Alicia Gutting and Itay Fischhendler discuss the “Nuclear Rhine”

Last week NUCLEARWATERS and the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH had the pleasure of welcoming Professor Itay Fishhendler from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as a disussant at NUCLEARWATERS PhD student Alicia Gutting’s mid-term seminar.

Alicia’s upcoming thesis has the preliminary title “The Nuclear Rhine” and analyses the history of nuclear energy in the upper part of the Rhine river basin from a transnational point of view, taking into account the experiences of Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein. The final thesis will consist of an introductory essay and 4-5 journal articles, two of which were presented in draft form at the seminar. The first article deals with controversies around drinking water in the area around Karlsruhe, home to Germany’s historically important nuclear research centre, which historically hosted several research reactors and a reprocessing facility. The second article targets the problem of thermal pollution along the Upper Rhine, the High Rhine and the Aare, where an impressive number of nuclear reactors were built over the years and an even greater number were planned.

Itay, an expert on transboundary water relations and environmental conflict resolution, emphasized the value of Alicia’s Rhine-oriented research for improving our general understanding of nuclear energy in transboundary river basins, and the crucial value of in-depth historical research in this field for coming to grips with contemporary concerns. The discussion at the seminar came to focus on methodological and theoretical challenges in this context, and on the potential for studies of nuclearized river basins to contribute to theories of transboundary risk and pollution. Other themes that came to the fore included the environmental history notion of a river’s agency in shaping nuclear energy history, and the relationship between thermal pollution, drinking water needs and the quest for scarce cooling water resources.

We will be looking forward to the finalized articles and, eventually, the completion of Alicia’s PhD thesis!