ABSTRACT
The communities at the heart of this study testify to the fact that nuclear power has left not just a physical imprint in the wastes it leaves behind but has a social expression, too, in the communities whose continuing role is to act as guardians of the legacy of nuclear power. And, just as the physical legacy of nuclear energy is enduring in both space and over time, so the social legacy, once established in nuclear communities, continues so long as the wastes are actively managed. Nuclear communities must endure both the physical threat of living with environmental risk and the social stigma that is often associated with proximity to the inevitable end products: the radioactive wastes arising from nuclear activities. Of course, nuclear communities do not and cannot live in a perpetual state of anxiety and dread, nor should they since, as custodians of these wastes, they have an obvious interest in their safe and secure management. Nevertheless, the possibility, however small, of a serious accident or even a catastrophic event that can and probably will occur somewhere, sometime, places these communities at a disadvantage compared to those that do not face the potentially devastating consequences of living with nuclear risk. It is true that there are communities living near hazardous facilities, those vulnerable to extreme natural hazards, seismic and climatic, as well as those engulfed by war that may also experience traumatic and annihilating events. But it is the potentially global scale of nuclear risk and its persistence over time that marks it off from other risks. And, by its association with weapons of mass destruction, nuclear risk, uniquely, suggests the possibility of global annihilation. For, in its extreme sense, a nuclear accident somewhere, is a nuclear accident everywhere.
