title: Sellafield and British Nuclear Culture, 1945-1992: Nuclear Imaginaries in the Rural Periphery.
Creators: name: Roberts, Harry
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2021

description: Responding to developments within the field of British nuclear culture, this thesis uses the concept of the sociotechnical imaginary (STIM) to trace the social and cultural history of the Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria between 1945 and 1990. Drawing upon oral histories of the people who built, worked at, and lived alongside Britain’s largest nuclear complex, this study identifies distinct forms of cultural expression particular to the local area, as rural citizens responded to nuclear developments by framing their rural identities and unique experiences of nuclear science in relation to a set of contested and dynamic ‘nuclear imaginaries.’ I will examine the evolution of public attitudes towards nuclear technologies, showing how social responses were structured and given shape by a series of imagined nuclear futures which were created and embedded into British cultural life. Examining the early years of the British nuclear project, I will demonstrate how a ‘utopian nuclear imaginary’ was cultivated within government at the end of the Second World War, becoming embedded within society as nuclear technologies were imagined as heralding a series of desirable social, political, and economic futures. 1 I will go on to trace how these imaginaries were subject to contest and redefinition by ordinary people, who resisted the proliferation of nuclear technologies, forging ‘dystopian’ imaginaries which challenged and entered into competition with the utopian imaginary propagated by government. Exploring the dynamic interplay between these two imaginaries, the following chapters will not only historicise the nature of public responses to nuclearisation, but uncover the social processes behind their creation, ultimately pointing 1 S. Jasanoff, ‘Future Imperfect: Science, Technology, and the Imaginations of Modernity’, in S. Jasanoff, and S. Kim, (eds.), Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), p. 4. 6 towards the immense power of ordinary people as agents of social change, capable of substantiating, challenging, and redefining ‘top-down’ narratives of sociotechnical progress. This echoes recent historiographical trends within the field of nuclear culture, which have pointed to the significance of the localised context in shaping our understanding of public responses to nuclearisation during the twentieth century. Furthermore, this also corroborates recent studies of rural Britain, which have demonstrated the agency of rural ‘peripheral’ communities to challenge the socio-spatial inequalities and power relations emanating from the urban core. Appropriating these two insights, this thesis ultimately demonstrates the plurality of cultural responses to the nuclear age, the presence and power of sociotechnical imaginaries to shape and inform these responses, and the agency of ordinary people to resist, challenge, and redefine dominant cultural assumptions about nuclear technologies and their place within British society.