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Title:
The Social and Ethical Aspects of Nuclear Waste
Journal Issue:
Electronic Green Journal, 1(21)
Author:
Marshall, Alan, Masaryk University
Publication Date:
2005
Publication Info:
Electronic Green Journal, UCLA Library, UC Los Angeles
Permalink:
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2hx8b0fp
Abstract:
Is information that we produce today about our radioactive waste accessible to future generations?
The Social and Ethical Aspects of Nuclear Waste
Alan Marshall
Masaryk University
.....................................
Nuclear waste management seems to exist in a perpetual state of crises. For
50 years the nuclear states of the world have fought, and generally lost, the
battle to deal with the nuclear waste problem. Worldwide, there is a growing
acknowledgement within industry and government that social and ethical
issues are just as important as technical issues when developing safe
programs for nuclear waste management. This paper is a review of some of
the outstanding social and ethical issues that are influencing discussions on
nuclear waste management around the world.
Social Equity in Nuclear Waste Management
There are many ways that nuclear waste management has the potential to
be socially inequitable: burdening certain groups of society with more than
their fair share of risks and costs. The following sections outline salient social
themes that have emerged as the nuclear nations in the world attempt to
deal with nuclear waste.
Nuclear Stigma
According to work by Slovic, Layman, and Flynn (1993, p. 64) nuclear waste
can be regarded as the top neighbor from hell, ranking higher than oil
refineries, chemical plants, garbage dumps and even nuclear power stations
as the most undesirable facility to live beside.
The aversion to things nuclear, including nuclear waste, is often referred to
as nuclear stigma and it has a number of possible effects: economic, social,
political, cultural and psychological. With regard to the last of these, while
there may be a case to state that the people of nuclear host communities
are active in the construction of a positive nuclear identity, it is apparent
that some members of the public are concerned about the mental stress of
living close to a nuclear site (or the prospect of the same) (Dunlap , Rosa,
Baxter & Mitchell, 1993; Edelstein, 1988). In such circumstances, if nuclear
waste managers are to take social issues seriously then maybe they should
consider the ideas brought out by the likes of Lois Wilson (2000, p. 87), and
Wendy Oser and Molly Young Brown (1996) who suggest professional
counseling in some form should be provided to local individuals or groups.
Kristen Shrader-Frechette (1993) suggests also that giving citizens funding
for education and health might alleviate this problem, as might delegating
authority to monitor stress to the community itself. This would allow local
Marshall: The Social and Ethical Aspects of Nuclear Waste
1
people to have some degree of self-help capacity over their own
psychological and stress problems.
Another type of stigma that may rear its head in the siting of radioactive
waste facilities is that associated with moral stigma. Easterling and
Kunreuther (1995, p. 137) indicate that the moral qualms that people feel
toward nuclear weapons seem to have generalized to civilian nuclear power.
And thence, to anything nuclear, such as the radioactive waste left over
from nuclear weapons and nuclear power production. In this case, if a
nuclear waste management facility goes against the morals of individuals, it
is not only politically problematic, giving rise to resistance, but ethically
problematic, asking people to live with a facility they find morally
objectionable. As far as these people are concerned, it is flippant for nuclear
waste facility planners to derail weapons/waste connections by indicating
that they are only involved in the rear-end of the nuclear cycle, when so
much of the waste was produced for military purposes.
Nuclear stigma has also been identified as having identifiably negative
economic consequences. New industries may be reluctant to set up near
nuclear waste facilities in fear that their products will suffer negative nuclear
stereotyping ( Great Britain, Parliament, House of Lords, Select Committee
on Science and Technology, 1999, p. 43).
In the states of Nevada and Texas, for example, pre-emptive concerns were
expressed regarding the reputations of the tourist and cattle industries when
sites in these states were considered for nuclear waste facilities proposed by
the U.S. Department of Energy (Brody & Fleishman, 1993, p. 117; Slovic &
Flynn, 1991; Easterling & Kunreuther, 1993). Similarly agricultural
communities in eastern Washington state were concerned that the
establishme
nt of a nuclear repository at Hanford would be seen as leading to
the contamination of fruits and wines grown in the area, thereby causing a
decline in the economy (Easterling & Kunreuther, 1995, p. 137).
It must also be noted that while some community members might welcome
an influx of industrial activity into their local area, desperate to “attract any
kind of economic growth” ( Rosa, Dunlap, & Kraft, 1993, p. 303), others may
fear that such an influx may lead to “increased crime, increased cost of
living,” property devaluation and disruption of their livelihood ( Nuclear
Energy Agency, Radioactive Waste Management Committee, 2003).
There has been some indication that what stresses the public most about
nuclear power and radioactive waste is the possibility of an accident ( Rosa
et al., 1993; Easterling & Kunreuther, 1995). This is confounded by the
suspicion that the managers of radioactive waste will be secretive with
Electronic Green Journal, 1(21), Article 4 (2005)
2
regard to the public dissemination of information about accidents ( Flynn,
Slovic, Mertz & Toma, 1990).
Nuclear Oases
Radioactive waste is an intensely local issue. The waste has to be located
somewhere, whether it is stored or disposed of, and some communities are
going to live nearer to this spot than others.
