Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface: Once there was a landscape …
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: Talking nuclear
- Part I Nuclear landscapes
- 1 La Hague or the nuclear zone
- 2 The nuclear setting
- 3 The politics of nuclear power
- Part II The nuclear people
- Conclusion: The ultimate subject: man
- Notes
- Index
3 - The politics of nuclear power
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface: Once there was a landscape …
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: Talking nuclear
- Part I Nuclear landscapes
- 1 La Hague or the nuclear zone
- 2 The nuclear setting
- 3 The politics of nuclear power
- Part II The nuclear people
- Conclusion: The ultimate subject: man
- Notes
- Index
Summary
There would be one way to cut short the rumours, and it would be for the management of the plant to speak plainly about the industrial policy it intends to pursue as well as about pollution or about safety problems with partners whom it regarded and who regarded themselves as equals. But with whom should it hold such a dialogue? With the local populations? Twenty years of mutual distrust are not easily forgotten. With local politicians? A history of passivity and submissiveness is not easily overcome. With the groups that opposed and still oppose the spread of the nuclear industry? But would they be able to drop their futile demonstrations, their abortive campaigns, their whole discredited struggle? And what of the technocrats? Do they think they will simply be able to disregard their aversion to all who oppose them? The public, the politicians, the anti-nuclear lobby, each one of these groups might have constituted a countervailing power to the real or imagined hold that COGEMA has on the region. None of them wanted to or has managed to. In the circumstances, is there any hope at all, here at la Hague, of finding a forum of discussion and communication, a space for mutual recognition?
Communication at cross-purposes
‘The whole problem stems from the fact that people here were taken in, so they no longer believe what they're told. I'm from la Hague myself … and when la Hague folk have been duped, it's a long, hard struggle to win back their confidence.’
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Nuclear Peninsula , pp. 51 - 72Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993