- Technical University of Munich, School of Engineering and Design, Chair of Landscape Architecture and Transformation, Germany (s.einsiedel@tum.de)
Decades after the nuclear euphoria of the 1960s and 1970s and the subsequent surge in construction of nuclear power plants, today the global nuclear industry is entering an unprecedented phase of nuclear decommissioning. Estimates suggest that within the next 25 years over half of all nuclear power plants worldwide will have begun decommissioning. At the same time, conventional ‘greenfield’ decommissioning outcomes are proving to be increasingly unsatisfactory solutions in an era of peak soil depletion and global climate crisis. The sociocultural significance of nuclear power plants—as utopian architecture, symbols of existential threat, and major economic forces in their regions—is being erased as part of the decommissioning process. Yet the decontaminated but deeply disturbed sites that result from this process more closely resemble brownfields or wastelands than the images of lush meadows and thriving habitat the term ‘greenfield’ conjures.
This predicament calls for a new approach to the growing number of nuclear brownfields around the world; an approach that understands these locations as complex multi-dimensional, multi-scalar and multi-temporal landscapes inextricably linked to their geophysical, socioeconomic, and cultural context. Drawing on landscape (architecture) theory, such an understanding of former nuclear power plants facilitates the conception of an adaptable landscape-led strategy that not only addresses the unique legacies of these sites but also initiates their transformation into meaningful post-nuclear landscapes. Tested at nuclear power plants across Germany, this landscape strategy pioneers a new approach to the transformation of former nuclear power plants but also other energy brownfield sites around the world.
The planned talk will present a landscape reading of former nuclear power plants and introduce a landscape-led transformation strategy for these sites developed by the author.
How to cite: von Einsiedel, S.: Post-nuclear landscapes – a landscape strategy for the transformation of decommissioned nuclear power plants, Third interdisciplinary research symposium on the safety of nuclear disposal practices, Berlin, Germany, 17–19 Sep 2025, safeND2025-88, https://doi.org/10.5194/safend2025-88, 2025.
