Burying globally, acting locally: control and co-option in nuclear waste management

Transcription

1 Science and Public Policy, 34(7), August 2007, pages DOI: / X251434; Burying globally, acting locally: control and co-option in nuclear waste management Darrin Durant Is nuclear waste disposal the Achilles heel of the global nuclear industry or its best opportunity for reinvention? The industry in retreat thesis depicts nuclear elites and supporting policy institutions as limited by problems of local autonomy and public consultation. This paper outlines an alternative thesis, showing how nuclear boundary organizations seek to control the public, maximize their organizational discretion, and discursively manage the accountability and legitimacy deficits common to contemporary forms of governance. To illustrate the thesis I review the national programs for nuclear waste disposal in the USA, UK, Sweden, and Canada. T HE GLOBAL NUCLEAR INDUSTRY faces many obstacles to the expansion of nuclear power, including concerns about safety, high cost, proliferation fears, and historical problems of low public credibility. Even those recommending the expansion of the nuclear power option threefold by 2050, as a means to combat global warming and meet global energy needs, admit that at present nuclear power faces stagnation and decline (Deutch and Moniz, 2003: ix). Opponents of the nuclear option concur, declaring that a nuclear renaissance faces severe challenges to its legitimacy (Stoett, 2003: 100) and is unlikely to occur without massive government subsidies (Rosenkranz, 2006: 38). The biggest hurdle appears to be unresolved questions about the disposal of high-level nuclear waste. The link between nuclear waste management and new reactor development is often kept deliberately ambiguous by governance organizations, and is an example of what Thompson and McEwan (1958: 30) once labeled a process of sounding out (the process of formulating new sets of social relations by first navigating through a period of deliberate ambiguity). Darrin Durant is Assistant Professor, Program in Science and Technology Studies, Division of Natural Science, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Room 218 Bethune College, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada; ddurant@yorku.ca; Tel: , ext ; Fax: Interactions in such periods of deliberate ambiguity are often guided by central actors and their quest to control uncertainties and maximize discretion. This paper explores this sounding out process, focusing on nuclear waste disposal policy in four nations (USA, UK, Sweden, and Canada), by showing how contemporary nuclear boosters are attempting to transform nuclear waste from Achilles heel to opportunity for reinvention. The current quest for public acceptance of proposed solutions of the nuclear waste disposal problem is driven by the twin conviction that the problem itself requires a solution, and that a new round of nuclear expansion may not go ahead without such acceptance. The possibility of a nuclear renaissance is evident in the four countries discussed here. The financial incentives contained in the US Energy Policy Act of 2005 is said to have led to 30 new reactors in various stages of planning (George, 2007: 13 14). In August September 2006 Canadian utilities applied to construct four new reactors (OPA, 2007: 16). In May 2007 the UK Government commenced public consultation about new builds (Department of Trade and Industry, 2007a: , 2007b). In Sweden the 1980 referendum decision to phase out nuclear power by 2010 has been steadily eroded (declining political will to follow through [Lofstedt, 2001], and high trust in the nuclear industry because it appears to have a solution to the nuclear waste disposal problem [Sundqvist, 2004: 58]). Science and Public Policy August /07/ US$08.00 Beech Tree Publishing

2 Nuclear waste management Darrin Durant's doctoral research was a study of the Canadian public inquiry into a nuclear waste disposal concept. His research centres on studies of expertise, the public understanding of science and technology, and the public policy context of nuclear waste management. An edited book, Nuclear Waste Management in Canada, is forthcoming with UBC Press (2008), and recent articles appear in Scientia Canadensis, 30(1) (2007) and Public Understanding of Science (2008 forthcoming). Nevertheless many argue the supposed nuclear renaissance is nothing more than a renaissance of statements (Rosenkranz, 2006: 36). Reasons for skepticism include the observation that new construction is primarily in Asia, that growth forecasts have been historically inaccurate, that current figures are inflated by delayed construction on old reactor orders, that developed nations appear more likely to refurbish existing reactors and build new generating capacity via clean coal technology or combinedcycle gas-fired turbines, and that basing cost efficiency projections on the promise of carbon credits is unwarranted given the carbon-heavy full nuclear fuel cycle (cf. Soderholm, 1998; Thomas, 2005: 4-6; Toth and Rogner, 2006: 7-10; George, 2007: 15-19; Greenpeace, 2007: 10-19). The nuclear waste disposal problem, because it necessarily involves some level of public involvement if there is to be a socially acceptable solution, over-shadows such contingencies and uncertainties. The current proposed solution, widely advertised as the product of international collaboration and as enjoying an international consensus among scientists (cf. World Nuclear Association, 2005), involves placing waste in sealed containers and burying it in deep underground repositories. Multiple natural and engineered barriers would isolate radionuclides from the biosphere for as long as they pose significant risk, while also minimizing or preventing human intrusion. A local area and a local community cannot be avoided. Hence technical discourse about how to safely dispose of nuclear waste is coupled to a discourse