The development of nuclear power has historically been intertwined with narratives of technological progress (von Hippel, Takubo, and Kang 2019). These narratives often carry promises of cost digression, fueling multi-faceted enthusiasm that shape policy and investment such as the Bandwagon Market in the US during the 1960s and 1970s (Cohn 1990). However, the temporal dimension of nuclear energy development reveals a critical tension: while capacity expansion currently is framed as an urgent and immediate necessity (NZN 2024), the management of nuclear waste unfolds over vastly longer timescales. Waste storage remains a slow and complex process, requiring secure containment for millennia—far beyond the political and economic cycles that drive nuclear expansion (Brunnengräber 2019). Consequently, priorities are differently allocated to focus on perceive urgent topics of energy supply all while shifting waste issues to future generations. Also, developers of so-called new reactor types such as SMRs simplify waste issues (Krall, Macfarlane, and Ewing 2022). This paper addresses the mismatch between the optimism of nuclear growth and the long-term realities of waste management. By doing so, it will investigate narratives of nuclear in energy projections and compare them with actual development in order to shed light on the discrepancy between enthusiasm and realities. Secondly, it aims to highlight discrepancy between capacity expansion efforts and efforts for waste management to investigate the potential shift of long-duration responsibilities in favour of more immediate gains.

How to cite: Böse, F.: Technooptimism vs. Realities: The Nuclear Energy Paradox and Narratives, Third interdisciplinary research symposium on the safety of nuclear disposal practices, Berlin, Germany, 17–19 Sep 2025, safeND2025-156, https://doi.org/10.5194/safend2025-156, 2025.

Within the international ‘nuclear community’, geological disposal is generally accepted as the preferred option for safe long-term isolation of high-level radioactive waste from the biosphere and living organisms, through the operation of both engineered and geological barriers, without the need of human intervention. This promise is vital not only for the affected potential host communities but also for the nuclear sector itself, whose survival hinges on its ability to demonstrate a credible solution for the enduring ‘waste problem’. Drawing on the ‘sociology of expectations’, most notably on the concepts of the economy of techno-scientific promising,1 we examine the construction of the promise of safe geological disposal. Through the case of Finland, poised to become the world’s first country operating a deep geological repository, we illustrate the political nature of geological knowledge and its entanglement with the discursive, institutional and material dimensions of the promise of safe disposal. As we argue, techno-scientific promises are not mere talk but are instead embedded in successive reconfigurations of formal and informal institutions, as well as in materialities such as R&D funding, underground research laboratories, and final repositories.

We apply these premises to a longitudinal qualitative document analysis of the Finnish repository project from the 1970s up until the present stage. The waste management company Posiva—owned by the nuclear utilities TVO and Fortum—is currently awaiting a positive statement from the national nuclear safety authority and an approval from the government on its operating license application. The study draws on material from Posiva, TVO, and the national authorities, at three key phases in the repository licensing process: 1) the decision-in principle, ratified in 2001 by Parliament, 2) the construction licence (submitted by Posiva in 2012 and approved by the government in 2015); and 3) the operating licence (submitted by Posiva in 2021). Our study highlights the changing role of geological knowledge in the co evolution of the discourses, institutions and materialities that make up the promise. These processes have been characterised by simultaneous stability and requalification of the promise, and by constant changes in the weight and roles of engineering and geological knowledge.

The article contributes to scholarship on techno-scientific promises by highlighting the political nature of geological knowledge, its interplay with engineering knowledge, and the joint contribution of these types of knowledge to the construction of the promise of safe geological disposal. It furthermore contributes to the emerging interdisciplinary field of political geology.

How to cite: Lehtonen, M., Kojo, M., and Litmanen, T.: Geological Knowledge, Institutions and Materiality in the Construction of the Promise of Safe Geological Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel in Finland, Third interdisciplinary research symposium on the safety of nuclear disposal practices, Berlin, Germany, 17–19 Sep 2025, safeND2025-172, https://doi.org/10.5194/safend2025-172, 2025.

In Germany, long-term documentation is a key measure in preserving information and knowledge about radioactive waste repositories over long periods of time. In accordance with its legal mandate, the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE) will permanently store analogue and digital information on the interim and final disposal of radioactive waste. This poster introduces the long-term documentation approach in Germany, and showcases past, present and future research regarding long-term preservation of information, data, and knowledge by means of e.g. durable storage media and markers.

Radioactive waste management information will be stored in analogue and digital form. Secured and audited information shall be available beyond the time of repository closure and for at least 500 years thereafter. Facing the challenge of maintaining an institutional awareness of the importance of the systematically compiled documents over such extensive timescales, BASE is en route to a systemic strategy of managing and preserving information, data, knowledge, memory and awareness. In accordance with Section 38 of the German Site Selection Act, the permanent integrity of current and future information on the interim and final storage of radioactive waste must be guaranteed.

