-131, only fifteen cases had proved fatal by 2005, some twenty years later.3 The death toll, then, was fewer than fifty.By contrast, a study by a group of scientists from Belarus, Russia, and the Ukraine, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, estimates the number of deaths attributable to the meltdown at around 980,000—almost twenty thousand times greater than the estimate by the UN scientific committee.4 What are we to make of this vast discrepancy, especially since the UNSCEAR report "was prepared in close cooperation with... (shrink)

This article examines public communication about atomic energy as an important vector in the political, institutional, and technological transformations of Ukraine's nuclear industry since the breakup of the USSR. It explores the ongoing effort to make the atom more domestic, familiar, human, and accessible against the not-so-distant backdrop of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. The central focus of this article is the analysis of children's drawings of nuclear power stations produced for art contests organized by (...) local nuclear information centers. These contests and other activities of the centers have contributed to the increased visibility of nuclear power in Ukraine. The drawings reveal the inscription of the atom into complex representations about the Ukrainian nation, its past, present, traditions, and modernity. The analysis of these drawings as well as government and nuclear power station (NPP) documents, press articles, and interviews indicates that the notion of the “domestication” of the atom is a particularly appropriate way to describe the banalization of nuclear technologies in Ukraine. (shrink)

The almost immediate Western detection and news reportage of the Chernobyl nuclear accident underscored the urgency of Gorbachev's call for glasnost and perestroika. While state-sanctioned church leaders played a minimal role in the coming of glasnost, other believers, through clandestine samizdat, figure prominently in the launching of the Soviet information revolution. In contrast to the USSR, the churches and the media, especially television, played an immediate, transparent, and successful part in the East European upheavals of 1989.

This study focuses on nuclear tourism, which flourished a decade ago in the Exclusion Zone, a regimented area around the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (Ukraine) established in 1986, where the largest recorded nuclear explosion in human history occurred. The mass pilgrimage movement transformed the place into an open air museum, a space that preserves the remnants of Soviet culture, revealing human tragedies of displacement and deaths, and the nature of state nuclear power. This study examines the (...) impact of the site on its visitors and the motivations for their persistence and activities in the Zone, and argues that through photography, cartography, exploration, and discovery, the pilgrims attempt to decode the historical and ideological meaning of Chornobyl and its significance for future generations. Ultimately, the aesthetic and political space of the Zone helps them establish a conceptual and mnemonic connection between the Soviet past and Ukraine’s present and future. Their practices, in turn, help maintain the Zone’s spatial and epistemological continuity. Importantly, Chornobyl seems to be polysemic in nature, inviting interpretations and shaping people’s national and intellectual identities. (shrink)

This book provides a current analysis of the legal and ethical challenges in preparing for and responding to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive crises. From past events like the Chernobyl nuclear incident in Russia or the Bhopal chemical calamity in India, to the more recent tsunami and nuclear accident in Japan or the Ebola crisis in Africa, and with the on-going threat of bioterrorism, the need to be ready to respond to CBRNE crises is uncontroversial. (...) What is controversial is whether we are on a path that adequately prepares us for the next event. The ethical and legal scholars in this volume hold that much work remains to be done and offer this book to stimulate further reflection and dialogue around CBRNE crises. This is an indispensable book for both students and scholars of bioethics, international law, public health, as well as for regulators and administrators developing policy and legislation related to public health planning and emergency responses. (shrink)

This essay explores the faultlines, poetic pressures and social structures of feeling determining poetry “after” Hiroshima. Nuclear bombs, accidents and waste pose theoretical and poetic challenges. The argument outlines a model of nuclear implicature that reworks Gricean conversational implicature. Nuclear implicature helps to describe ways in which poems “represent” nuclear problems implicitly rather than explicitly. Metonymic, metaphorical, and grammatical modes of implication are juxtaposed with recognition of social attitudes complicit with nuclear problems. Mushroom and lichen (...) metaphors are analysed and distinguished. There are brief accounts of The Chernobyl Herbarium, The Nuclear Culture Source Book and poems by Aidan Semmens, Lorine Niedecker, George Oppen, Denise Levertov, Adrienne Rich, Allen Ginsberg and Gerry Loose. The argument attempts to keep open the fragile agency of writing in poems that confront nuclear power. Poetry after Hiroshima is also contrasted with Adorno’s provocative questions about poetry after Auschwitz, amid Cold War arguments that have distorted recognition of the reality of nuclear production. The essay concludes by considering the emergence of poetry within E.P. Thompson’s theoretical account of “Exterminism,” sketching ways in which poetics and theory might inform both the nuclear imagination and the difficulties of nuclear song. (shrink)