Once upon a time, when the dangers of nuclear activities were not generally
well-known, it was usually the case that certain nuclear host communities
were very positive about their status. Living in a pre-nuclear stigma era,
many host communities felt they were partaking in a beneficial and
advanced technological industry that brought jobs and services to their area.
Since the late 1960s however, this unfettered optimism has been battered
by the changing economics of nuclear power and faltering tolerance of
anything nuclear.
In some nations, the United States and the United Kingdom amongst them,
the nuclear industry is suffering a slow but observable decline. Nuclear host
sites and their adjacent communities, however, might be labeled as nuclear
oases; a term the U.K. social scientist Andrew Blowers uses to denote places
of lively nuclear activity in a world gradually deserting the industry (Blowers,
Lowry & Solomon, 1991). According to Blowers (1999), nuclear oases are
peripheral communities, in so far as they tend to be remote, economically
and politically marginal and environmentally degraded. Examples of such
communities, suggests Blowers, might include Sellafield in England, Hanford
in the United States, Dounreay in Scotland, and Cap de la Hague in France.
These localized nuclear communities, Blowers (1999) intimates, exist as
sites of intense interest for the nuclear industry, the last strongholds of
economic and technical survival against a changing world. Generally,
though, and despite the nuclear interest, nuclear oases are sometimes sites
of neglect as far as national economy and public profile is concerned.
Burdened with remoteness, marginality and powerlessness and previous
environmental degradation the above named communities exhibit “a
relatively stable locational pattern as a declining industry is resisted in all
but the nuclear oases” (Blowers, 1999, p.242).
Blowers’ idea of nuclear oases is supported by American social science work
on nuclear waste. For example, the social scientists Douglas Easterling and
Howard Kunreuther (1995) have observed that traditionally there are lower
levels of resistence and protest to new nuclear facilities in regions of strong
nuclear presence where the residents may be dependent upon the jobs that
Marshall: The Social and Ethical Aspects of Nuclear Waste
3
the nuclear industry brings. Through such common dependence, a
community spirit of defensiveness against anti-nuclear protest becomes
inscribed in the minds of much of the local people (Blowers, 1999).
Of course, not all people living in nuclear oases may be there because they
work for the nuclear industry, and some within the industry may themselves
be quite critical of it. This has prompted some to note that nuclear host
communities exhibit certain schism with regard to nuclear resistance. As well
as schisms within the community, it is quite probable that individuals and
family units may exhibit schisms of resistance and non-resistance. When
social scientist Brian Wynne (1996) was studying the communities around
Sellafield in the United Kingdom, for example, he found that Cumbrian
farmers not far from Sellafield:
recognized their own indirect and sometimes direct social dependency upon
the Plant—not only neighbors, but also close relatives of the hill farmers
worked there. Thus, underlying and bounding their expressed mistrust of the
authorities and experts, there was a counter-veiling deep sense of social
solidarity and dependency—social identification with material kinship,
friendship, and community networks which needed to believe that Sellafield
was well controlled and its surrounding experts credible. (p. 37)
Wynne doesn’t believe such schisms represent an inability to decide upon
the ultimate goodness or badness of the nuclear plant but as a considered
strategy to tread between various allegiances and experiences (p. 43).
According to Buclet and Bouzidi (2003), who studied nuclear host
communities in France, the presence of nuclear oasis communities strongly
familiarized to nuclear power does not give rise to more gentle resistance to
nuclear waste issues. However, it should be noted that this resist
ance in the
French case is not necessarily community-based but involves the actions of
activist groups from metropolitan centers away from the nuclear host
communities. In their book The International Politics of Nuclear Waste,
Blowers, Lowry and Solomon (1991) also acknowledged such a phenomenon
in the United Kingdom and the United States, as does Sj ölander (2003) in
the case of one of Sweden’s proposed nuclear host communities. If such
examples are to be trusted, then we should predict that all nuclear waste
host communities are liable to garner increasing help and attention from
formally organized protest groups and informally organized urban
sympathizers.
Regional Justice
If nuclear facilities happen to be clustered in particular parts of a nation then
Electronic Green Journal, 1(21), Article 4 (2005)
4
radioactive waste can become a regional phenomenon, thereby giving rise to
issues of regional environmental justice (or geographical equity, as some
writers like to call it ( Gowda & Easterling, 2000)). This issue has been
brought to light by a number of writers in a number of countries. Lois Wilson
(2000), in regard to Canada, points out, for instance, regional injustices
whereby the south produces nuclear waste while the north is focused as the
future repository of it. She cannot offer any process to resolve this injustice
but merely asks what is the best way to address “equitable distribution of
costs, risks and benefits among regions” (p. 3).
Easterling and Kunreuther (1995, p. 35) also point out that an unequal
relationship of regions is something keenly felt by western states in the
United States. Eastern states, which have a greater population and a greater
electricity use, have historically looked west when they are searching for
sites for the long-term management of the waste. Anti-nuclear waste
sent
iment in the western states of Nevada and Utah has given rise to cries of
regional injustice when it comes to the planned nuclear waste facilities at
Yucca Mountain (Dunlap, Rosa, Baxter & Mitchell, 1993) and Skull Valley
(Fahys, 2003). The governors of these states have repeated the complaint
that they do not produce nuclear waste, so therefore they should not have to
store it for those who do ( Gerrard, 1996).
