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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Deep Space: The new frontier of radiation controls
In commercial nuclear power, there has always been a deliberate tension between the regulator and the utility owner. The regulator fundamentally exists to protect the worker, and the utility, to make a profit. It is a win-win balance.
From the U.S. nuclear industry has emerged a brilliantly successful occupational nuclear safety record—largely the result of an ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) process that has driven exposure rates down to what only a decade ago would have been considered unthinkable. In the U.S. nuclear industry, the system has accomplished an excellent, nearly seamless process that succeeds to the benefit of both employee and utility owner.
Vincent Ialenti
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 9 | September 2021 | Pages 1377-1393
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1868890
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Drawing on 32 months of interview-based ethnographic fieldwork, this paper examines Finland’s “mankala” nuclear energy companies through the lens of anthropological theories of corporate form. Mankalas are limited liability companies run like zero-profit cooperatives that bring together consortia of Finnish corporations and municipal energy providers to purchase, finance, and share the output of jointly owned energy-generation facilities. They have long been associated with “uniquely Finnish” modes of trust, cooperation, societal cohesion, and transparency. In recent years, however, political-economic uncertainties have destabilized Finland’s mankala circuit, impacting how, whether, and when mankalas Teollisuuden Voima Oyj and Fennovoima have pursued new reactor projects. This has impacted reactor technology suppliers abroad, including France’s Areva, Germany’s E.On, and Russia’s Rosatom. With that in view, this paper explores whether anthropological analysis of Finland’s mankala corporate form can inspire new strategies for institutional innovation and reactor project financing for nuclear energy organizations. To chart out avenues for collaboration between anthropologists and nuclear energy practitioners, it concludes by proposing three pathways through which anthropological sensibilities could inform institutional decision making. I term these pathways holism, tracking and translation.