In this commentary, I reflect on the differences between two independent citizen approaches to monitoring radiological contamination, one in Belarus after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident and the other in Japan following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident. I examine these approaches from the perspective of their contribution to making radiological contamination more publicly visible. The analysis is grounded in my earlier work, where I examined how we have come to know what we know about post–Chernobyl contamination and (...) its effects in Belarus, a former Soviet republic most heavily affected by the fallout. As I described in this study, much of what we know about the consequences of Chernobyl is based on the work of the Belarusian nonprofit Institute of Radiation Safety, “Belrad.” I compare Belrad’s approach to radiological monitoring with the work of the volunteer network Safecast, arguably one of the best-known citizen science projects in the world, which is working to monitor the scope of the post–Fukushima contamination. Through this comparison of approaches, I raise broader questions about a form of sensing practices—data-related practices of citizen science that make environmental hazards publicly in/visible. (shrink)

Discusses the methods of moral reasoning, the evaluation of moral arguments, nuclear war theory, the policy of nuclear deterrence, and the effect of nuclear weapons on nonnuclear powers.

The excellent quality and depth of the various essays make [the book] an invaluable resource....It is likely to become essential reading in its field.—CHOICE.

We are morally perplexed about nuclear weapons. Popular debate oscillates tediously between an apparently impractical idealism which would have nothing to do with the things, and a military and political realism which insists that we have to use such means to attain our legitimate ends. The choice, it too often seems, is between laying down our nuclear arms–thus avoiding the moral odium of resting our defence policies on threats to vaporize millions of civilians–but leaving ourselves open to domination (...) by those who do not feel such scruples, and on the other hand, retaining such weapons as long as our potential enemies possess them, constantly maintaining parity with the other side–in other words, proceeding with the arms race. The respective proponents of principle and of prudence typically fail to understand how others can possibly neglect the considerations which loom so large in their own minds. Each has at bottom a deeply held ethical view–that certain means may not be used for any end, or that certain ends are so important that they justify the use of almost any means. The disagreement is so irreconcilable that it spills out from TV studios and newspaper editorial pages on to the streets and the missile bases, and into the courts and the prisons. (shrink)

The 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami damaged the nuclear reactors in Fukushima. Prime Minister Naoto Kan took this crisis seriously, and made himself personally involved with damage control, especially during the first week. This study examines the responses to the incident by the prime minister's office.

We are morally perplexed about nuclear weapons. Popular debate oscillates tediously between an apparently impractical idealism which would have nothing to do with the things, and a military and political realism which insists that we have to use such means to attain our legitimate ends. The choice, it too often seems, is between laying down our nuclear arms–thus avoiding the moral odium of resting our defence policies on threats to vaporize millions of civilians–but leaving ourselves open to domination (...) by those who do not feel such scruples, and on the other hand, retaining such weapons as long as our potential enemies possess them, constantly maintaining parity with the other side–in other words, proceeding with the arms race. The respective proponents of principle and of prudence typically fail to understand how others can possibly neglect the considerations which loom so large in their own minds. Each has at bottom a deeply held ethical view–that certain means may not be used for any end, or that certain ends are so important that they justify the use of almost any means. The disagreement is so irreconcilable that it spills out from TV studios and newspaper editorial pages on to the streets and the missile bases, and into the courts and the prisons. (shrink)

From the nineteen sixties onwards a branch of philosophy of science has come to development, called history-oriented philosophy of science. This development constitutes a reaction on the then prevailing logical empiricist conception of scientific knowledge. The latter was increasingly seen as suffering from insurmountable internal problems, like e. g. the problems with the particular "observational-theoretical distinction" on which it drew. In addition the logical empiricists' general approach was increasingly criticized for two external shortcomings. Firstly, the examples of scientific knowledge that (...) the logical empiricists were focusing on were con sidered as too simplistic to be informative on the nature of real life science. Secondly, it was felt that the attention of these philosophers of science was restricted to the static aspects of scientific knowledge, while neglecting its developmental aspects. History-oriented philosophy of science has taken up the challenge implicit in the latter two criticisms, i. e. to develop accounts of science that would be more adequate for understanding the development 1 of real life science. One of the more successful products of this branch of philosophy of science is Lakatos's theory of scientific development, sometimes called the "methodology of scientific research programmes". This theory conceives science as consisting of so called research program mes developing in time, and competing with each other over the issue which one generates the best explan~tions of the phenomena that they address. (shrink)

The excellent quality and depth of the various essays make [the book] an invaluable resource....It is likely to become essential reading in its field.—CHOICE.