The Promise of Employment
If nuclear communities and nuclear regions are economically depressed and
sometimes financially stricken then perhaps they should be quite pleased to
host a radioactive waste facility since it may well offer up new employment
opportunities. Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), for example, makes
the point that when construction of the Canadian Shield disposal facility
starts, “jobs will be created” (as quoted in Wilson, 2000, p. 40). The
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is also on record as saying that e
mployment opportunities associated with nuclear facilities can foster
community acceptance of the facility (International Atomic Energy Agency,
2003).
The immediate response from those who receive such advice, as Wilson
(2000) notes, is to question exactly who will get these jobs. Will it be local
people pooled from the surrounding community, or will the jobs go to
imported skilled workers from different regions of the country? If the latter is
more probable than the former, then any social impact analysis must be
critical of the claim that long-term waste management facilities decrease
local unemployment.
What also has to be assessed is the variation of the grades and qualities of
Marshall: The Social and Ethical Aspects of Nuclear Waste
5
work available to the local workers compared to the imported workers. The
local workers, if unskilled in the nuclear industry, are more liable to be given
the low-paid jobs and, if Shrader-Frechette’s (2001) research is to be
trusted, they also may be far more likely involved in non-unionized, low-
profile, dangerous work for which they are under-prepared and underpaid
with respect to the risks. For these reasons, it has sometimes been
expressed that the promise of jobs is not sufficient to garner community
acceptance of nuclear waste ( Great Britain, Parliament, House of Lords,
Select Committee on Science and Technology, 1999, p. 43).
Coercion and Consent
In the case of nuclear waste planning, it is an accepted belief within social
science circles that a facility that imposes risks on a community should be
built only if the members of that community give their consent (Gowda &
Easterling, 2000). But an important issue that emerges involves the way
that a potential nuclear host community may be pressured into offering up
their consent.
Many prospective facilities have come across stiff opposition when proposed
by governmental or private bodies. Despite this, though, the resources and
funds that nuclear resistance groups are able to muster compared to the
nuclear industry and government is very small. Governments and business
can inject funds into their side of the proposal to produce advertisements,
campaigns, education projects, and so forth, all aimed at fostering a public
opinion conducive to their plans. If consent is given within such an
atmosphere of often subtle but perfectly legal coercion, then what is the
ethical status of the facility?
Normally we would regard all players in technology and environment
debates as rational and well-informed actors capable of making up their own
minds. For instance, if a radioactive waste facility was planned in a disused
metro station in central New York or London and then opposed by the local
people, we’d regard the people as being quite rational and informed. But as
Blowers and Shrader-Frechette have illustrated, the communities subjected
to waste facility plans (and the workers who are promised jobs in these
facilities) may be regarded as peripheralized communities and economically-
disadvantaged workers, unable to access all the information they need,
unable to access independent points of view, and unable to fully judge the
economic benefits versus the radiological risk.
All this gives rise to what Shrader-Frechette (1991) and Wigley (Wigley &
Shrader-Fechette, 1994) would call the consent dilemma: wherein the siting
of nuclear waste facilities and the employing of nuclear waste workers
Electronic Green Journal, 1(21), Article 4 (2005)
6
requires the consent of those who are put at risk; yet those most able to
give free, informed consent are usually unwilling to do so, and those least
able to validly consent are often willing to do so because they are unaware
of the dangers.
These problems then beg us to ask the following questions with regards to
siting nuclear waste facilities.
* What is an adequate level of information and understanding for
people to make a decision?
* Do all stakeholders have equal access to adequate information and
assistance in understanding?
* Who should be in charge of ensuring adequate and equally-accessed
information and understanding?
Compensation
One way of dealing with many of the issues noted above is to enact some
form of retributive justice, typically compensation, for the people and
communities affected. This path in itself is fraught with problems.
Kleindorfer et al. (1988), for example, have produced evidence that some
people do not believe any amount of compensation makes up for living next
to a radioactive waste site.
Shrader-Frechette (1993, p. 204) warns that the use of compensation
confuses and upsets any notion of pure consent. Although many people
would acknowledge we live in a complex political world where consent
always has to be negotiated, the problem is that the disparities in
negotiating strength might arise purely through well-financed interests
employing misinformation and propaganda, something that has to be
countered if the act of compensation is to be processed in an open and fair
way.
As an example of nuclear waste financial compensation in action, consider
the town of Eurojoki in Finland whose council accepted over 6 million Euros
from the waste production and management company Posiva to site a
repository near their community. The Eurojoki council did not put the
question to referendum amongst its community members but used a Posiva-
conducted poll (Posiva Oy, 1999)—that indicated 59% of the community
might accept the repository—
to make a decision on behalf of the community.
