Between Memory and Forgetting: Following the History of Nuclear Residues in two French sites

Taking care of nuclear residues – the diverse left-behinds of “nuclear activities”– requires careful preservation of knowledge to prevent future risks, which in turn tacitly governs meaning and management; thus, it presupposes technical as well as social continuity and stability over centuries. This situation raises questions: How do state-led efforts to institutionalize nuclear memory relate to the lived experiences of communities that coexist with nuclear residues? And what happens when nuclear waste and residues, despite efforts to control this legacy, fades from public as well as expert awareness—only to resurface later in contested and unexpected ways?

This research explores the uneasy space between memory and forgetting when it comes to nuclear residues in France, focusing on two distinct case studies: the Centre de Stockage de la Manche (CSM) in La Hague, the oldest French nuclear waste storage site, now operated by Andra (the waste management company), and the Bois-Noirs uranium mine in Saint-Priest-la-Prugne, owned by Orano (the French nuclear fuel multinational holding). While both sites bear the imprint of France’s early nuclear history marked by military secret, urgency, and a “pioneering” spirit, their trajectories over time have diverged significantly.

Built in 1966, the CSM first operated as a precariously built surface storage site that contained traces of long-lived elements and that caused radioactive leakages; from the 1970s to the 1990s, it raised controversy from citizen groups. From 1994 onwards, it has been actively integrated into the state’s nuclear waste management infrastructure by Andra, and its residues were progressively archived and made “visible” through regulated oversight, public reporting, and controlled site visits as part of an explicit “memory” effort.  

In contrast, the Bois Noirs former uranium mine remains in a state of legal ambiguity. The institutional archive documenting its potential environmental and health effects – the main concern being water contamination – is dispersed among different actors and into arguably imprecise large-scale national databases. There, the memory of nuclear residues is contested terrain, kept alive through the persistent efforts of local activists who push back against what they perceive as the deliberate erasure of nuclear contamination from public discourse.

These cases reveal that nuclear residues are more than just material legacies; they are also the subjects of memory work—embedded in narratives that shape how they are perceived, governed, and projected into the future. The way a nuclear residue is remembered or forgotten shapes whether it is treated as a manageable risk, a hazardous burden, or an inherited, invisible relic of the past. However, the comparison also allows us to explore potential similarities in institutionalized memory work, while the two cases show substantial differences.

This research draws on an assemblage of fieldwork, archival work, interviews, and media analysis to trace the multiplicity of narratives that define nuclear memory (or forgetting) at these sites.

This research is conducted as part of the ERC Advanced Grant “Innovation Residues – Modes and infrastructures of caring for our longue-durée futures” (GA 10105480; PI: Ulrike Felt) at the University of Vienna.