Poste
Phd candidateInstitution de rattachement
CERMERS 3The accident at the Fukushima power plant in 2011 highlighted the possibility that a nuclear accident occurs in an industrialized country. It also leads, like the previous accidents at Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986), to update the safety approaches and standards. This thesis aims to retrace the techno political trajectory of “corium”, which is produced during the nuclear core melting. The melted core produced a kind of magma which melt also all the other components of the reactor. It may melt through the nuclear vessel and being released in the Environment after melting through the power plant concrete ground. The evolution of corium during a severe accident is particularly unpredictable and uncertain, that leads to expert debates and expertise issues. The thesis examines the ways a corpus of knowledge has been constituted since the beginning of the nuclear energy development and also the ways the knowledge and the uncertainties have been treated in the expertise frame to take decisions.