The `long-term durability of paper´ project, which has already been completed, investigated the ageing durability of paper documents, carrying out practical accelerated ageing tests and developing a coordinated system with regard to writing and printing materials. These practical tests were conducted with laboratory hand sheets, printed and non-printed industrial papers, and specialty papers. The testing procedures followed the ISO 5630 and 20494 as well as DIN 6738 standards, but extended the minimum required duration of 6, 12 and 24 days drastically up to 16 months. The main results of project include a recommendation for a preferred combination of printing materials: gravure printing on bible paper or rag paper. This low-impact printing method in connection with these durable paper types have been identified as the most promising ones for an ageing resistance of at least 500 years.

Complementary, the ongoing research project `on the evaluation and optimisation of the long-term stability of digital storage media´ is investigating which storage media strategy is most suitable from a long-term perspective and which options exist for optimising individual storage media. Accelerated ageing tests will examine, which technical properties of electronic and technical components can contribute to a significant increase in long-term durability, and key indicators of an impending performance loss or even failure of system components. This research project examines leading data storage media and digital preservation solutions, including SSD and HDD, the M-Disc, archival grade microfilm, and nanoforms.

Expanding the scope of preservation mechanisms, BASE intends to explore the role and possibilities of markers in a wider strategy to reduce the likelihood of inadvertent human intrusion by raising awareness. An upcoming research project therefore intends to shed light on relevant aspects of different marker types while – among other aspects – considering their integration with other preservation mechanisms as well.

How to cite: Böhmer, J. K., Offen, B., Leopold, K., and Möller, D.: Long-term documentation in Germany: steps towards a systemic strategy, Third interdisciplinary research symposium on the safety of nuclear disposal practices, Berlin, Germany, 17–19 Sep 2025, safeND2025-106, https://doi.org/10.5194/safend2025-106, 2025.

In recent months, the prospect of a coming nuclear renaissance has become more palpable: nuclear energy has emerged as a crucial technology within international efforts to model and imagine ‘carbon free futures’; advancements in nuclear energy and waste management technologies have conjured familiar visions of promise of nuclear energy and the power of humanity in harnessing the immense power of the sun; the backing of nuclear power by civil society organisations, such as Finnish Greenpeace, demonstrates all too clearly the presence of a certain ‘a nuclear renaissance’ for some. And yet, the pronouncement of ‘a nuclear renaissance’ demands critical attention, especially if it is to avoid the human-centred trappings of the anthropocene and the hubris associated with designating a new temporal horizon of ‘the nuclear renaissance’ for all of humanity. Rather than simply asserting the nuclear-renaissance-as-temporal-epoch, I seek instead to critically examine the terms on which this temporal moment is asserted, and to consider who is included and excluded from this prospective renaissance. Making this argument, this paper comprises two sections. First, I outline how the pronouncement of a nuclear renaissance is not new, but rather a notion that has previously been beckoned by the nuclear social sciences - especially in Europe and North America. Second, I consider what promises and pitfalls arise from developing a more spatially and temporally situated understanding of ‘a nuclear renaissance’. To do so, I draw on speculative research emphasising that any understanding of future temporal horizons must begin with an attention to contingent relations of experience. Apprehending this contingency, I contend, may provide one way to begin imagining a nuclear renaissance besides certain anthropocentric limits of thought.  

How to cite: Keating, T.: Whose renaissance is it anyway? Rethinking the speculative futures of the nuclear renaissance within the anthropocene, Third interdisciplinary research symposium on the safety of nuclear disposal practices, Berlin, Germany, 17–19 Sep 2025, safeND2025-114, https://doi.org/10.5194/safend2025-114, 2025.

An inherent paradox characterizes the material remains of the atomic age. On the one hand, from a human perspective, radioactivity will remain forever and can only – sometimes – be moved and consciously stored and imaginatively contained. On the other hand, radioactive contamination entails substantive materialities to disappear. Nuclear facilities are to be fully dismantled, machinery to be cut into pieces, sorted and melted, skylines drastically changing. What remains will be voids, scars, but also more quiet remnants, transformed and in resonance with what is no longer there.

Taking Susan Schuppli’s work on material witness (2020) as a point of departure, this presentation explores the capacity of “nature” to offer alternative modes of investigating historical events and experiences forming cultural heritage as part of nuclear decommissioning. More specifically, it tries to unveil the potential witnessing at a decommissioning site in southern Sweden, the Barsebäck nuclear power plant, through a study of the material traces of a radioactive sludge pond, called the Viktoria Lake. Tentatively, the presentation will suggest a narrative of human-nonhuman intersections in a theoretical-methodological reflection on the (post-)nuclear condition, challenging and expanding what might be considered heritage, both from a heritage institutional perspective and from an anthropocentric point of view.

How to cite: Storm, A.: The Viktoria Lake at Barsebäck: A radioactive sludge pond as material witness, Third interdisciplinary research symposium on the safety of nuclear disposal practices, Berlin, Germany, 17–19 Sep 2025, safeND2025-12, https://doi.org/10.5194/safend2025-12, 2025.