Negotiating Radiation Protection in the Nuclear Age: Histories of Exposure and Expertise

The development of nuclear technologies for war, medicine, and energy production dramatically increased the number of people exposed to artificial radioactivity and raised new stakes and questions about protecting them. This volume examines how the establishment of standards and protocols for radiation protection was not only a technical process, but also the byproduct of extensive and ongoing negotiations among scientists, states, international bodies, lawyers, economists, companies, unions, and activists. Over time, exposed individuals--whether Japanese survivors, accident or fallout victims, atomic veterans, or workers--have leveraged their own experiences of radiation exposure to challenge powerful institutions and their standards. Contributors explore radiation risk and protection policies across the globe, from Japan to Canada, the United Kingdom to North Africa, and Spain to Greece. They excavate the legal, scientific, diplomatic, and personal challenges posed by radiation protection. Chapters move from the individual and institutional to the global level, arguing that issues of radiation exposure, like so many other forms of risk, are never merely personal but deeply, often invisibly, political and diplomatic.

Maria Rentetzi (Editor)
Maria Rentetzi is professor and chair of Science, Technology and Gender Studies at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU). She is also correspondent member of the International Academy of the History of Science, and FAU’s special representative for internationalization. She has served as Scientific advisor on science diplomacy to the Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece, (2017-2018) and as member of the EU working group ＂Making European diplomacy more strategic, effective and resilient through scientific evidence and foresight.＂ She is the editor of a new book series on Science Diplomacy published by Brepols and of the academic journal Almagest. Her research focuses on nuclear history, gender science studies and science diplomacy. Her latest monograph is Seduced by Radium: How Industry Transformed Science in the American Marketplace (2022). For more info please visit https: //rentetzi.de