Nuclear power plants (NPP) in rural areas had been qualified as “nuclear oasis”, whose “remoteness, economic marginality, powerlessness and environmental degradation” (Blowers, 1999) facilitated the local acceptance of the industry promises for modernization, development, and economic progress. Recent research has shown that this depiction of nuclear communities as “locked into a servile and dependent relationship with the nuclear industry” (Bickerstaff, 2022) reproduces a stigmatizing narrative which invisibilize local actors’ capacities of resistance. The apparent higher “culture of nuclear acceptance” (Vilhunen et al., 2019) of rural areas must thus be questioned through a sensible attention to the concrete negotiations and controversies triggered by these promises at the local scale._x000D_
To do so, our paper focuses on the installation of Wylfa NPP, in the northernmost tip of Anglesey Island (Wales). In the early 1960s, the NPP was promoted as a promise for rural modernization in regions suffering from industrial decline. Informed by the materialist turn of energy research (Balmaceda et al., 2019), this paper studies the debate over the anticipated material consequences of these modernization promises on the landscape. We analyze the NPP construction as “politics of landscape production”. Data were gathered through semi-directive interviews and archival research in Anglesey in autumn 2022._x000D_
Results show that promises of modernization were not fully accepted and that controversies arose between actors, local and national, on how to integrate the Wylfa NPP in the landscape. Imaginaries of rural transformation collided with narratives on landscape and identity conservation. Negociations led to a landscaping of the site trying to respect both the characteristic physiognomy of Anglesey and the technical needs. However, the infrastructure has not been completely hidden: the promise of modernization also includes the unveiling of the construction site to the public.

Audrey Sérandour and Teva Meyer
Université de Haute-Alsace, CRESAT (France)

 
ID Abstract: 625