Nuclear Remains: On Temporalities, Responsibilities, and Values

An ethnography of U.S. nuclear waste policy, and how to understand contemporary societies’ attempts to establish “good” relations with the future.

Contemporary societies are often criticized for their incapacity to account for the long term. Nuclear Remains asks what happens when a society decides to think long term—examining the US efforts to hold present and distant futures together.

Focusing on the case of the US nuclear waste program, Başak Saraç-Lesavre argues that no temporal orientatio...