(1986). Reason and Nuclear Deterrence. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 16, Supplementary Volume 12: Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence and Disarmament, pp. 129-159.

The nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union has reached a stage of unparalleled destructive potential. Fueling the race are not only an immense series of mighty technological developments but also each side's unremitting quest for both security and power. Thus, each side is animated by intense competitiveness with and deep distrust of the other.My primary purpose in this essay is not to examine the historical background or the current status of this murderous competition but (...) rather to inquire into what can and should be done to avoid its dangers. For this purpose, we must make the most intensive possible use of reason. For reason gives us the surest way to attain truth, including practical truth about what ought to be done in the various predicaments that confront human beings. (shrink)

The export of processed RNA molecules from the nucleus is an intricately regulated process, subject to various developmental and physiological controls. The structural and biochemical properties of the nuclear envelope that are involved in this process are described here.

(1986). On Defense by Nuclear Deterrence. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 16, Supplementary Volume 12: Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence and Disarmament, pp. 195-211.

War winning, however, is impossible precisely because of the fact that there is no defense now against all-out nuclear use and probably not for the foreseeable future. A nuclear war could therefore be controlled and won only if one side consciously chose to lose the war, an event as unlikely in the future as it has been rare or nonexistent in the past. It is not necessary to win a nuclear war in order to deter it; one (...) has only to ensure that both are likely to lose it.It takes two to make a war, and of those combatants, one must start it. If nobody starts the war, there won't be a war. This is as true in the nuclear era as it ever was. But if any given party is certain that he would lose any war initiated by him, then presumably he would not initiate a war. One way for A to make certain that B would lose any war B starts is by having an unstoppable superpowerful weapon of retaliation at hand. (shrink)

(1986). Individual Responsibility, Nuclear Deterrence, and Excusing Political Inaction. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 16, Supplementary Volume 12: Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence and Disarmament, pp. 213-236.

Nuclear intermolecular duplexes appear to be a general feature of nucleated cells. Most of these duplexes are formed between large RNA as well as between large and small RNA molecules. A significant portion of the large molecules belong to a special class of RNA that is restricted to the nucleus and, therefore, not designated for export. These molecules are assembled with proteins and form a structure of a higher order. The possibility that these molecules and a set of small (...) nuclear RNAs are components of a complex machine, “the transportosome”, which functions in nucleocytoplasmic traffic, is discussed. (shrink)

Mathematical methods and physical ideas developed by Bogolubov are intensively used in the theory of the atomic nucleus. The variational Hartree-Fock-Bogolubov method and the self-consistent field method found wide application in calculating nuclear spectra and nucleus-nucleus interactions. The development of these methods led to the formulation of the quasiparticle-phonon nuclear model for calculating the properties of nuclear states at low, intermediate, and high excitation energies.

(1986). Moral Approaches to Nuclear Strategy: A Critical Evaluation. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 16, Supplementary Volume 12: Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence and Disarmament, pp. 75-109.

The role played by scientists in opposing nuclear weapons policy in Britain has been underestimated or discounted in much of the historical literature on the 1940s and 1950s. In fact an active and vocal section of scientific opinion attempted to organize public opposition to nuclear weapons. This article describes their activities. It also assesses their significance in the wider anti-nuclear weapons movement in the years leading to the foundation of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Before the development of the nuclear shell model estimates of the strength of the nuclear spin-orbit interaction varied widely. Wheeler was the first to conclude that the nuclear spin-orbit interaction produces splittings of several MeV. This conclusion appeared, however, to be inconsistent with some experimental results that later turned out to be faulty.

This article traces disagreements about the genetic effects of low-dose radiation exposure as waged by James Neel, a central figure in radiation studies of Japanese populations after World War II, and Yuri Dubrova, who analyzed the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. In a 1996 article in Nature, Dubrova reported a statistically significant increase in the minisatellite DNA mutation rate in the children of parents who received a high dose of radiation from the Chernobyl accident, contradicting studies (...) that found no significant inherited genetic effects among offspring of Japanese A-bomb survivors. Neel’s subsequent defense of his large-scale longitudinal studies of the genetic effects of ionizing radiation consolidated current scientific understandings of low-dose ionizing radiation. The article seeks to explain how the Hiroshima/nagasaki data remain hegemonic in radiation studies, contextualizing the debate with attention to the perceived inferiority of Soviet genetic science during the Cold War. (shrink)