Nuclear Spaces: Communities, Materialities and Locations of Nuclear Cultural Heritage (NuSPACES)

Nuclear cultural heritage is a fast-growing field in many European countries due to nuclear decommissioning and its impact on local communities, and the challenge of safeguarding nuclear waste and protecting future generations.

However, it is unclear and contested what constitutes nuclear cultural heritage and how it can benefit different social groups.

There is a risk that valuable tangible and intangible forms of nuclear cultural heritage will be lost and that social inequalities might be perpetuated in the process.

NuSPACES will collaborate with different stakeholders to document and examine the creation of nuclear cultural heritage in three countries, the UK, Sweden and Lithuania and to shape a new agenda for research and practice in this field.

It will explore, first, the ways in which different social groups at local communities, nuclear industries and national cultural organisations engage in creating museum expositions and heritage sites in the process of selective preservation of their nuclear past.

Second, it will explore the role that nuclear cultural heritage can play in the process of decommissioning nuclear objects, for instance, providing new categories and types of materials to be preserved in the archives that are being assembled to inform future management of nuclear waste depositories.

Third, it will contribute to the internationalisation of local and national nuclear cultural heritage-making activities by establishing a platform where stakeholders will be able to share their experience and shape future agenda for research and practice in the field in conversation with academic researchers.

NuSPACES will result in new empirical data, academic publications, workshops and will produce a report containing policy guidelines on nuclear cultural heritage.