Dangerous Cultures: Affective Safety Culture and the Work of Remediation at the Hanford Site

• In Event: Social Studies of Politics: State Affect? 1

Abstract

A sudden olfactory, gustatory, or somatic assault—the odor or taste of dill pickles, or burning lungs—may signal the presence of toxic vapors belched from large, underground tanks storing a complex stew of waste left over from the Manhattan Project or Cold War era processing of spent fuel rod in to weapons-grade plutonium. A project engineer and a nuclear safety manager are terminated after raising safety concerns about designs for a facility that will turn this waste into glass for safer disposal. In the aftermath of these kinds of incidents at the Hanford Site on the Columbia Plateau, calls for studying and reforming the “safety culture” of this former nuclear weapons complex, which is currently undergoing extensive environmental remediation by the U.S. Department of Energy, proliferate. As what it is perhaps the most prominent lens within official discourses for the enlightened management of risky institutions, this paper will examine “safety culture” as a contested framework for regulating sentiments such as fear and suspicion both inside and outside the gates of dangerous industrial operations. In this case, efforts around “safety culture” often reinforce an imaginary of a coherent state in control of the material legacies of nuclear militarism, even as bodily encounters with these legacies is surrounded by suspicion.

Author

• Pedro Eduardo de la Torre, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY