Technological challenges and uncertainties among social, scientific and politic governance: Brazil and the discussion about nuclear energy

Based on the literature of Beck and Giddens (1997) and Jasanoff (2003), this paper seeks to examine the arguments that have filled most distinct agendas, not only political, scientific, but either social and media, that happen with the background of the reviewing of the Brazilian Nuclear Program implemented after the nuclear accident in Fukushima. Above all, by sharing a number of uncertainties about the limits of risk and benefits that a particular technology, in this case nuclear, and their implications for society, environment and future. The current Brazilian context is marked by divisions and re-evaluation of its nuclear program beside the demand for new studies and debates. The decisions themselves are being delayed, and meanwhile what we see is that the scientific argument has not been enough against the uncertainty introduced that moves from the general population, among environmentalists and also among policy makers of the country that has increasingly thought of measures to make more effective public participation through referendum in decision-making moments and measures of compensation for possible victims of disasters related. In dialogue with the sociology of science and technology, environmental sociology and sociology of risk we seek to examine this scenario, showing how, in this case, the decision to insist and to invest (or not) in 'nuclear' is not only a scientific issue. This affiliation allows us to reiterate that science, technology and society do not stand in isolation and that a technological choice is not as neutral and objective as it may seem. Rather, they come through a negotiation game that can and should be thought as a social product and process, since the limits of scientific knowledge are linked to historical, cultural, social, political, economic circumstances, that embrace mutual influences.