Principles of efficiency and occupational health: the case of the nuclear industry

Reducing risks in the nuclear industry necessarily exposes maintenance workers to ionizing radiation. In the early 1980s, the French industry started outsourcing certain work operations, including nearly all maintenance. The goal was seen as one of reducing costs. But an important result is a shift in the category of workers receiving radiation doses. External workers receive 80 percent of annual collective doses recorded at nuclear sites, with average individual monthly dosages in an irradiated area eleven to fifteen times more elevated than those of workers in the French electric company. Nuclear producers strictly observe regulatory exposure limits by managing jobs by doses and externalizing the problem. An employee who reaches the dosage limit is banned from the plant. Qualified permanent employees do not do the work that is most costly in dosage. Outsourcing the risky work prevents challenges from unions and public officials, and firms can claim that radiation exposures are controlled and do not endanger workers' health. The problem, a terrible contradiction at the heart of the industry, has been socially constructed to be invisible.