Transnational nuclear knowledge-making beyond science: The laboratory of Chooz A (1960s–80s)

Abstract

This article examines the Franco-Belgian Chooz A nuclear power plant as a transnational laboratory for nuclear knowledge-making in postwar Europe. Situated on the French–Belgian border, Chooz A was the first pressurized water reactor built in France and one of the earliest collaborations between the French utility EDF, Belgian companies, Westinghouse, and Euratom. We argue that Chooz A is an example of how nuclear knowledge was produced outside of scientific institutions through experimenting, testing, and tinkering. Previous scholarship has tended to analyze nuclear knowledge production from the perspective of “big science” and experiments at scientific institutions. By conceptualizing Chooz A as a laboratory, this article argues that nuclear power plants, often viewed merely as industrial installations, can also be understood as experimental arenas for producing more practical knowledge. Particularly in border settings, nuclear diplomacy was crucial in shaping knowledge production, and collaborative ideas for this knowledge production often coexisted with national interests. Drawing on unexplored archives from EDF, ASNR (the French Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection Authority), Westinghouse, and the Belgian National Archives, as well as oral history interviews, we explore five examples that demonstrate Chooz A’s experimental nature: its unconventional cavern design, the operation of the plant as a social laboratory and arena for nuclear diplomacy, the 1968 thermal-shield incident, tritium contamination controversies, and early MOX (mixed-oxide) fuel experiments. In all these instances, not scientists but engineers, technicians, and regular workers produced practical knowledge that would prove crucial in France’s, Belgium’s, and arguably Europe’s energy transition toward nuclear in the postwar period. These examples all demonstrate, to a greater degree than scholars have previously recognized, that the boundary between laboratory experimentation and energy infrastructure was blurrier, as engineers, technicians, and regulators collectively generated tacit and practical knowledge that informed later postwar European nuclear programs.