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In 1972, the US Navy installed a base for nuclear submarines in the
Archipelago of La Maddalena off the northeastern shore of Sardinia,
Italy. In response, Italy established a radiation surveillance
program to monitor the impact of the base on the environment and
public health. In the first systematic study of nuclear expertise
in Italy, Davide Orsini focuses on the ensuing technopolitical
disputes concerning the role and safety of US nuclear submarines in
the Mediterranean Sea from the Cold War period to the closure of
the naval base in 2008. His book follows the struggles of different
groups--including local residents of the archipelago, US Navy
personnel, local administrators, Italian experts, and
politicians--to define nuclear submarines as either imperceptible
threats, much like radiocontamination, or as efficient machines at
the service of liberty and freedom. Unlike inland nuclear power
plants, vividly present and visible with their tall cooling towers
and reactor containers, the mobility and invisibility of submarines
contributed to an ambivalence about their nature, perpetuating the
idea of nuclear exceptionalism. In Italy, they symbolized objects
in constant motion, easily removable at the first sign of potential
harm. Orsini demonstrates how these mobile sources of hazard posed
special challenges for both expert assessments and public
understandings of risk, and in contexts outside the Anglo-Saxon
world, where unique social power dynamics held sway over the
outcome of technopolitical controversies.
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