On February 23, 2022 I visited for the first time the nuclear area of Saluggia, Piedmont (Italy). The site is well known among decommissioning experts and Piedmont residents for its critical conditions due to the presence of a high-waste deposit located next to the river Dora Baltea. The nuclear area is formed by two distinct but adjacent installations: the former research reactor Avogadro built in the 1960s to produce medical radioisotopes (Pic. 1) and former CNEN/ENEA spent fuel reprocessing plant EUREX (Pic. 2). The Avogadro reactor has been decommissioned and dismantled and Sogin (the state owned company responsible for nuclear decommissioning in Italy) transformed the container building into a temporary deposit of liquid and solid waste produced by the EUREX reprocessing plant. Saluggia is part of of Italy’s nuclear geography and one of the sites undergoing decommissioning since the early 1990s.
The Saluggia sites are also interesting for the history of their “emplacement.” They were built inside the river basin of the Dora Baltea, where the Cavour Canal (Pic. 3) and the Farini Canal (Pic. 4) form a sort of water triangle. Water is an essential component of nuclear technology, but also to agriculture. Saluggia sits close to the Vercelli area, famous for its rice fields. Irrigation through water canals alimented by the Po river and by the Dora Baltea river have been part of the landscape for centuries.
How is the “displacement” of the nuclear sites going to interact with the wet environment of the area? How are the hydraulic defenses built to protect the temporary high-waste deposit after the flooding of the Dora Baltea in 2000 working? The logic of “emplacement” corresponds to the need of preventing unwanted and uncontrolled interactions of nuclear sites with the surrounding environment: leakages but also water flooding inside the area have to be avoided. What happens during the decommissioning of nuclear sites? Who plans and works it out? These and other questions are at the core of my project NUCLEARDECOM. Stay tuned as I try to answer these and other questions…
The title Fondamenti | Foundations reflects my personal aspiration to overcome analytical fragmentation in the interpretation of reality. I think we can better understand what is going on in the world if we retrieve our capacity to orient ourselves through the overwhelming flux of information provided by multiple media. Here I offer my sense of orientation in the discussion of practical and theoretical problems that invest our societies, particularly in relation to public engagement with science, technology, public health, and the environment.
My first book The Atomic Archipelago: US Nuclear Submarines and Technopolitics of Risk in Cold War Italy is coming out soon (May 24, 2022) for University of Pittsburgh Press, Intersections Series.
Affannati alla ricerca di spazi per il rientro in classe degli studenti in autunno, autorità pubbliche, amministratori scolastici, e presidenti di università si preparano a diversi scenari. L’incertezza sulle previsioni di una seconda ondata di contagi da SARS-CoV 2 regna sovrana, ma altrettanto robusto sembra essere il desiderio di tornare alle normali attività scolastiche, pur con le precauzioni che la presenza del virus richiede. L’Italia è in grave ritardo, lo hanno detto in tantissimi, mi ci aggiungo io. L’indecisione del governo ha spinto molti presidi delle scuole medie e superiori ad organizzarsi in proprio, prevedendo rotazioni e quote di lezioni on-line.
Continue reading “Alcuni buoni motivi per investire sulla scuola online.”
Spesso, in TV o sui social media, ascoltiamo e leggiamo critiche feroci rivolte agli esperti che si “contraddicono in continuazione”. Veramente, le critiche sono selettive. Spesso si ascoltano gli esperti che esprimono pareri per noi più rassicuranti, e si denigrano quelli che invece reputiamo allarmisti, arrivisti, o faciloni, a seconda delle nostre paure, preferenze, stati d’animo. Segnalo questa breve intervista ad Anthony Fauci, che da decenni dirige il centro di malattie infettive degli USA, di base ad Atlanta (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases). In questa intervista Fauci spiega perché all’inizio della pandemia molti esperti dicevano che le maschere erano necessarie solo per gli operatori sanitari, ma non per il pubblico in generale.
Continue reading “COVID 19: Le contraddizioni degli esperti”
Thanks to Per Högselius for sharing his research experience and for his comments. Ideas for a future collaboration?
From 24 to 27 October NUCLEARWATERS project leader Per Högselius participated in the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), wich was held in Milan this year. The history of nuclear engineering played a prominent role at the meeting, featuring an impressive 25 presentations analyzing nuclear technologies in energy, medicine and war. Our project featured in a special session organized by ERC representative Flavia Cumoli, with the double purpose of spreading the word about three ongoing ERC projects in the history of technology – the other two being led by Maria Rentetzi and Mikael Hård – and seeking to inspire other historians of technology to apply for the ERC’s generous research grants.
After the meeting we decided to take the opportunity to explore Italy’s nuclear past through an excursion to the Po River basin. The area around and between Milan and Turin is…
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Michele Ainis, noto costituzionalista italiano, ha pubblicato un suo editoriale sul ruolo e sulle responsabilità di politica e scienza nella gestione e nella soluzione della crisi attuale. L’editoriale di cui personalmente condivido l’argomento di fondo, fa uso di diverse semplificazioni e stereotipi su cui vale la pena dire due parole.
1) La “scienza” non è unitaria, nel senso che ci sono scienziati e scienziate che lavorano all’interno di diverse discipline, ognuna con dei parametri e dei sistemi di valutazione (e linguaggi, che equivalgono a pratiche e significati) assai disomogenei. Una virologa, non è una immunologa. I termini non sono sinonimi. Così come una persona che studia l’effetto dei farmaci sul virus non è necessariamente esperta di igiene e profilassi. Dunque, dire che la “scienza fa”, la “scienza dice” la “scienza suggerisce” è di per sé una semplificazione fuorviante.
Continue reading “Il rapporto fra scienza & politica in Italia durante la prima fase della pandemia da SARS CoV 2”
Davide Orsini 