Spreading the atom, encapsulating politics: a story of confinement on a nuclear containment building in Barcelona

Abstract

In 2005, the containment building of the first nuclear reactor in Catalonia was silently demolished in the streets of Barcelona. The destruction was the last step in the long history of invisibilization of a nuclear facility that had been inaugurated forty years before as a “radiant symbol” of the autarkic policies of General Franco's dictatorship (1939-1977). What did the containment building contain beyond radioactivity? What ideas about the atom and the nuclear dangers did it foster? This paper will focus on the history and geography of the nuclear building with the aim of exploring the intersection between the “politics of containment” and the “politics of invisibility”.