A new Springer title to discover: Decommissioning Aging Installations

Decommissioning Aging Installations and Declining Technologies eis the result of the NeTWork seminar held in 2024, sponsored by Mathilde Bourrier (University of Geneva, Switzerland) and Eric Marsden (Foncsi, France).

Read and download the book here:
 Decommissioning Aging Installations and Declining Technologies. Burden or Inspiration?

What is it about?

This open-access brief tackles the idea, prevalent in some industrial sectors, that decommissioning, de-pollution and waste management are a necessary evil rather than a predictable phase of industry for which preparations can and should be made in advance. 

The brief forms the beginning of a conversation on the conditions under which current examples of decommissioning and phasing-out could help establish a basis for envisioning future dismantling efforts across safety-critical systems and in the light of the sustainability transitions with which many sectors have to engage. 

What are the conditions that would allow these operations to be seen, not as a sad act of deconstruction, but rather as a source of learning about technological rebound, renaissance and ecological redirection?

The articles and their authors

This volume brings together ten articles written by international experts:

1. “Decommissioning Ageing Installations and Declining Technologies: Burden or Inspiration?”, by Mathilde Bourrier (University of Geneva, Switzerland) and Eric Marsden (Foncsi, France)
2. “Technological Decline from a Socio-Material Perspective”, by Zahar Koretsky (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
3. “Discontinuation Through Enforcement of the Law: Court Rulings as Leverage for Stopping Delegitimized Practices and Technologies”, by Peter Stegmaier (University of Twente, The Netherlands)
4. “Undesirable Systems, Undesired Ends: The (Un)Bearable Heaviness of Phasing-Out Pesticides?”, by Bruno Turnheim (Inrae, France), Marc Barbier and Mireille Matt (LISIS-Inrae, France),
5. “Glory, Mourning, Memory. Archiving Knowledge, Dismantling Nuclear Power”, by Christine Bergé (France)
6. “Preserving and Valuing Memory for a Safer and More Sustainable Future: The Key Role of Archives”, by Fabienne Peris-Raimbault (Haute-Garonne Departmental Archives, France)
7. “Collecting, Dismantling, Documenting, Reusing: Marginal Practices with Discarded Electronics”, by Nicolas Nova, Anaïs Bloch and Thibault Le Page (HEAD, Switzerland)
8. “Safety Culture Lessons Learned in Decommissioning VTT’s FiR 1 Research Reactor”, by Kaupo Viitanen, Merja Airola, Markus Airila and Petri Kotiluoto (VTT Technical Research Center, Finland)
9. “Decommissioning Management and Leadership for Safety Education: Addressing the Organizational Challenges and the Managerial Complexity of Nuclear Decommissioning Projects”, by Yoann Guntzburger (SKEMA Business School, France), Jacques Repussard (IMDR, France), Savéria Cecchi (Université Côté d’Azur, France), Pierre Daniel (SKEMA Business School, France), Renata Kaminska (SKEMA Business School, France), Joseph A. Ridao Cabrerizo (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, germany), Evelyne Rouby and Catherine Thomas (Université Côté d’Azur, France)
10. “The Language of Transitions: Navigating Innovation, Decline and Renewal”, by Eric Marsden (Foncsi, France) and Mathilde Bourrier (University of Geneva, Switzerland)

An internationally renowned academic collection

Since 2016, Foncsi has been publishing an open access collection with the scientific publisher Springer: the “SpringerBriefs in Safety Management”.

Decommissioning Aging Installations and Declining Technologies is the 17^th book published by Foncsi in this collection. Cause of open access, these works reach a wide audience, and six of them, to be precise, have exceeded 100,000 downloads.

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