How do nuclear technologies become commonplace? How have the borders between the exceptional and the banal been drawn and redrawn over the last 70 years in order to make nuclear energy part of everyday life? This special issue analyzes the role of fun and display, broadly construed, in shaping the cultural representation and the material circulation (or non-circulation) of nuclear technologies. Four case studies, covering the United States, Great Britain, Portugal, Spain, and Ukraine from the 1950s to the 2000s, explore (...) how specific forms of public display and playful practices of cultural production were used as means to banalize (or de-banalize) nuclear energy. This introduction addresses the main theoretical and historiographical signposts of the special issue and outlines the different ways in which the articles explore them. (shrink)

In the mid-1970s, the fascist-leaning dictatorships in Spain (1939–1977) and Portugal (1933–1974) fell. Closely linked to the 1973 oil crisis, debates over energy and technology policies became very prominent during the ensuing political redefinition of both countries. Two decades after the first international agreements between the Iberian regimes and the United States for the development of nuclear programs, a myriad of movements of social resistance to nuclear technology emerged in dialogue with anti-nuclear organizations in other European countries. Fun and playfulness (...) have been used for top–down popularization and banalization of nuclear technologies since the 1950s, but here pleasant forms of resistance also played a central role in contesting national energy plans, expert discourses, and vested interests. This article explores what we call “anti-nuclear fun,” the use of amusement, play, and humor as political and epistemic tools to familiarize society with the exceptional and daily risks of the “peaceful atom.”. (shrink)