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LEAD RESEARCHER: BAŞAK SARAC-LESAVRE My research is situated at the interface of Science and Technology Studies, economic sociology and nuclear anthropology. I received my MRes from the LSE, and PhD in Science and Technology Studies from the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris (ENSMP). During my thesis, I was a Fulbright fellow in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. I held a temporary assistant professorship position at the ENSMP, where I examined European nuclear stress- tests. Later, I joined Virginia Tech's Department of Science, Technology, and Society, and contributed to a National Science Foundation-funded research project on post-Fukushima nuclear emergency response initiatives. SUMMARY // Making the unknown knowable has always been located at the heart of scientific activity. Yet, whether the goal is to understand extreme environments, to transform uncertainties into calculable risks, to make futures present and actionable, to identify pollution and contamination, to establish the causes and effects of human intervention on Earth, this activity has never been as equipped and mediated as it is today. Producing knowledge about the unknown and undertaking action in an uncertain world, are not only fascinating in that they involve pushing the limits of human knowledge, but the analysis of their modalities also tells us a lot about MAKING RADIOACTIVE ENVIRONMENTS KNOWABLE, GOVERNABLE, MANAGEABLE the nature and forms of scientific collaboration, political economies in which these collaborations take place, and definitions given to 'responsible' action. The potential uses of robotic technologies at nuclear sites generate a lot of excitement and concern. I underline that risks and uncertainties related to their use, are not given. While for some, what is uncertain and unknown is the radioactive environments to be rendered knowable, for others, it is the proposed technologies. I stress that the alignment of these divergent perspectives and the reaching of a common definition about what constitutes 'good' robotic technologies, can only be the result of long multi-scale negotiations, as well as of a multitude of resultant political, technical, and regulatory adjustments and refinements. UNIQUENESS // My work interrogates how RAIN researchers make sense of the sometimes conflicting and at other times contradictory societal, environmental, political, regulatory, economic, and moral demands involved in designing for nuclear environments, how they integrate those demands in their research, and how they negotiate their inscription in their technologies. I consider that these demands do not constitute 'barriers to adoption' but rather provide invaluable information for gaining the capacity to develop technologies considered as 'desirable' and 'valuable' by concerned groups, whether they are operators, regulators, funders, or political actors. 14

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