Uranium exposed at Expo 58: the colonial agenda behind the peaceful atom

Abstract

ABSTRACT This research focuses on the staged contrast between atomic modernity and colonial backwardness at Expo 58 in Brussels, as a strategic promise of the peaceful nuclear, powered by Congolese uranium. I analyze the management of nuclear power – ranging from household technologies to European (post)colonial infrastructures of uranium resources and nuclear power plants – to reveal architecture as a geopolitical technology. The article argues that the ‘domestication of the atom’ goes hand in hand with the domestication of power, exercised through architecture on various levels, affecting the politics of visibility, knowledge, and imagination. The article examines Expo 58 as a case study, where global uranium agents such as the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK), the US Atomic Energy Commission (USAEC), the Belgian Centre d’Études pour les applications de l’Energie Nucléaire (SKC-CEN), and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) met in a setting that constructed both a Western scientific gaze and colonial backwardness.