Issue link: https://htpgraphics.uberflip.com/i/1214361
Getting Robotic and AI technology to become more commonplace on nuclear sites is a complex process, not just because of the technology. The RAIN Hub has funded an ethnographic researcher, Başak Sarac -Lesavre, to investigate the social and organisational aspects of using advanced robotics and artificial intelligence in the nuclear industry. Başak has many years of experience with the nuclear industry, including work on the European post- Fukushima nuclear stress-tests and post- Fukushima nuclear emergency response initiatives. She offers an introduction to her project below: MAKING RADIOACTIVE ENVIRONMENTS KNOWABLE, CONTROLLABLE, AND GOVERNABLE Societies are inscribed in technologies that, in return, reflect them in all their complexity. The ethnographic research within RAIN considers nuclear decommissioning, not only as a technical but also as a political, socio-economic and regulatory problem. Concerned actors constantly need to reach common understandings about what constitutes "safer, cleaner, cheaper, faster" nuclear decommissioning and cleaning up. Just like the ever-evolving nature of radioactive environments, definitions given to those values are open to change and are only results of long negotiations and controversies, to list a few, among; facility managers, budgets, physical constraints, nuclear workers, designs, technical experts, designers, funders, regulatory environment and political institutions. This project aims to overcome the separation between techno-scientists in charge of dealing with "things technical" and "the others" in charge of dealing with "things social". It empirically follows negotiations that are involved in making radioactive environments knowable, controllable, and governable. It takes hold of the idea that technological innovation is only the result of processes of translations; concerns and solutions need to be shared. Then, it highlights that innovation does not reside in technical objects but in complex socio- technical arrangements; involving culture and nature, technology and society, humans and non-humans. SOCIAL SCIENCES RESEARCH Başak Sarac -Lesavre 28