One of these two positions will entail field work in Belgium

French proficiency is required, Dutch is a plus.

It's a great project that has the potential to lead to important new insights about Belgium's relationship with nuclear technologies

So, to my Belgian colleagues, please spread the word!

Our panel was with Martin Kohlrausch, Jens van de Maele and @cecipax679.bsky.social. Check out their work as well!

Looking back at a great @shothisttech.bsky.social conference in Esch-sur-Alzette last week!

🏭 On a very eye-catching campus, a former steelworks

🧑‍🔬 Had a great panel on "expertise" (look how happy we were afterwards)

⚛️ Presented my work on the history of nuclear expertise & engineering education

it was a pleasure to share info on Robert O. Anderson that I & especially @odinnmelsted.bsky.social have collected w/ @roycerk2.bsky.social & glad that info proved useful in deflating one of the conspiracy theories in this apparently "mid" & misleading book:

Congrats!!

Poster showing a wind turbine from frog perspective. The picture is in light pink and blue nuances and announces a PhD course in energy humanities. More information can be found in this website. https://www.uis.no/en/research/collaboration/the-greenhouse-centre-for-environmental-humanities/humanities/apply-for-phd

I am really excited to announce the call for the PhD Course in Energy Humanities!

Held at the @greenhouseuis.net from 1-5 December.

Applications are welcome until 24 October.

#envhum #envhist #energyhistory

The highlight of the conference for me, however, was my Master and Commander moment on board the Briggen Tre Kronor ⛵⚓

@eseh.bsky.social in Uppsala felt very much like coming home, not only because it was in Sweden🇸🇪

🌍One word dominated the conference: Anthropocene

☢️& lots of nuclear history! Had the pleasure of presenting ongoing work on Belgian (anti-)nuclear history

💧+ I was part of two exciting water panels!

URL and ALT text to follow.

excited to share the call for the workshop

EXTRACTIVE NATURES / NATURES OF EXTRACTION

happening at @uobrisceh.bsky.social on 6-7 Nov 2025,

made possible by the @britishacademy.bsky.social

deadline: 10 September!

full call below ⤵

#envhist #envhum

@siegfriedevens.bsky.social scattered nuclear landscape in Belgium, with little national regulation until late 1980s/1990s. Local and transborder anti-nuclear protests, interantional influences really important, but success not entirely clear in face of corporate decisions to drop nuclear plans.

Creating Chernobyl. - NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin Starting in 1970, this article studies how Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was built. It follows the station’s operational history until 1982. During that year, reactor block one suffered a torn reactor...

"Creating #Chernobyl" article out now!

#envhist #nuclearwaters #nuclear

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The Technocratic Culture Behind Chernobyl’s Disaster Recently my new article about nuclear Ukraine was published. In this article, I am using a technocratic culture perspective to analyse what was going on at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant before that fateful night in April 1986, when reactor block four exploded.

The Technocratic Culture Behind Chernobyl’s Disaster

Recently my new article about nuclear Ukraine was published. In this article, I am using a technocratic culture perspective to analyse what was going on at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant before that fateful night in April 1986, when reactor block…

Look what came in the mail today! I was thrilled to contribute a chapter to this volume by @perhogselius.bsky.social and @siegfriedevens.bsky.social, based on a fantastic conference in Stockholm.

2000 years ago: the Romans would let an aqueduct destroy the Gardon Valley. We need clean water, but at what cost?

Look, the Guardian is hardly a pro-nuclear newspaper and you can definitely ask a tech bro to do the same old nuclear marketing pitch. But when you make up historical facts, use them to argue for investing billions of £ in new nuclear, and there is no factcheck, there really is a problem!

8. "Today we have this added motivation to get rid of fossil fuels." It's not added. This motivation already existed in the nuclear sector since the very beginning. It was just more related to energy dependence than climate change. But nuclear's competition with fossils is not new at all.

7. "France is not too dissimilar on how its government functions." Not sure if this is true at all, but certainly not for nuclear. France's nuclear policy has been quite unique in how state-centred, centralized, and nationalistic (see The Radiance of France by @gabriellehecht.bsky.social) it was.

6. "The French fleet arrived on time and within budget. 55 were built basically at the same time." His chronology is very off here. A period of 3-4 decades is not "the same time." And they were definitely not all on time and budget.

5. "In relative terms, the same amount of people has died from nuclear as wind/solar." The problem with these kinds of quantitative comparisons is that they are so unnuanced. Are all deadly workplace incidents in nuclear facilities over 9 decades in those numbers ? And all latent radiation deaths?

4. "Small modular reactors, like submarine reactors, used to fit under a kitchen table." Maybe this was a joke. But Admiral Rickover would not have found it funny. Obviously untrue though.

3. "We need a lot of mines for critical minerals for renewables." Correct. But at no point does anyone mention uranium mines and the historical impact on people and the environment they have had.

2. "Three Mile Island and Chernobyl put an end to the expansion of nuclear power." The expansion had already stopped before 1979. Reactor orders were already going down in the US from 1974 onwards. The main cause was high costs.

1. "Calder Hall was the first commercial NPP." No, its prime purpose was to produce plutonium for nuclear bombs. Shippingport was the first fully commercial NPP.

Today's episode of the @theguardian.com Today in Focus podcast, which I usually love, was about nuclear power. Unfortunately, nuclear scientist Tim Gregory was allowed to flood the episode with historical inaccuracies. How this passed without any factcheck is beyond me. A selection:

The Nuclear-Water Nexus An edited collection that takes a deep dive into the complex interactions between nuclear energy and water.Splitting atoms is a water-intensive business. T

Check out The Nuclear-Water Nexus! Here you have a foundational volume about the hydrological turn in #nuclear energy history - all in open-access!

Props go out to @siegfriedevens.bsky.social and @perhogselius.bsky.social for editing!

I contributed chapter 4!

direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edi...

If you are interested in #nuclear power this is the most important book of the year #NuclearPower #climate

"The Nuclear-Water Nexus" on a plain background. In the top half of the cover is an image of two cooling plants by a body of water. Their reflection is mirrored in the bottom half of the cover.

In "The Nuclear-Water Nexus," @perhogselius.bsky.social & Siegfried Evens bring together contributors from around the world to take a deep dive into the complex interactions between nuclear energy and water. Available #OpenAccess: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255228...

The Nuclear-Water Nexus Splitting atoms is a water-intensive business. To operate efficiently and safely, a standard nuclear reactor needs around 50 cubic meters (13,000 gallons) of...

Delighted to have a chapter in 'The Nuclear-Water Nexus' edited by @perhogselius.bsky.social & @siegfriedevens.bsky.social

Kate Brown and I trace the legacies of #Chornobyl through the proposed E40 waterway, exploring historical/contemporary attempts to engineer the #Prypiat River

The Nuclear-Water Nexus: 9780262552288 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books An edited collection that takes a deep dive into the complex interactions between nuclear energy and water. Splitting atoms is a water-intensive business. To operate efficiently and safely, a standar...

Readers with a US email can get 30% off when ordering here: penguinrandomhouse.com/books/777523.... Use the code MITP30. Only valid today!

With 20 chapters and 25 authors from a wide variety of countries and backgrounds, with academics from all kinds of disciplines as well as non-academics, it's a uniquely large and diverse edited volume!
Of interest to anyone in history of tech, STS, environmental humanities, and nuclear engineering⚛️