Stichting Laka

Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
Nuclear Servitude: Subcontracting and Health in the French Civil Nuclear Industry (2000)

Auteur	A.Thébaud-Mony, INSERM
Datum	2000
Classificatie	6.01.0.60/06 ((UITZEND) WERK IN KERNINSTALLATIES)
Voorkant

About the Book

France's nuclear facilities, which include 58 reactors, are half a century old. This 
is an industry in which risks to health in the short, medium, and long terms seem both 
the most dreaded and the most controversial. Every year, around 30,000 employees 
of "outside" companies perform maintenance in France's nuclear power plants. These 
workers receive 80% of the total annual occupational exposure to ionizing radiation 
in French nuclear plants. The sociological study presented in this book began with 
some workers' accounts of their experiences, and analyzes the social division of labor 
that divides workers' activities between highly specialized operations and "nuclear 
servitude" -a highly suggestive term designating the indispensable tasks that entail 
the most exposure to radiation while preparing for other maintenance operations.

Nuclear producers strictly observe regulatory exposure limits by managing job 
exposures by radiation doses and externalizing the problems. Outsourcing the risky 
work prevents challenges from unions and public officials, and firms can claim that 
radiation exposures are controlled and do not endanger workers' health. This 
problem, a terrible contradiction at the heart of the nuclear industry, has been 
socially constructed to render it invisible.

This book highlights the dangers of the "disorganization" of work through 
subcontracting practices, both for workers' health and for nuclear safety. It also 
demonstrates the adverse effects of flexibility on the production of knowledge 
about occupational hazards, especially the effects of low-level radiation on health.
The results of this French study sound an alarm for organizational choices in the 
nuclear industry worldwide.

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