Nuclear media discourses after the closure of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant: Is the game over?

Abstract

The article presents a critical discourse analysis of media coverage of the most important Lithuanian strategic object — the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant INPP — in the three biggest news portals. Media news focuses mostly on certain aspects of decommissioning of the INPP management issues and the transparency of financing mechanisms. Environmental and social aspects of the decommissioning are not sufficiently disclosed and discussed. The community of Visaginas the satellite town for the workers of the INPP remains an invisible and silent actor of the discourse. In the media news portals, the town is portrayed as disconnected from the INPP. This divide could be explained by assuming that after the closure of the INPP as a major feeding enterprise the town must search for a re-definition of its identity and construct this identity without nuclear energy and without the INPP. On the other hand, such a divide reflects a common trend characteristic of the entire nuclear discourse — to disempower communities and the public, create a boundary between the industry and the public, between the experts and ordinary citizens.