Semantic+Shift_pedlt3

On the Hanford project site, they have three very old newsreels, some of them describing animal experiments at Hanford, about “[|The Atom and You].” Watch these newsreels along side, a 2012 video posted on YouTube by the DoE, could shed some light on some of the ways that discourses and symbols have changed around not only nuclear technologies, but large federal nuclear complex sites like Hanford, Oak Ridge, etc.

In the newsreels, the most common setting is the laboratory, the hospital, and the reactor. Landscape shots are nearly absent, and much of the action takes place in doors. Much of the newsreels are dedicated to highlighting experiments of various kinds and how they might affect the ‘average joe’ viewers. The very enthusiastic announcer tells us towards the end of the first newsreel that: “All this important research has great meaning for the world of today and tomorrow. [?] the atomic energy program is a bold experiment in science, in economics, and in cooperation between government and private enterprise for the benefit of all of mankind.” Everything from medicine to energy to agriculture seems as if it is on the brink of a golden age thanks to the wonders of modern atomic science. Some of the experiments seem to be primarily about exposure, and one—breeding salmon from the Columbia river in waste water (in a lab), burning them to ash, and measuring the radiation in the ash—allows the narrator to conclude that the nuclear industry is safeguarding our rivers and fish (of course, this was not an [|accurate conclusion] about either).

The Hanford Story’s principle setting is the landscape (often the narrator speaking in front of a green screen). There is also much talk about the future, but instead of revolutionizing technologies, they speak of the “large area near Richland that could be available for industrial use, and wide swaths of land that will be made available for future activities, such as preservation, conservation, and recreation, bringing Hanford one step closer to being available for future uses.”

These videos may not be exactly comparable—one speaks of nuclear technology as a whole, while the other is about a particular site. Yet, there is something striking both about how limited and limiting the future presented (after all, preservation and conservation are mostly about keeping people out, and being able to use the land at all is hardly an inspiring technofuture).