Nuclear Awareness

This chapter draws attention to the concept of nuclear awareness that arose in the wake of the nuclear catastrophes. It highlights epistemic and political stakes: the almost unimaginable timetables of nuclear energy (extraction and waste) on one hand, and the threat of instantaneous destruction on the other. The chapter emphasizes nuclear awareness as a critical assertion of nuclear energy and its societal impact and as a trigger of critical thinking of nuclear technology, nuclear power production, nuclear agenda, as well as their challenges and opportunities involved. The chapter analyzes the tools of narrating the Chernobyl disaster in the contemporary nuclear fiction, regarded as a archive of the nuclear Anthropocene and a case of nuclear knowledge management.