Insure the volume? Sensing air, atmospheres and radiation in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone

Eriksen, Christine; Turnbull, Jonathon (2022). Insure the volume? Sensing air, atmospheres and radiation in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. In: Booth, Kate; Lucas, Chloe; French, Shaun (eds.) Climate, Society and Elemental Insurance: Capacities and Limitations (pp. 167-182). London: Routledge 10.4324/9781003157571-17

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On 26 April 1986, the explosion and subsequent open-air graphite fire at Reactor No. 4 of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant contaminated the soil, water, and atmosphere alike with radioactive material. The Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, imposed after the accident, remains one of the most contaminated areas in the world today. Over a thousand wildfires have burnt inside the Zone since it was established, raising international concern that combustion from a high-intensity wildfire will rerelease radioisotopes currently held in the vegetation and soil. This chapter focuses on the wildfires that blazed in the Zone in the spring of 2020. To understand the lingering effects and insurance implications of the Chornobyl disaster, volumetric understandings of sovereign power and territory are required. Equally, the affective atmospheres of the subsequent wildfires require attention in order to understand the impacts of such atmospheric events. This chapter, therefore, brings ideas regarding affective atmospheres, sensing assemblages, and volumetric sovereignty from human geography and cognate disciplines into conversation with insurance studies. We think through the insurantial consequences of events that are not bound by two-dimensional cartographies, and that transcend geopolitical borders in space and time.

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