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What if the underground, where people go down to work every day and where microscopic life forms sometimes persist, were not the empty space we imagine? Lisa Claussmann, a postdoctoral researcher at i3-CSI, has written her first book, Sous le sol, about the workers, industrial residues and infrastructures that make the subsurface the receptacle of our ecological modernities. In it, she highlights the paradox of underground disposal carried out in the name of the environment, in spaces we assume to be inert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this book, structured like a set of investigative notebooks in the manner of \u00c9mile Zola’s, the researcher accompanies workers underground, into spaces that have now become storage sites for toxic substances. “The workers are caught between very gruelling working conditions and their loyalty to the world of mining, while also being bound by the ecological promise carried by underground disposal projects,” she explains. She describes the work of these technicians, most of them former miners who have been able to transfer their skills to this new line of work. Working underground sets the subterranean space in motion, “giving it life”, as some miners like to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But is the subsurface really dead? Can humans truly master it? Slag heaps, mounds of mining residue that have been an inescapable feature of the northern French landscape since the 1850s, are themselves contaminated and a cause of occupational diseases. In Wittelsheim (Haut-Rhin), StocaMine, an underground hazardous waste storage facility set up in a former potash mine, was devastated by a fire in September 2002; the accident led to the end of operations. Because the cocktail of toxic substances in the waste reacted with the geological layers, the fire’s consequences for the health of workers and the environment are difficult to trace. “As with the subsurface itself, it is very difficult to measure its effects on the health of those exposed,” the researcher continues. She has also examined “slow violence”, a concept coined by Rob Nixon, which she uses to describe the very long-term health effects on exposed people, whether workers or local residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite the dangers, what French law defines as “ultimate waste” continues to be buried: waste that can no longer be recycled or recovered, whether as materials or as energy, under current technical and economic conditions. This logic now extends to carbon capture and storage (CCS), which involves burying carbon dioxide from industrial activities. The CO2 is compressed into a fluid and injected through an underground pipeline several thousand metres below the surface. “In France, the industrial sector, which is specifically concerned by CO2 storage, was responsible for 17% of all greenhouse gas emissions in 2025. Since the early 2020s, carbon capture and storage projects have been developed in Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway,” she explains. Claussmann’s investigative notebooks go on to describe this new climate market, still largely unknown to the general public. The oil industry aims to become its European leader, drawing on scientific and technical expertise acquired over decades of mining and oil extraction. “I also wanted to show that this new exploitation of the subsurface relies, as mining once did, on know-how inherited from earlier forms of exploitation in the region.” She visited the storage facilities of Northern Lights, a specialised port terminal that showcases brand-new, state-of-the-art equipment to its visitors. The young researcher questions the growth of this sector at a time when the subsurface’s capacity to store CO2 is still being studied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her investigation may thus invite us to take a fresh look at what lies beneath our feet. “Burying toxic waste tends to make us forget about it, precisely because it is kept out of sight, in spaces that have been made invisible. This spares us from having to think about the need to produce less industrial waste. My aim is to lead us to ask ourselves, collectively: what is environmental protection worth if it leaves out the subsurface?” she concludes.
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Find out more::<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What happens to industrial waste beneath our feet?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n