This high level of acceptance, 59%, in Eurojoki may have been because the
town was already host to two nuclear reactors and so the community
members involved in these nuclear operations could have been quite
accustomed to the risk of happily clawing economic benefits from the
Marshall: The Social and Ethical Aspects of Nuclear Waste
7
handling of nuclear materials. However, according to Jorma Jantunen, a
critic of the Eurojoki nuclear project, Posiva was bombarding the community
with an advertising campaign, served not to inform the community members
about the project but to get them to be positive about it ( Nuclear Energy
Agency, Radioactive Waste Management Committee, 2002).
Alternatively, if Blowers (1999) is right, the community members of Eurojoki
may be so economically dependent on the nuclear industry that they feel
unable to resist further nuclear operations in fear of industry’s declining
future. Added to this, if we put store in the writings of Blowers (1999),
Shrader-Frechette (1991), Dunion (2003), and others, it may be that
community members not actively involved in current nuclear
operations may
have been socialized to accept the industry’s view of the risks and benefits
without having the intellectual and financial resources to assess and
challenge these received views. When financial compensation is introduced
in a form such as that offered by Posiva, it is likely that some will perceive
the process as being somewhat morally corrupt ( Oughton, Bay, Forsberg,
Hunt, Kaiser & Littlewood, 2003, p. 35).
Gender and Risk Sensitivity
A general feminist critique would posit that a lot of environmental and
technology policy is biased towards male interests and perpetuates a
patriarchal society ( Buckingham-Hatfield, 2000; Everts, 1998 ). As a
possible example of the gendered nature of radioactive waste, the report to
the 3rd COWAM Seminar ( History and some facts to Wellenberg, 2002)
indicates that only 41% of women polled in a potential repository site
accepted the idea of a nuclear waste repository in their area compared to
52% of males. Other commentators, like Gregory and Satterfield (2002),
have noted that woman have a greater degree of sensitivity to risk in
various hazardous environmental projects. Undoubtedly, there are a myriad
of reasons for such situations: the sensitivity of women as a social group to
environmental issues due to their self-perceived social roles, the sensitivity
of men as a social group to technical issues due to their jobs, the higher
expectations within men that economic benefits will actually help them and
their families compared to a lower expectation among women for the same
thing.
Indigenous Issues
Many countries with historical settler-populations have laws maintaining the
land rights and personal rights of indigenous communities. Some of these
countries, for instance, the United States, Canada, and Australia, have
nuclear waste. In these countries it often happens that nuclear waste
Electronic Green Journal, 1(21), Article 4 (2005)
8
facilities are proposed in remote areas occupied by a high proportion of
indigenous people or near to indigenous reservations. An added concern is
that these communities are often peripherilized and economically
disadvantaged (Fowler, Hamby, Rusco, & Rusco, 1990). This is a recipe for
deep social injustice based not only on regionalism and economic inequality
but on ethnic issues as well. For instance, Lois Wilson (2000) in Canada
noted that one representative of the Canadian indigenous community in a
preliminary hearing said that he:
represents fifty First Nation communities, inhabiting two-thirds of the
Ontario land mass. Thirty-five of these communities do not have road
access, twenty-five are not connected to the electric power grid, and none
use nuclear power. (p. 16)
In Canada, the responsible authorities have now at least recognized the
necessity to incorporate indigenous concerns into radioactive waste
management ( Nuclear Energy Agency, Radioactive Waste Management
Committee, 2003). Amongst the cited concerns of indigenous groups within
targeted sites are the issues of maintaining access to water and land
resources, protecting the quality of these resources, health and safety
against accidents and pollution, protecting important historical and cultural
sites, and sustaining and enhancing cultural and economic opportunities for
community members.
NIMBYism
Negative public reactions to radioactive waste facilities are often construed
as an operation of the NIMBY (Not-In-My-Back-Yard) syndrome. NIMBYism,
under this interpretation, is the emotive, reactionary impulse of local citizens
to a project they would probably agree with were it placed somewhere else.
Some, like Rosa, Dunlap, and Kraft (1993), feel that such NIMBYism may
just be the predictable result of the alienation that people feel to national
decision-making processes, a natural response to their resignation that their
views will not ever be considered.
According to some research, the whole concept of NIMBYism has little
explanatory power when used to interpret the politics of managing and siting
radioactive waste facilities. The NIMBY concept predicts that those people
physically closest to any planned facility should be those most objecting to
it, but when Krannich, Little, and Cramer (1993) studied the phenomenon as
applied to the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada they found that
opposition and concern are strongest in the communities farthest from Yucca
Mountain.
Marshall: The Social and Ethical Aspects of Nuclear Waste
9
Another theme that the faltering NIMBY concept predicts is that the
arguments of opponents will be emotionally driven by fear and dread and
that they will be lacking in technical sophistication. But according to Kraft
and Clary (1993), who were studying repository-siting meetings, only 14%
of those members of the public testifying made declarations of this kind.
Emotive themes were present for only a relatively small number of those
making statements; the vast majority did not appeal to emotionalism.
Kraft and Clary also repeat the idea forged by numerous previous studies
that a great amount of public testimony from non-expert individuals and
groups is of comparable technical sophistication to that of the experts
(Martin, 1996).
