Science and Technology Studies (STS) have shown that techno-scientific promises and expectations are strong socio-political forces having performative power in shaping the trajectories of modern societies. The perspective accentuates importance of understanding construction and evolution of technological future scripts and technological hype cycles. _x000D_
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In the past seen as a herald of progress, a comprehensive solution to the grand problems of society, nuclear energy is today portrayed as a temporary “bridge solution” or alternatively key component of diverse visions of sustainable energy futures. In course of time nuclear promises have been recurrently revived and reshaped, in response to new challenges and scenarios. The latest in the series of promises are the Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) – reactors with a capacity of 10-300 MW, with commercial serial production expected by 2030. Smaller in unit size and produced via modular assembly-line model, SMRs are supposed to be cheaper, safer, and quicker to deploy than today’s large nuclear megaprojects, whose construction has faced formidable difficulties in the West. Additionally SMRs are considered inherently invulnerable to Chernobyl or Fukushima style large scale catastrophic failures due their small size. _x000D_
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We apply the perspective of sociology of expectations to analyse intertwining of SMR hype and SMR promises and examine 1) the quantity SMR articles and texts published in a leading Finnish daily newspaper during the period 2000-2022, 2) the technological hype periods which can be found in the data, 3) the article themes causing the most SMR mentions, and 4) what is the “hype language” of the Finnish newspaper like? On a theoretical level the aim is gain more understanding on how hype and promises are intertwined in the print media and how we should distinguish between quantitative hype cycle and a semantic hype cycle, which do not necessarily go together.

Mika Kari, Tapio Litmanen, Matti Kojo, Markku Lehtonen
University of Jyväskylä, LUT university, Pompeu Fabra University

 
ID Abstract: 365