Nuclear waste matter(s): time and technopolitics at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in nuclear New Mexico

IR scholarship on the international politics of nuclear weapons does not meaningfully engage with the politics of nuclear waste. This article makes the case for nuclear weapons waste as an integral part of the US nuclear weapons complex and of international nuclear politics more broadly. Waste is not simply a by-product or one of many reasons for nuclear disarmament, but is a component of nuclear weapons politics that needs to be actively investigated and addressed. I argue that nuclear waste matters and I develop a technopolitical  and narrative framing grounded in work across disciplines through which to begin to incorporate weapons waste into our understandings of the global nuclear weapons order. This is expressed through three propositions: that waste is not just a by-product but a core part of the nuclear weapons system; that nuclear waste governance exhibits dynamics of technopolitics; and that nuclear waste infrastructures have narrative and temporal significance. The article develops these statements through interviews collected during fieldwork on the US nuclear weapons waste complex in New Mexico, focusing specifically on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) the only permanent geologic disposal site for nuclear weapons waste in the United States.

Speaker: Laura Considine (University of Leeds)

Discussants: Shampa Biswas (Whitman College) and Lucie Genay (University of Limoges)