The Skyline is Changing: Editing Space and Discourse in Nuclear Decommissioning

Abstract

Drawing on 5 years of ethnographic fieldwork at and around the nuclear facilities at Sellafield in Northwest England, I engage with a ubiquitous turn of phrase that describes the material, visually striking reality of a slowly disappearing industrial landscape, while wishing another, morally charged technosocietal reality into existence."The skyline is changing" is a discursive trope wielded by the Sellafield Limited company and echoed in local media and parlance.It is also a case of visually performative rhetoric that seeks to tame uncertainty by celebrating examples of the nuclear industry's selective editing of an iconic skyline. VIEWS OF SELLAFIELDOnly one A-road runs west of England's Lake District National Park, the A595, winding its way between North and South Cumbria while affording vistas of Cumbrian fells on the one side and views of the Irish Sea on the other (Figure 1).This is mainly a single-carriageway with one lane in each direction, only rarely fattening out to become dual for awhile.The modest infrastructure is testimony to and part of the continuing reality of West Cumbria's remoteness.The region does have a rail connection: small diesel trains chug along the coast, transporting travelers on their way to the more southerly cities of Lancaster and Manchester, or to Carlisle in the north, whence trains to Scotland or again to the south depart.Traveling out of West Cumbria means PETRA TJITSKE KALSHOVEN, a cultural anthropologist with The University of Manchester since 2009, draws on a background of Humanities and Social Sciences (M.A. in Classical Languages and Cultures, Leiden University; Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology, McGill University).She explores skilled manifestations of human curiosity, simulation, play and rhetoric.Practices of modeling and mimesis are central foci: she conceives of human life as a series of repetitions and rehearsals for things that never quite come to pass.

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