After reviewing the way public acceptance of a facility is either forthcoming
or not within various affected communities across the United States, Rosa et
al. (1993) come to the conclusion that resistance to nuclear waste is so
widespread that it does not conform to NIMBYism at all but to NIABYism:
Not In Anyone’s Backyard (p. 318).
Although NIMBYism is denounced by many project planners as the irrational
knee-jerk reaction of technically unsophisticated locals acting out of self-
interest, if we trust the research outlined above, it seems as though the
quick and indiscriminate labeling of resistance as NIMBYism is but the knee-
jerk reaction of politically unsophisticated project planners who themselves
are reacting under self-interest. A number of works, like for instance that of
Rabe (1994), Dunion (2003), and McAvoy (1999), would confirm this view.
Lack of Public Understanding
One of the concerns that arises from the side of the nuclear industry
regarding nuclear waste management is that the public does not fully
understand the technical issues at hand. This makes it impossible for the
nuclear industry to garner full public acceptance of their plans.
This perceived public deficit of knowledge gives rise to what Alan Irwin and
Brian Wynne label the public ignorance model of citizen participation. If only
the public can be rescued from their ignorance, this model suggests, they
would be freed of their irrational dread associated with nuclear operations.
The public ignorance model, which advocates a form of public participation
based upon education, has its roots in the presumption held by many
scientists and technologists that the reason people do not fully trust the
scientifically-proven point of view is because the public don’t fully
understand it. For example, Sundqvist (2002) says:
Electronic Green Journal, 1(21), Article 4 (2005)
10
There is a widely held image, in the rhetoric of decision makers, of lay
people as uninformed, ignorant and fearful of the unknown. This image
suggests that if the level of information is raised, lay people will accept the
proposals from decision makers. (p. 14)
Rosa et al. (1993) echo this point with regard to the 50 years of nuclear
facility siting in the United States:
The nuclear sub-government, then as now, was guided by the unshakeable
belief that increased public understanding—the knowledge fix—would
translate into support for nuclear technologies. All that was required was
thoughtful public relations to convert the dull, scientific knowledge into
interesting, convincing public knowledge. (p.77)
Susana Hornig Priest (Hornig Priest, Bonfadelli & Rusanen, 2003), drawing
from her social studies of biotechnology, points out that any determined
effort to use public relations to educate the public about controversial
science and technology is prone to backfiring. Rosa et al. (1993, p. 315)
have found that the same
thing happens when the nuclear industry starts up
campaigns aimed at using the media to disseminate information.
Transportation Issues
Within and outside of the industry, the transport of nuclear waste has been
perceived as inherently riskier than its storage or disposal. The risk of such
accidents has driven some writers to declare that waste transport should be
regarded as the last resort ( Nuclear Guardianship Project, 2002).
According to studies by Slovic et al. (1993), somewhere between 70% and
80% of people questioned in Nevada and California were convinced that
railway and highway accidents were going to occur on route to any operating
nuclear waste facility. The public perception of transportation as being a
problem arises in part from the acknowledged dangers emerging from
industry watchdogs, the media, and the industry itself. For instance, the
Association of Electronic Journalists declares that “from 1971 to 1998, there
were 1,936 accidents and incidents involving radioactive materials transport”
( Nuclear Shipping Accidents: Rare but Regular , 2002) .
When forecasting the transport problems of the proposed Yucca Mountain
repository in Nevada, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) predicted there
will be 100 accidents over the lifetime of the project (the State of Nevada
predicts 400 accidents during the same period) (Wile & Cox, 2002). Most of
these accidents would result in no, or negligible, harm to human health and
the environment. However, Wile and Cox used published DOE figures to
Marshall: The Social and Ethical Aspects of Nuclear Waste
11
study what that agency calls a “moderate” accident. Wile and Cox concluded
that under such an event:
* A small number of first responders may be fatally affected.
* Around 200 to 1,200 latent fatal cancers of nearby citizens would
eventuate.
* Nearly 600 million dollars would be needed to clean up the
contaminated area over a 14 month period.
In the event of a transport accident it is fairly certain that local fire, police,
and ambulance services might be among the first upon the scene. An ethical
issue that must be investigated here is whether all the emergency personnel
from the local communities that line the proposed routes of the transported
radioactive waste should be trained in some way to deal with accidents that
may involve that waste. If so, this will have ramifications concerning the
security and financial regimes under which such training might be given.
Some people have argued that the transportation of waste is so dangerous
that it should not be undertaken. The Nevada-based Citizen Alert group, for
instance, points out that transportation massively increases all the risks
associated with radioactive waste handling ( High level radioactive waste
transportation factsheet , 2000) . Physical, or passive, security, for instance,
at stationary sites involves much more robust physical protection from
human interference and natural disaster since the strength of buildings and
earthworks that house stationary waste is greater than that achievable with
mobile wastes. Nevada’s Nuclear Waste Project Office confirm this when
they declare that if transport casks were designed to protect the waste to
the same degree as stationary facilities, they’d be too heavy to be
transported ( Nevada Nuclear Waste Project Office, 1999).
