This paper investigates the American imperial encounter in the Pacific Rim through the above-ground nuclear testing held on the Marshall Islands (Operation Crossroads 1946-1958) and the accidental explosion at the Daiichi Nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan (2011).

Engaged with Mbembe's "Necropolitics" and Rose's and Petryna's concept of the "biologi-cal citizen", this essay aims to define what I call nuclear reasoning. My articulation of nuclear reasoning is guided by the following questions: How are the "costs" and "benefits" of nuclear fallout conceptualized by state and corporate agents? How are race, class, and gender at work in legitimations for nuclear technology? Who stands to benefit from the insertion of bodies into the infrastructure of nuclear fallout? What assumptions about the stratified values of life (accorded to certain bodies) must be upheld in order to sustain nuclear reasoning? This paper demonstrates nuclear reasoning as a particular form of hegemony that works to deplete and dominate the lives of others in order to enhance and condition the lives of some.

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