Containing the nuclear past: The politics of history and heritage at the Hanford Plutonium Works

This paper examines the production of a particular nuclear-organizational history to illuminate the rhetorical and political practices by which stakeholders engage that history as an opportunity to perform preferred ideological narratives. Analysis utilizes data collected from the authors' reflective participation in this process, and focuses on the tension between nuclear-historical and -heritage discourses. We use the lens of critical public nuclear history studies to show how nuclear-organizational history contributes to broader controversy over the commemoration of nuclear weapons production in post-Cold War US culture.