ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Contested Atoms: the Ao Phai Nuclear Power Project and Global Nuclear Modernity in Thailand

• In Event: Nuclear History as Global History: Current Debates and New Perspectives 2

English Abstract

For many years global nuclear history has been recounted as a developmental journey from backwardness to modernity through the provision of nuclear plants and power, with contestation featuring exclusively as holding the journey back. This paper seeks to appraise this narrative based on the history of Thailand’s nuclear programme. The cancellation of the Ao Phai Nuclear Power Project followed the popular uprising of October 1973. The fall of authoritarian rule enabled the resurgence of a public debate, while student publications and national newspapers criticising government policies and foreign influence, fuelling public distrust and weakening the legitimacy of technocratic development. In turn this focused the attention of local administrators towards the atomic energy project’s viability. They eventually agreed to remove it from the National Economic and Social Development Plan and the project reappeared only in 1997. In this period the Office of Atomic Energy for Peace (OAEP) sought to support Thailand’s atomic energy ambitions through bilateral negotiations with the United States, Japan, and Britain, and by hosting IAEA training programmes in Bangkok. Yet public fears persisted and intensified after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, revealing the coexistence of modern scientific ideas and local belief systems, exemplified by the consecration of the Phra Hang Mak amulet in 1990, believed to protect people from radiation. We conclude that the suspension of the project was therefore a reflection of Thailand’s “science diplomacy” attempt to address multiple developmental issues: Western dependence, regional autonomy, and local beliefs and resistance.

Authors

• Kwanchanok Kittiwanich, Chiang Mai University

• Simone Turchetti, University of Manchester