Building and Dismantling the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant : Social and Technical Media Packages
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Description | The chapter discusses the complexity of a nuclear system around the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, which also consists of adjacent towns and territories, as well as the institutions, research, production of goods, policies and the population and cultural production in which a nuclear power plant is intertwined. The study is based on the analysis of the representation of the construction process in late 1980s and dismantling processes of the INPP in late 2010s in print, online media and archival photographs. Using the concept of media packages (Gamson and Modigliani) - a set of interpretative packages through which media give meaning to a particular sociotechnical issue, we illustrate how packages might frame the nuclear power issue. In the period of the construction of the power plant, the interdependence between the INPP, Visaginas and its inhabitants was emphasized and praised by the media. In contrast to the newspapers of the Soviet period, today media focus primarily on technical aspects of the INPP dismantling and pay little attention to its social consequences. We argue that while the dismantling of the RBMK reactor is a unique technical procedure, the closure of the nuclear power plant can also be conceived as a sensitive social process but the important political, social and economic aspects of dismantling remain misrepresented. |
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