of inclusive and respectful public consultation about repository siting and criterions of safety and acceptability. Although this non-technocratic style signals a reinvention of the nuclear industry, much of the reinvention is due to a strategic adaptation to external political realities, some of which exhibit crucial ambiguities. For instance, different evaluations of the potential role of nuclear in any future energy economy structures public opinions about the social acceptability of disposal solutions (Van den Berg and Damveld, 2000: 14). Public groups both support nuclear expansion if assurances of safe disposal are provided, but also fear that acceptance alone will be taken as political consent to reinvigorate nuclear power (NEA, 2004: 19 20). Nuclear boosters thus face a dilemma about how closely to draw the link between solutions to waste disposal and new reactor orders, especially in the context of restructured electricity markets, where the high capital costs and long construction times of nuclear projects make nuclear power a risky investment (cf. Raber and Hassell, 1997; Soderholm, 1998: ; Thomas, 2005: 12 17). Indeed credit agencies have concluded that a solution to the waste disposal problem is required to lower investment risk (Standard and Poor s, 2006). External political realities also include broad shifts in governance patterns, occasioned by the degree to which deference to expertise has decreased, the accountability of political elites has increased, and the pervasiveness of demands for public participation in decision-making. This complex political environment has led many to claim the nuclear industry is in retreat. Thus Berkhout (1991, 1997) claimed technical obstacles to safe disposal are insurmountable, leaving the industry to battle on less secure social and political terrain (Berkhout, 1991, 1997). Blowers (1999) claimed the future of the industry will be decided in the peripheral communities targeted as repository sites. Stoett (2003) claimed the political foundations of industry legitimacy are undermined by continued concerns over waste and safety. The legitimacy of such points aside, as a description of the contemporary nuclear regime they fail to take seriously how managing the nuclear waste disposal issue has presented an opportunity to reinvent the face of the nuclear option. This paper thus focuses on the organizational agency being developed to actively tackle this new political space. Rather than local actors wrestling both control and discretion over nuclear matters from technical and policy elites, I depict an industry using innovative types of organizations to stabilize their political environments, thereby reducing uncertainties and maximizing their organizational discretion. I thus follow in the tradition of Thompson s (1967) approach to organizations. I draw upon the social scientific work of analysts of domestic programs for nuclear waste disposal, while supplementing those analyses with commentary on publications by domestic waste management organizations. Rather than focus on the member reasons proffered for such organizational activity, I analyze the way in which the products of organizational action mediate the relations between different sets of political actors. I suggest newly formed waste management organizations make use of the blurred boundary between science and politics to discursively shift emphasis towards claims about what mediating institutions are able to control. I also suggest that organizational discretion is maximized to the extent local frames of reference and citizen dialogue can be constructed as fragmented enough that any decision can be grounded in some kind of public backing. Furthermore, these organizations make discursive use of the limits of their accountability to construct domains of legitimacy; indeed the inverse is also the case. The next section theorizes this proposed organizational activity by 516 Science and Public Policy August 2007

3 Jacob argued that understanding nuclear waste politics involved linking the historical, spatial, social and economic contexts and recognizing the boundaries among state, economic and civil institutions are often unclear and permeable characterizing the new organizations as boundary organizations that exist within new styles of governance. The following four sections comment upon how the new organizations seek to maximize control and discretion. I conclude by reflecting upon how the various organizational moves may not bode well for democratic aspirations. Governance by boundary organizations Previous treatments of the nuclear waste disposal issue have painted a bleak picture for the nuclear industry. Jacob (1990) posited three crises facing the nuclear industry: the loss of scientific credibility, institutional legitimacy, and economic profitability. Jacob argued that understanding nuclear waste politics involved linking the historical, spatial, social and economic contexts and recognizing the boundaries among state, economic and civil institutions are often unclear and permeable (1990: 10 11). This interdependence of factors led Jacob to conclude that challenges to repository siting would continue unabated and may result in drastic restructuring of the nuclear industry and new forms of external control and oversight (1990: 165). Berkhout s international survey reached similar conclusions: the effort to claim absolute safety for nuclear waste disposal was an illogical tomb concept, which could not avoid the fact that the genie may yet escape from its bottle, rendering the nuclear industry the single clearest threat to the environment (1991: 2, 128, 226 and 44 respectively). Such warnings have routinely been taken as signaling a trend toward the increased ability of, and opportunity for, local interests (public or private) to mobilize, participate, and affect decision making (Ballard and Kuhn, 1996: 830). Nevertheless Berkhout revisited nuclear waste disposal