Nuclearity, the work of bodies and justice: the environmental rehabilitation of the Urgeiriça mines and local protest

Abstract

This article analyses the long cycle of nuclearity in Portugal on the basis of the closing-down process at the Urgeiriça mines and their subsequent environmental rehabilitation. The article addresses the action of the former workers in their claim that they are contaminated, just like the territory, and in their search for the same right to compensation. It shows how the presence and pain of the victims is not of sufficient dimension to alter the technical/political and administrative frameworks. It concludes that the state is managing to shut down the controversy, to a certain extent, and to assume normality in the governance of the territory on the basis of devices of technical and scientific normalisation regarding nuclearity.