Decommissioning Aging Installations and Declining Technologies: Burden or Inspiration?

This open-access brief tackles the idea, prevalent in some industrial sectors, that decommissioning, de-pollution and waste management are a necessary evil rather than a predictable phase of industry for which preparations can and should be made in advance. The brief forms the beginning of a conversation on the conditions under which current examples of decommissioning and phasing-out could help establish a basis for envisioning future dismantling efforts across safety-critical systems and in the light of the sustainability transitions with which many sectors have to engage. What are the conditions that would allow these operations to be seen, not as a sad act of deconstruction, but rather as a source of learning about technological rebound, renaissance and ecological redirection?

This brief will be of interest to academic researchers and graduate students working in safety science, sustainability and environmental risk and management. Members of expert bodies – safety and health agencies, environmental agencies, regulators and inspectors – consultants working with hazardous industries and policy-makers dealing with the environmental and health-and-safety law may find the advice given in this book of practical use in cutting down the undesirable environmental effects of industrial decommissioning.

Mathilde Bourrier is Professor of Sociology at the University of Geneva, where she teaches the sociology of organizations, work and risk. Her work focuses on the social construction of organizational reliability, seeking to understand how it can be achieved, maintained or compromised. She is particularly interested in organizational design and resource allocation in nominal as well as during crisis situations. She has investigated in a wide range of organizations, including civil nuclear power plants, hospitals, police stations and expert teams in epidemic and pandemic management.