Spectacle, an instrument “to the organization of regimes of perception, and to forms of collective
experience, population management and social-ecological order that, in this case allow for abandonment and exposure” (Kurpar, 146). There are two predominant methods of managing nuclear waste sites, the salvation method and a neo-liberal framework of surveillance (Krupar, 148). A salvation framework attempts to rescue the purity of the landscape through environmental cleanup. This includes the reintroduction of plants and wildlife in order to advantage environmental tourism. Alternately, a framework of surveillance works to manage the legacy of nuclear production into an infinite data dependent future. Through constant observation, testing, budgeting, supervision and regulation, these nuclear waste site sustain an economy of unlimited regulation. The induction of spectacle onto a site is a response tactic used to make sense of the sites violated by the prioritization of warfare over humanity and natural systems.
Further, through the practices of monumentalization and memorialization, the transformation of
nuclear landscapes to cultural landscapes create landscapes for consumption and concealment.
Instead, these landscapes should be considered landscapes of complex socio-political histories
that need to be further tested and explored by designers. These methods of spectacularization
reduce environmental memory by concealing their pasts.