The improvised expert: Staging authority at an OECD Nuclear Energy Agency workshop in Fukushima

In recent years, concerns about a crisis of expert authority have been expressed across the globe. Japan is no exception to this trend. Scandals surrounding the (mis)management of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster severely damaged public confidence in state institutions, posing an additional challenge for those engaged in radiological protection. This article examines how claims to expert authority are made in these conditions of low public trust. To this end, I offer an ethnographic account of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency's (NEA)