When it comes to active security, mobile radioactive waste cannot favorably
compare to the stationary waste either, since the former does not have the
police presence, and the emergency personnel, that regularly accompanies
the latter. The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) ( Mariotte,
1998) also points out that mobile radioactive waste is more vulnerable to
external factors than stationary waste since, as safe as we can get the
transportation system, external factors (such as drunken drivers, weather
extremes, traffic emergencies—all of which have caused accidents in
radioactive transport in the past) cannot be eliminated.
Another important issue regarding transport of radioactive waste is whether
the route should be openly declared. To discuss this particular issue
necessitates an engagement with the never-ending balancing act of working
with security concerns versus fairness/democratic concerns. To minimize the
Electronic Green Journal, 1(21), Article 4 (2005)
12
risk of terrorist action or theft, the usual approach is to keep the routes
secret. To maximize the democratic impulse of people to know about threats
to their health and their environment, the routes should be declared. This
balance may be made more complex by acknowledging that some along the
route are more concerned about nuclear stigma affecting property prices
than about any health risk or environmental danger. Thus, under the
rhetoric of fairness, there may be social pressure (and also political back-
up)
for the routes to remain unnamed (Gawande & Jenkins Smith, 2001).
Public Participation Issues
Projects to manage nuclear waste involve a series of important and perhaps
irreversible decisions. In many nations it is generally thought that these
decisions should reflect a certain amount of public involvement (Kraft, Rosa
& Dunlap, 1993, p. 11).
Not all people are of the opinion that nuclear waste is an issue worthy of
extensive public consultation. Many technocrats believe that when it comes
to siting radioactive waste, it is unlikely that everybody can have their
desires catered for, but that this situation shouldn’t stop the government
from making a decision in favor of the interests of the majority ( Great
Britain, Parliament, House of Lords, Select Committee on Science and
Technology, 1999) .
Public participation has come very slowly to nuclear issues. The secrecy of
the nuclear industry and its strategic importance regarding security and
military affairs has encouraged this. In some nuclear nations this modus
operandi of secret operations continues unabated. There has also been the
attitude that such complex technical issues should be left to those experts
trained in nuclear science and technology management.
In those nations that claim to have strong democratic governments,
however, public participation is gradually becoming more extensive and
more intensive. The most rudimentary form of public participation is the
breaking down of the secrecy barriers just mentioned. This form of public
participation involves the D-A-D (Decide – Announce – Defend) approach
(Hunt, 2001). Nowadays such an approach is criticized for being more
technocratic than democratic, and for being inefficient, socially unjust, and
ethically biased. The Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee
(2001) in the United Kingdom, for instance, has become aware of this and
has declared such an approach “inappropriate.”
Beyond the D-A-D approach there are a variety of ways to allow the public
to enter into the decision-making process, some of which occur earlier or
Marshall: The Social and Ethical Aspects of Nuclear Waste
13
later along the decision chain with varying efforts to allow public input. For
instance, Vári, Reagan-Cirincione, and Mumpower (1994) outline the four
ways that public participation has been conceived and used by various
nations as they strive to site nuclear facilities:
1. Stakeholders are involved in the project, receiving information, but
have no decision-making power (equivalent to the D-A-D approach).
2. Stakeholders are granted the power to review and modify
recommendations or decisions.
3.
Stakeholders are given the power to make recommendations, although
decision-making power is reserved by state or private agencies or
institutions.
4. Stakeholders are given direct power to choose a solution or make a
decision.
An example of the first way of involving the public, which had been used as
the preferred public participation method in the United States up until recent
times, is the public hearing. Many heavily criticize this form of public
participation, however. For example, Kraft and Clary (1993) say that such
participation provides a weak opportunity for real public involvement, lacks
two-way channels of communication, and may be usurped by planners to
promote the facility they are planning.
Evidence that suggests that maximum community involvement is more
effective than minimal community involvement is offered by Carnes,
Copenhaver, Sorensen, Soderstrom, Reed, Bjornstad, et al. (1983). They
asked a sample of Wisconsin residents whether or not they would oppose a
radioactive waste repository built in their state. Initially 26% of respondents
indicated they would approve such a repository. Then after being offered
accompanying conditions (which included independent monitoring, enhanced
community control of the facility, and the power to shut the facility down)
the percentage favoring the repository rose to 46%.
Whatever precise path of public participation that a mission-oriented
organization might consider adopting, the Swiss-based Expert Group on
Disposal Concepts for Radioactive Waste (EKRA), acknowledge there is
always the question of how to reconcile different forms of knowledge, levels
of rationality, and claims of truth and, at the same time, carry on pluralistic
and democratic discussion on the topic of radioactive waste management
(EKRA, 2000).
The public participation schemes undertaken by various authorities involved
with nuclear waste policy and planning have brought to light a number of
Electronic Green Journal, 1(21), Article 4 (2005)
14
recurring public concerns. These are listed below:
A. What are the exclusion criteria for siting?
People want to know what reasons the authorized body would have to stop a
siting (Wilson, 2000, p. 67).
B. Complaints of notification
Despite there sometimes being a lot of press, many people complain they
don’t know when or where the public consultation process is be to held, and
that if they do know, they don’t know what the parameters of the meeting
are (Wilson, 2000, p. 39).
