ABSTRACT
The legacy of nuclear power is found in the sites around the world where uranium has been mined, where nuclear power has been produced, where nuclear weapons have been manufactured and tested and where reprocessing of nuclear fuel for plutonium has taken place. The legacy consists in the buildings that once housed reactors, in the pools and storage areas that hold radioactive wastes and in the areas of contaminated land and polluted waters caused by emissions and discharges, leakages and precipitation. The legacy of radioactive waste in its various forms is inevitable and long-lasting arising from routine operations but also from accidents, some of them releasing large quantities of radioactivity over wide areas, in the worst cases causing the evacuation of surrounding populations and perpetual restrictions on human habitation. While Fukushima and Chernobyl are the most notorious nuclear accidents, there have been many others, often unpublicised and sometimes unrevealed until long after they occurred. But, around every nuclear installation there is restricted access for safety and security reasons, and beyond, often an area where various restrictions and emergency planning procedures are in place. The calculation of risk to human health and the environment from exposure to radioactivity is a contested area; all that can really be said is that a risk, real and perceived, exists and persists over time though the nature and extent of the risk is a matter of seemingly irreconcilable debate. The communities living in the shadow of nuclear facilities are, thereby, communities living with risk and it is these communities, the problems that they face and the implications for how we manage the nuclear legacy which are the subject of this book.
