Negotiating Radiation Protection in the Nuclear Age

This deeply researched collection is a timely reminder of the distributed and often intentionally downplayed risks, both past and present, of the nuclear world. Chapters highlight the complex history of the safety standards for radiation protection and the ongoing difficulties of holding the responsible authorities accountable for the harms to people and the environment.

Spanning many domains, Negotiating Radiation Protection demonstrates how debates among stakeholders directly shape radiation protection standards and practices—and the lives of those exposed. It is a timely and groundbreaking volume destined to be a field-defining classic for understanding the origins and future of the global nuclear order.

Journeying across five continents and alighting at locations as diverse as mines and crash sites, meeting rooms and laboratories, blast zones and field stations, the contributors of Negotiating Radiation Protection develop truly transnational standpoints on the development of knowledges and standards surrounding radiation exposure. The volume showcases the situated, multi-sited, and contingent nature of this important history. Contributors establish the centrality of actors and agents including atomic veterans, miners, labor organizers, survivors, and scientists. Collectively, the authors offer insight into whose knowledge counted, and how standards were made and contested worldwide. The volume is essential reading for scholars and students in the history of biology and technology, as well as those interested in science and diplomacy and international standard-setting.