C. Statements of Uncertainty
People seem to want to have a clear statement of technical and scientific
uncertainties up-front. In Canadian public hearings it was found that the
public takes the uncertainties far more seriously than the experts, and trust
is not built by scientific uncertainties not being stated up-front (Wilson,
2000, p. 37).
The public participation process in the Finnish case also found that there was
some public unease about whether experts can claim certainty of their
knowledge with regard to the long-term safety of the facility ( Nuclear
Energy Agency, Radioactive Waste Management Committee, 2002).
D. The right of veto
The right of veto is clearly desired (Flynn, Mertz & Slovic, 1993). But who
should it be invested in—the citizenry, the local council, or low- or top-level
Government officials? When in the process should it be given—before or
after feasibility studies?
Douglas Easterling and Howard Kunreuther (1995, p. 12) offer a method of
voluntarism in which a waste management organization proposes to
prospective volunteer communities a list of minimum requirements for a
facility. The waste managers can then ask the prospective volunteer
communities to propose the conditions under which they would allow the
facility to be constructed. Under Easterling and Kunreuther’s vision of such a
system, potential host communities enter into negotiations with the
developer only if they are interested and that they can de-select themselves
at a future time.
Marshall: The Social and Ethical Aspects of Nuclear Waste
15
E. The Reliance on Experts
Nuclear experts are only occasionally seen as being neutral. Usually, the
public discounts expert evidence because of whom the expert works for
(Papinchak & Wingard, 1990). For example, “the international consensus on
the concept [of deep geological disposal] comes from proponents of the
industry only” (Wilson, 2000, p. 39).
The public often believes that experts have the prevalence of working
towards:
* Making their employers happy (Johnson, 2003; Irwin, Dale & Smith,
1996).
* Justifying their own earlier judgments (Wynne, 1996; Sismendo,
1996).
* Legitimizing their own personal value framework (Sundqvist, 2002;
National Research Council, Committee on Disposition of High-Level
Radioactive Waste Through Geological Isolation, 2001; Slovic et al., 1993,
p. 64).
Thomas Rosenberg of the Lovisa movement in Finland found that the EIA
process at Eurojoki was steeped in scientific camouflage by the experts
involved, alienating the citizenry from the decisions ( Nuclear Energy
Agency, Radioactive Waste Management Committee, 2002) . According to a
moderator within this process, some participants mentioned that due to lack
of resources, some people who held suspicions about the proposed plant
could not hire their own independent experts to offer independent views.
F. Measuring public attitudes
Lois Wilson (2000) asks, “What method will measure public acceptance?
Referendum? Plebiscite? City Council vote?” (p. 43).
G. False participation
According to Wallentinus and Paivo (2001), there have been inst
ances where
bodies have sat down to listen to the stakeholders in a succession of
meetings in which no effort was made to adjust proposals to the ongoing
suggestions of stakeholders. This issue can be expanded to include the often
expressed suspicion that much of what constitutes public participation is just
public relations (Beder, 1999; Kraft & Clary, 1993), an attempt to
manipulate public acceptance into a pre-chosen proposal (or to make the
public choose from a range of favored proposals).
Electronic Green Journal, 1(21), Article 4 (2005)
16
H. Trust and trustworthiness
Speakers at hearings and on citizen panels intimate that it is often very
difficult to trust the various actors involved in radioactive waste
management. For example, in European nations, Eurobarometer found that
29% of the respondents state that they are very worried about the way
nuclear waste is handled in their own country and only 10% trust the
information provided by the nuclear industry ( INRA European Coordination
Office, 2002) .
Intergenerational Justice in Nuclear Waste Management
Issues of justice do not cut across only space but also across time.
Radioactive waste is long-lived. The waste produced today is going to be
around many years after this generation has disappeared. There are a
number of ethical problems thrown up as a result of this and they tend to be
categorized together in the literature under the rubric of intergenerational
equity; a phrase meant to convey the fact that there are obligations and
rights that the current generation owe to, or project upon, future
generations.
Consent
In democratic societies it is often regarded as important to get the
agreement of the local people in some way before building a hazardous
facility. However, it is impossible to get the consent of future generations of
communities that may surround such facilities. With regards to nuclear
waste this becomes an intergenerational issue, for the waste remains
hazardous from 100 to a million years. Even if the most extensive and
intensive public participation, democratic decision-making and stakeholder
involvement was all enacted, and even if local consent is given for a nuclear
waste management facility to be constructed at this moment in time, this
does nothing to allay concern that such processes and such consent decides
the future environmental quality of peoples who have not, in any way,
approved the facility. In light of this, Nilson (2001) raises a question: how
far in the future can we make democratically credible decisions?
Relying on Future Techno-Fixes
While talking about our responsibility to manage our own radioactive waste,
Shrader-Frechette (2000) makes the point that:
Of course it may be counter-argued that future persons ought to bear more
of the risk and cost of nuclear waste because those future people will be
Marshall: The Social and Ethical Aspects of Nuclear Waste
17
better prepared to face these technological and economic risks. ( p. 773)
Thus, given that society is always advancing and progressing scientifically,
technologically and economically, radioactive waste managers shouldn’t be
in too much of a hurry to invent a solution because any generation that
comes after us will provide a better one. Shrader-Frechette’s answer to this
is:
* We don’t know what the future holds.
