Nuclear servitude: subcontracting and health in the French civil nuclear industry

<p>France's nuclear facilities, which include 58 reactors, are half a century old.

This is an industry in which risks to health in the short, medium, and long terms seem both the most dreaded and the most controversial.

Every year, around 30,000 employees of ""outside"" companies perform maintenance in France's nuclear power plants.

These workers receive 80% of the total annual occupational exposure to ionising radiation in French nuclear plants.

The sociological study presented in this book began with some workers' accounts of their experiences, and analyses the social division of labour that divides workers' activities between highly specialised operations and ""nuclear servitude""—a highly suggestive term designating the indispensable tasks that entail the most exposure to radiation while preparing for other maintenance operations. </p><p> Nuclear producers strictly observe regulatory exposure limits by managing job exposures by radiation doses and externalising the problems.

Outsourcing the risky work prevents challenges from unions and public officials, and firms can claim that radiation exposures are controlled and do not endanger workers' health.

This problem, a terrible contradiction at the heart of the nuclear industry, has been socially constructed to render it invisible. </p><p> This book highlights the dangers of the ""disorganisation"" of work through subcontracting practices, both for workers' health and for nuclear safety.

It also demonstrates the adverse effects of flexibility on the production of knowledge about occupational hazards, especially the effects of low-level radiation on health.

The results of this French study sound an alarm for organisational choices in the nuclear industry worldwide.</p>