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Nuclear Servitude: Subcontracting and Health in the French Civil Nuclear Industry
Annie Thébaud-Mony
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Work, Health and Environment Series, Series Editors, Charles Levenstein, Robert Forrant, and John Wooding
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IN PRAISE OF
"Nuclear Servitude is a scholarly look at a major issue to the health risks associated with nuclear power and how they can be reduced, a vital addition to community and college health studies collections."
—James A. Cox, The Midwest Book Review, Library Bookwatch 2011
ABOUT THE BOOK
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 ionizing radiation in French nuclear plants. The sociological study presented in this book began with some workers' accounts of their experiences, and analyzes the social division of labor that divides workers' activities between highly specialized 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.
Nuclear producers strictly observe regulatory exposure limits by managing job exposures by radiation doses and externalizing 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.
This book highlights the dangers of the "disorganization" 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 organizational choices in the nuclear industry worldwide.
Intended Audience: Public officials, public health professionals, radioprotection specialists, academic staff in social sciences, students, journalists, trade unions, NGOs fighting for human rights, lawyers, citizens concerned about the future of energy choices.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Annie Thébaud-Mony, Ph.D., is director of research at the National Institute for Health and Medical
Research (INSERM), a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Social-Social Sciences,
Policies, Health (IRIS), and director of the Scientific Group on Occupational Cancer (GISCOP93). A sociologist in
the field of occupational health, Thébaud-Mony has developed studies on social inequalities in health, occupational injuries and diseases, the rules and practices of prevention in workplaces, and the social division of work and occupational
risks. She has been an active participant in international research networks on occupational health, especially with
Brazil, Australia, the United States, Canada, and Japan. In 2008 she received awards for her book Travailler peut nuire gravement à votre santé (Working can seriously damage your health; published in 2007)
from the Association of Medical Journalists of the Press and from the medical review Prescrire.
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