and concluded that science had failed to establish a politically sufficient agreement (1997: 278) that geological disposal could isolate wastes from the biosphere. Industry and government were thus in retreat from policy positions, taking refuge in retrievability and transmutation options (1997: 298), so that the ultimate viability of disposal projects Nuclear waste management will depend more on ethical, political and economic, than on scientific considerations (1997: 298). Blowers analysis of the international politics of nuclear waste concluded similarly: an inability to overcome problems of local and intergenerational inequity in repository siting portray an industry in retreat (1999: 261), saddled with attempting to site repositories in nuclear oases (established nuclear sites peripheral to economic activity and population centers). Blowers noted the industry is often found embattled against an opposition that cuts right across social, political, and geographical divides (1999: 260) and that, because such local opposition has increasingly and successfully undermined the power of the nuclear cause, nuclear oases hold the key to the future of the nuclear industry (1997: 260 and 263). Such commentaries underplay the agency of nuclear interests. Control and discretion over repository siting assessment and future industry growth are removed from industry hands, and placed in the hands of external control and oversight (Jacobs, 1990), diverse social, economic and political factors (Berkhout, 1991, 1997), local politics (Blowers, 1999), and at the least an uncertain future (Stoett, 2003: 114). Despite this underplaying of the agency of nuclear interests, the kind of political space assumed by the industry in retreat thesis to be occupied by nuclear proponents is one in which the power and discretion of nuclear proponents is maximized rather than out of their hands. The image of an iron triangle, a tight and stable alliance of industry and government elites making policy decisions in isolation from broader public scrutiny (Temples, 1980), seems not to have been relinquished despite empirical work suggesting power is now more dispersed and contested. Thus Jacob refers to the staying power of the nuclear establishment (1990: 6 7), Berkhout refers to the failure of democratization of decision-making (1997: 298), Blowers calls for public involvement in the face of the privileged access and non-decision making style of the state-backed nuclear option (1999: 262 and 260), and Stoett refers to public resistance being caused by the non-participatory aspect of nuclear decision-making (2003: 113). A colloquial way to state the tension evident in the industry in retreat thesis is that the industry is simultaneously criticized for being a powerful and elitist political bully while also constructed as subject to the countervailing forces of individually weak but collectively strong political actors. Both claims may be true, but this spectrum obscures those political actions that fall in between controlling society and being controlled by society. It is not a gross over-simplification to say that the agency of the contemporary nuclear regime is too often depicted as the passive inertia of powerful institutions, in contrast to the active agency of social challenge. The literature on regime effectiveness offers a more nuanced means of describing the situation. The nuclear case shares affinities with the general case of Science and Public Policy August

4 Nuclear waste management a regime facing an uphill battle: rather than institutional elites sharing a tradition of cooperation and acting as independent drivers of change, the nuclear case is like that of a new regime forced to actively build bridges among antagonistic actors but also constrained by external forces (Yonge, 1999). In response to attempts to filter political legitimacy through the narrow confines of nuclear oases and citizen autonomy, the contemporary nuclear regime seeks to coopt public participation to predetermined ends and emphasizes what managing institutions can control. Stoett was on the right track in arguing that the nuclear industry is constantly in the process of further consolidation and has managed to survive through self-reinvention (2003: 101). I argue this process of reinvention is situated within innovative waste management (boundary) organizations, which use their fuzzy political status to construct the boundaries of their legitimacy and accountability, and which exploit shifting patterns in styles of governing to control the boundary between what science can authorize and political issues of public acceptability. The boundary organization concept (cf. Guston, 2000) is partly an adaptation of Thompson and McEwan s (1958) and Thompson s (1967) notion of boundary-spanning organizations. This organizational studies literature concerns itself with the boundaries of the organization itself, which help constitute membership, and the types of activities organizations engage in so as to gain support from the external political environment. Thompson and McEwan (1958: 25 28) utilized a classification scheme in which competition and three sub-types of co-operative interaction (bargaining, co-optation, coalition) differed in terms of the degree of environmental control of organizational action and the costs incurred (in terms of sacrificing decisionmaking discretion in exchange for gaining support from the political environment). From least costly to most costly, and following an increase from partial to extreme external control of organizational activity, and with the first two activities maintaining mutually exclusive memberships but the latter two envisioning overlapping organizational membership, the four activities were: competition (rivalry between organizational entities that is mediated by a third party, which chooses from alternatives); bargaining (direct negotiations between organizational entities regarding the