Decommissioning as Residual Care: Transforming Nuclear Reactors into Waste

This paper takes nuclear decommissioning as an entry point in the way we understand and value innovations from what they leave behind. Nuclear decommissioning allows one to capture transformations through which an infrastructure that has lost its initial use and value is transformed into storable nuclear waste. We label this process “residual care,” a form of care in practice dealing with neglected things, and analyze it through the case of graphite-moderated reactors in France. Once at the forefront of nuclear innovation in the 1950s–60s, these machines have turned into poorly known piles of degrading residues that are now planned to be fully decommissioned in 2100. The irradiated graphite they contain, long considered a negligible background element, does not fit the current standards of nuclear waste management and must be turned into proper waste. We argue that residual care changes the nature of the infrastructure—as different facts appear, such as the radiological properties of graphite and the fragility of its containment devices. What was once a demonstration of mastery has become the object of a fragile demonstration of care.