* Economically, demographically, and resource uncertainty may make
it more difficult for future generations to solve these problems.
* Just because they may be able to solve the problem better than
present generations, this does not mean they should solve our problems.
In contrast to Shrader-Frechette, Nilson (2001) sets store in the ability of
each generation being able to furnish the next with the skills, resources and
means to manage problems that they leave behind. She says that to do that
we should make sure the chain of skills remains undiminished. To do that
there needs to be a number of processes set in place (such as record
maintenance, standardizing a long timescale review process, ensuring
traditions of practice are sustained, etc.). Only by actively doing these things
in the near-
term can we possibly rely on social institutions that are supposed
to preserve current experience and knowledge and pass it on to the future
generations. The Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has also raised similar points
(Nuclear Energy Agency, 1995). Critics of this approach, however, might
raise the point that this is an apology for the continuation of a nuclear
industry.
Social and Political Change
The social and political backgrounds against which radioactive wastes are to
be managed are liable to change, perhaps drastically, in both the short-term
and long-term life of the waste. Some, like Buser (1997),have noted that
our knowledge of the physical environment and our prediction of its stability,
while full of lacunae and doubts, are far more impressive than our ability to
understand and predict the course of the social and political
environment.“Political science fiction” is the phrase Lois Wilson (2000) is
driven to use when cogitating about failing institutions and changing social
circumstances over the lifetime of radioactive waste.
Writers like Wilson are sensitive to the fact that things are going to change
quite unpredictably. It’s not only the case that wars will be fought, economic
slumps and booms will come and go, but that nations also may rise and fall.
And even the concept of a nation may disappear (as some intimate with
Electronic Green Journal, 1(21), Article 4 (2005)
18
regard to globalization (Giddens, 2000)) taking along with it, perhaps, any
institutional body charged with maintaining control or a watching brief over
nuclear waste.
Given all of this, many have stated that now is the time to solve the
problem, now is the time to think of a permanent solution ( McCombie,
Pentz, Kurzeme & Miller, 2000; McCombie & Chapman, 2002;
Säteilyturvakeskus, 1989; Nuclear Energy Agency, 1995; International
Nuclear Societies Council, 2002). Whether this is true or not, an important
question that must come up is this: is it worthwhile making any predictions
for the future of social environment as is done with the physical
environment? Some, like Wilson (2000), would say no, since it is merely
sooth-saying. The chances of you predicting the right result are very small.
Others may say yes, but only if we acknowledge that our predictions are
limited to generalities. It is possible, for example, for social scientists to
arrive at a range of scenarios for future societies that are
helpful in providing
overall advice to today’s radioactive waste managers. Given that most social
science has never been a predictive art, except to those with a distinct
utopian agenda, most sociologists would be skeptical of the social and
political predictions. However, based on their attempts to delve into the
social aspects of other environmental problems (Williams, 1998; Dunlap &
Michelson, 2002) , and based upon their attempts to tease out the social
aspects within scientific and technological projects (Sismendo, 1996; Mack,
1990), most social scientists would be convinced of the massive importance
of social and political issues on the future management of nuclear waste,
and they’d probably say that these factors would equal or outweigh many of
the technical factors already considered by nuclear waste managers.
Information Upkeep
If future generations are to be able to care for or avoid the radioactive waste
facilities that this generation constructs, then some way of communicating
the dangers of radioactive waste to these future generations has to be
realized. However, any attempt to do this must be cognizant of the changing
regimes of information storage. Mainstream manners of conveying
information are obviously subject to change over long time periods. Many of
the oral traditions and symbolic representations that were standard
thousands of years ago are largely lost to or lost on the current generation.
Similarly, the documents we produce now relating to the siting of dangerous
waste are less likely to survive than the waste itself. The digital revolution
may exacerbate this problem according to Ulrike Fink (1993) who points out
that data losses may take place even faster due to the rapid progress and
subsequent incompatibility of computer systems. Fink offers an example of
information loss that she believes is somewhat analogous to what may
Marshall: The Social and Ethical Aspects of Nuclear Waste
19
happen with regards to nuclear waste:
Everyone knows that Germans are especially tidy and painstaking—but
nevertheless, now and then it happens that old pits of a
bandoned coal mines
are just drilled by chance! That means, either the knowledge has got lost
during 100 years or the people didn’t study the available, existing data—the
people were not conscious of the problem. (p. 136)
This case, suggests Ulrike Fink, implies that despite our best record-keeping
efforts, it is likely that the information we produce about our radioactive
waste activities is probably going to be inaccessible to future generations.
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.....................................
Dr. Alan Marshall <alannigelmarshall@yahoo.com>, Department of
Environmental Humanities, School of Social Studies, Masaryk University,
Gorkého 7, CZ-602 00 Brno, Czech Republic.
Marshall: The Social and Ethical Aspects of Nuclear Waste
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