Welcome! Thank you for visiting the site for the March 2021 Symposium.
Our Radiation Governance Symposium, hosted by UC Irvine and UCLA with support from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science, San Francisco and the UCLA Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, acknowledges the Acjachemen and Gabrielino/Tongva peoples as the traditional land caretakers of Tovaangar (the Los Angeles basin, southern Channel Islands, including the region from the Santa Ana River to Aliso Creek and beyond).
Additionally, the greater Los Angeles area is home to the largest indigenous populations in the U.S. It is the ancestral homeland of the Tongva, the Acjachemen, the Chumash, the Tataviam, the Cahuilla nations, the Chemehuevi, the Pipa Aha Macav, the Morongo, the Pechanga, the Yuhaaviatam, the Soboba among other peoples. It is also presently home to large communities of Indigneous peoples from the greater Turtle Island, the Pacific Islands, and Central and South America, including Zapotec and Mixtec peoples.
We acknowledge that Los Angeles is also a place with large communities of Two Spirit peoples who organize and fellowship with each other.
We acknowledge colonization as an ongoing process, the need to continue repairing the harm caused to Indigenous peoples around the world, and a special need to better govern radiation hazards in Indigenous communities.
We want to continue this governance “cross-talk” across our fields of knowledge, our memory practices, our policies, our countries, and our toxic sites while focusing in greater depth on issues raised during this symposium.
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Dr. Thomas De Pree, University of New Mexico, USA, Professor Kim Fortun, University of California, Irvine, USA, Ina Kim, University of California, Irvine, USA, Tim Schütz, University of California, Irvine, USA, Professor Hirotaka Sugawara, Director General Emeritus, KEK, Tsukuba, Japan, Dr. Nadine Tanio, University of California, Irvine, USA and Professor Sharon Traweek, University of California, Los Angeles, USA.
Japan’s ongoing experiences with radiation from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Fukushima provide powerful examples of the importance of radiation governance. The tenth anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear reactor failure calls for reflection on past and future radiation governance, recognized as a transnational, transdisciplinary, and transgenerational challenge and responsibility. The Envisioning Next Generation Radiation Governance Symposium held Mondays in March, 2021 will include an introductory lecture and four panel discussions exploring the archiving, regulation and education needed to support radiation governance in the future, in a wide array of places. One goal is to bring together people involved in different aspects of radiation governance, connecting efforts related to uranium mining and processing, weapons testing, nuclear power generation, food safety, radiation medicine, and so on. Another goal is to foreground diverse approaches to radiation governance stemming from diverse histories, foregrounding initiatives in Japan and the United States. Each panel will be a moderated discussion among differently-situated experts, with time for questions from the audience. This symposium extends from and supports the on-going work of the Radiation Governance Working Group in the Disaster STS Network https://disaster-sts-network.org/. The Radiation Governance Working Group is building a transnational community-of-practice, body of research, and teaching materials focused on radiation governance. We investigate how those with different kinds of expertise about radiation (nuclear scientists and engineers, policy makers, affected community members, regulators, facility administrators, clinicians, social science researchers, educators, et al) can construct among themselves ways of sharing their knowledge and working together to build effective governance. We also want to help build new capacity for radiation governance through educational programming and inclusive networking.
6pm Monday 29 March 2021 PDT = 10:00 Tuesday 30 March 2021 JST
In this session, we will focus on particular places facing radiation hazards, addressing their past and current governance and key lessons that should be shared in building next generation radiation governance capacities. Confirmed panelists: Monamie Bhadra, Thomas De Pree, Terry Keyanna, Scott Knowles, Hiroko Kumaki, Maxime Polleri, Mallery Quetawki and Tony West
6pm Monday 22 March 2021 PDT = 10:00 Tuesday 23 March 2021 JST
Register for this webinar at http://socs.ci/RadEducation
Panelists for this session have helped build diverse, interdisciplinary education programs that build radiation expertise. We will learn what motivates and shaped the formation of these programs, and the challenges they have faced. We also will discuss the kinds of radiation education needed in the future. Confirmed panelists: Sulfikar Amir, Rethy Chhem, Brien Hallett, Johnnye Lewis, Sonja D. Schmid, Chris Shuey, Noboru Takamura
6pm Monday 15 March 2021 PDT = 10:00 Tuesday 16 March 2021 JST
Register for this webinar at http://socs.ci/RadRegulation
Panelists for this session have played leading roles as nuclear and radiation regulators. We will ask them to share their perspectives on the strengths and weaknesses in current regulatory frameworks and organizations. We also will discuss the kinds of issues that will need regulatory attention in coming years, the kinds of regulatory capacity that needs to be built, and the kinds of educational programs needed to support next-generation radiation governance. Confirmed panelists: Kiyoshi Kurokawa, Allison Macfarlane and Hirotaka Sugawara
5pm Monday 8 March 2021 PST = 10:00 Tuesday 9 March 2021 JST
Register for this webinar at http://socs.ci/RadArchives
In this session panelists will describe their radiation archiving practices, their perspectives on radiation knowledge databases and infrastructures needed for the future, and ideas for ways these infrastructures can be built and sustained to support radiation education and governance. Confirmed panelists: Jon Mitchell, Ryo Morimoto, Hiroko Takahashi and Sharon Traweek
Welcoming remarks by Professor Sharon Traweek, UCLA Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, and Professor Toru Tamiya, Director, JSPS San Francisco.
A presentation by Professor Kim Fortun, From Bhopal to Fukushima and Next Generation Disaster Governance, will launch the Envisioning Next-Generation Radiation Governance symposium, posing questions and laying ground for the panel discussions to follow.
Kim Fortun is a Professor in the University of California Irvine’s Department of Anthropology. Her research examines how people in different geographic and organizational contexts understand environmental problems, uneven distributions of environmental health risks, developments in the environmental health sciences, and factors that contribute to disaster vulnerability. Fortun is the author of Advocacy After Bhopal Environmentalism, Disaster, New World Orders (University of Chicago Press 2001). September 2017- 2019, Fortun served as President of the Society for Social Studies of Science. Currently, she helps run the Disaster-STS Research Network and co-edits a book series for University of Pennsylvania Press, Critical Studies in Risk and Disaster.