Science et démocratie. À propos du nucléaire aux États-Unis

Even though this article looks more to the past than to the future, it examines an issue that is more than ever in the news: democratic control over scientific and technical decisions, a question that is gaining in importance as these choices carry ever more serious consequences for the future of the planet.
The article is about the disposal of nuclear waste in the US and, more generally, the choices that may have been made and the secret experiments carried out, including for strategic reasons, alongside the transparency that, sooner or later, proves indispensable for public trust.
Jean-Jacques Salomon, who maintains a constant watch over these issues, bases his article on two books about past policies whose critics at the time were silenced: Eileen Welsome’s The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War (New York: Delta, 2000), and Gayle Greene’s The Woman Who Knew Too Much (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999).