Nuclear technologies in the Great Basin oral history project

Abstract: The United States currently faces a nuclear waste crisis. According to a 2002 report by former Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, “We have a staggering amount of radioactive waste in this country.”1 The Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that by 2035 the U.S. will have approximately 115,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste, which exceeds the capacity of the proposed federal storage site at Yucca Mountain.2 Deciding where and how to store nuclear waste is a significant nuclear, environmental, and health policy issue. The decisions that we make about nuclear waste siting greatly impact the future of nuclear technologies and the communities and environments surrounding the sites. This research project attempts to understand the rhetorical nature of the historical and contemporary controversy over nuclear waste siting in the U.S. through the collection and rhetorical analysis of oral histories from people involved in high-level nuclear waste siting decisions. A crucial part of studying the Atomic West is archiving stories, documents, and events that constitute the relationship between nuclear technologies and the West. 3 However, strikingly absent in this growing body of scholarship are oral histories that specifically address nuclear waste siting decisions from a variety of perspectives. This project will archive and analyze the stories of people involved in the controversies over high-level nuclear waste in the American West including: (1) the controversy over the proposal to permanently store high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada (1982-present); and (2) the Private Fuel Storage/Skull Valley Goshute private proposal to temporarily store high-level nuclear waste on the Skull Valley Reservation (1987-present). This research project significantly contributes to my overall research trajectory of examining the rhetoric of nuclear waste siting decisions. Most significantly, this research will be incorporated into a scholarly book manuscript that I am in the process of writing

The Radical Potential of Public Hearings: A Rhetorical Assessment of Resistance and Indecorous Voice in Public Participation Processes

Little scholarship in environmental communication has considered the intersections between public participation and social movement. We fill this gap by discussing how public participation process can become sites of radical politics when publics employ disruptive or improper tactics, known as indecorous voice. Indecorum can be used to sustain protest matters beyond official forums, engage multiple audiences, and forge new identities among publics. We demonstrate the utility of indecorum through two case studies: Love Canal, NY where residents combat exposure to toxic chemicals, and Salt Lake City, UT, where publics challenge industrial expansion in a fight for clean air

The guise of deliberation: a rhetorical criticism of arguments in the Yucca Mountain site authorization controversy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2005.A contemporary controversy in the United States over nuclear waste concerns the 2001 decision to site a national high-level nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain in Nevada. This dissertation is a rhetorical criticism, specifically and argument evaluation, of the arguments of three important stakeholders: American Indian tribes, Nevadans, and the federal government. Through a close reading of DOE public hearing comments and the federal government's official site authorization documents, this dissertation finds that the process of the Yucca Mountain site authorization is a guise of deliberation in which American Indian arguments are ignored, Nevadan scientific arguments are disregarded, and the federal government employs rhetorical strategies which create a guise of reasonableness and deliberation to cover a primarily justificatory process. In particular, this case study finds that (1) American Indian arguers appeal to differing loci of values, use different forms of argument, and evaluate arguments using different standards than the federal government; (2) scientific argumentation from the public is constrained by conceptions of the relationship between science and the public, which demonstrates the need for a theory of public science that comes from below; and (3) the federal government rhetorically constructs an opposition to the site with American Indians as a third persona which is negated in the text. In addition to evaluating the arguments made by each of the stakeholders, this dissertation also informs our understanding of the process of public participation in the decision-making and the rhetorical manifestations and perpetuation of the phenomenon of radioactive colonization, offers implications for theories of American Indian argument forms and evaluation, offers a theory of public science, and provides suggestions for those involved in the controversy

Rhetoric, Climate Change, and Social Justice: An Interview with Dr. Danielle Endres

The Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis had the opportunity to interview Dr. Danielle Endres (Ph.D., University of Washington)—an Associate Professor of Communication and faculty in the Environmental Humanities Masters Program at the University of Utah. The interview discussed how rhetoric influences and shapes our societal understandings of climate change, strategies for mitigation and adaptation, and the intersections of social justice and environmental action.</p

The Radical Potential of Public Hearings: A Rhetorical Assessment of Resistance and Indecorous Voice in Public Participation Processes

Little scholarship in environmental communication has considered the intersections between public participation and social movement. We fill this gap by discussing how public participation process can become sites of radical politics when publics employ disruptive or improper tactics, known as indecorous voice. Indecorum can be used to sustain protest matters beyond official forums, engage multiple audiences, and forge new identities among publics. We demonstrate the utility of indecorum through two case studies: Love Canal, NY where residents combat exposure to toxic chemicals, and Salt Lake City, UT, where publics challenge industrial expansion in a fight for clean air.</p

The Radical Potential of Public Hearings: A Rhetorical Assessment of Resistance and Indecorous Voice in Public Participation Processes

Little scholarship in environmental communication has considered the intersections between public participation and social movement. We fill this gap by discussing how public participation process can become sites of radical politics when publics employ disruptive or improper tactics, known as indecorous voice. Indecorum can be used to sustain protest matters beyond official forums, engage multiple audiences, and forge new identities among publics. We demonstrate the utility of indecorum through two case studies: Love Canal, NY where residents combat exposure to toxic chemicals, and Salt Lake City, UT, where publics challenge industrial expansion in a fight for clean air.This is a chapter from Confronting the Challenges of Public Participation: Issues in Environmental, Planning and Health Decision-Making (2016): 65-79. Posted with permission.</p

Engaging complex temporalities in environmental rhetoric

In this essay, we identify a temporal turn in environmental rhetoric. As field researchers, we have experienced different senses of time bumping against one another in intercultural, ecological situations. Although these micro-experiences of time provide a constant grounding for our lives, we are also aware of the macro-expressions of time and the ways that they order our world and understanding of environmental degradation. We detail three interrelated temporal themes in environmental rhetoric. First, we delve into the practical considerations of time, articulating it in relation to how humans address environmental crises. Second, we respond back to ourselves by discussing epistemological concerns of time that emphasize knowing as critical to appropriate action and recognizing the need for impatience in the face of colonial, sexist, and racist systems that have existed for far too long. Lastly, we unpack multiple conceptualizations of time—the ontological commitments of different entities, systems, and cultures—and ask how scholars should conduct their own work given the temporal challenges presented by environmental problems, the demands of the field, the need for radical change, and the necessity of intelligent and meaningful choices. We do not seek to resolve tensions between these three themes but deepen the field's engagement with multiple temporalities. The conclusion offers some pathways to stimulate further scholarship about environmental temporalities

Amino acid and carbohydrate metabolism are coordinated to maintain energetic balance during drought in sugarcane

The ability to expand crop plantations without irrigation is a major goal to increase agriculture sustainability. To achieve this end, we need to understand the mechanisms that govern plant growth responses under drought conditions. In this study, we combined physiological, transcriptomic, and genomic data to provide a comprehensive picture of drought and recovery responses in the leaves and roots of sugarcane. Transcriptomic profiling using oligoarrays and RNA-seq identified 2898 (out of 21,902) and 46,062 (out of 373,869) transcripts as differentially expressed, respectively. Co-expression analysis revealed modules enriched in photosynthesis, small molecule metabolism, alpha-amino acid metabolism, trehalose biosynthesis, serine family amino acid metabolism, and carbohydrate transport. Together, our findings reveal that carbohydrate metabolism is coordinated with the degradation of amino acids to provide carbon skeletons to the tricarboxylic acid cycle. This coordination may help to maintain energetic balance during drought stress adaptation, facilitating recovery after the stress is alleviated. Our results shed light on candidate regulatory elements and pave the way to biotechnology strategies towards the development of drought-tolerant sugarcane plants212