The Skyline is Changing: Editing Space and Discourse in Nuclear Decommissioning

Abstract

Drawing on 5 years of ethnographic fieldwork at and around the nuclear facilities at Sellafield in Northwest England, I engage with a ubiquitous turn of phrase that describes the material, visually striking reality of a slowly disappearing industrial landscape, while wishing another, morally charged technosocietal reality into existence. “The skyline is changing” is a discursive trope wielded by the Sellafield Limited company and echoed in local media and parlance. It is also a case of visually performative rhetoric that seeks to tame uncertainty by celebrating examples of the nuclear industry’s selective editing of an iconic skyline.