"Doctoral Dissertation Research: Rocks and Reactors: The Origins of Radiation Exposure Disparity, 1941 to 1979"

Oregon State University, Corvallis OR

Investigators

Abstract

Doctoral Dissertation Research: Rocks and Reactors: The Origins of Radiation Exposure Disparity, 1941-1979 This research investigates how different standards for contamination became acceptable norms at different organizational settings and stages in the nuclear fuel chain. It compares radiation safety as practiced at Atoms for Peace research reactor laboratories and at southwestern United States uranium mines. Archival and secondary literature is used to investigate how radiation safety was instituted internationally at academic research reactors, but not extended to those most directly affected by radiation pollution?indigenous subsistence communities located where a high proportion of the nuclear fuel chain activities (mining, milling, production, use, and storage of nuclear materials) occur worldwide. It advances scholarship on the inclusion, exclusion, and exchange of scientific knowledge and practice between diverse cultures at research reactors and mining sites. It demonstrates how the differential regulation of the same technological product can occur, and finally, it fills an important gap in the history of nuclear technologies, by placing the regulation of nuclear reactors at the center of analysis. This research explains the complex history of radiation standard setting so that a broader public can participate and contribute to discussions and decisions on environmental justice and nuclear history. In addition, it develops new teaching tools, and disseminates and builds knowledge through workshops on radiation exposure in which indigenous groups, research scientists and historians are active participants.