exchange of goods and/or services); co-optation (absorbing new elements into decision structures so as to avoid overly costly confrontation or threats to existence, with outsiders now taking direct part in deliberations, creating overlapping memberships); and coalition (the combination of multiple organizations devoted to a common purpose, with a commitment to joint decision-making about future activities). The organizations reviewed here operate within a competitive activity framework, thus creating room for government discretion in selecting a waste management approach and distancing itself from both social squabbles about those options and responsibility for coming up with solutions. Pronuclear interests have been protected by keeping membership in the organizations mostly restricted to nuclear insiders. The organizations have resisted coalition activity, though an operative ideal appears to be that bargaining arrangements will be converted into optimal outcomes by benevolent co-optation. What seems most pertinent is that the organizations reviewed here have been selective in their co-option of external demands. Although co-optation is meant to describe how outsiders gain access to deliberation about goals, such selective acts implicitly circumscribe and constitute the kinds of goals that outsiders are able to exercise influence over in deliberative exchanges. The concept of boundary organizations, as used in science and technology studies, adapts such notions of boundary-spanning activities but focuses more specifically on the processes whereby organizational goals and products themselves may be constituted and reconstituted. The central question concerns how organizations engage in activities to manage the boundary between science and politics, thus allowing different communities to work together. Typical boundary organizations might be those semi-public or fully public institutions with legislative mandates to perform specific tasks. Whereas boundaryspanning organizations are said to control uncertainties and maximize discretion by monitoring organizational membership per se and seeking to isolate itself from external political authority, boundary organizations are conceived of as beholden to multiple principals (such as government, the public, and industry groups). Although constrained in their action (by initial mandates, stakeholder base, and resources), a boundary organization neither seeks isolation from external political authority nor integration with a political authority. Rather, boundary organizations seek to induce stability in the putative boundary between science and politics, public and private, by internalizing the negotiations over where the boundary resides (cf. Guston, 2000: 30 32). A sphere of organizational discretion is thus created even while accountability and responsiveness to external political actors are sustained. I suggest one way to link these two traditions is to analyze how boundary organizations, via internal negotiations about the science politics boundary, seek to avoid some of the confrontational political work normally conceived of as boundary-spanning activity. For instance, even as nuclear waste disposal boundary organizations approach the boundaryspanning activity of bargaining, they seek to define in advance where the boundaries between science and politics reside. This kind of activity defines what objects of social action will exist in the bargaining 518 Science and Public Policy August 2007

5 exchanges, while also seeking to constitute the perceived character of those social objects. Such boundary organizations appear part of shifting patterns in styles of governing. The governance perspective thus suggests that, as the boundaries between public and private become blurred, new styles for ordering relations between civil society and the State are emerging (Stoker, 1998; Lyall and Tait, 2005). Rather than the conditions for ordered rule emanating strictly from formal institutions of state, the conditions of ordered rule are increasingly resulting from the interaction of multiple centres of influence, with shared responsibility for strategic decision-making, and accompanying shifts in responsibility relations, accountability, and task coordination. Nevertheless actors can still seek and obtain sovereign positions (Stoker, 1998: 24 26). Via its handling of nuclear waste disposal the global nuclear industry is not only stabilizing conceptions of the technical and political issues, but such attempted stabilizations are geared toward repairing the legitimation and accountability deficits theorized to be part of the experience of emerging governance networks (Stoker, 1998: 20 23). America: informative failure? Three crucial junctures in the US repository project witnessed political action preceding technical consensus. The first was the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (1982), setting 1998 as the operational deadline for a repository. This tight schedule was adopted by Congress to force getting on with the job (Colglazier and Langum, 1988: 320), and was forged in the absence of expert consensus about the feasibility of permanent disposal or public trust in the nuclear industry and its regulators (Balogh, 1991: chap. 8; Carter, 1987). Political haste plus a pro-nuclear Department of Energy (DOE) resulted in a decide announce defend approach to repository siting in the 1980s (Duffy, 1997). State legal action, expert criticism of the assessment procedure, and much local opposition accompanied site exploration in both Eastern and Western American locations (Flynn et al, 1992). The old nuclear regime thus found democratic expectations an obstacle to their political legitimacy. The second juncture was amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1987, in which Yucca Mountain (Nevada) was selected as the repository site. The DOE cited sound science as the basis for truncating the screening process: Yucca Mountain is an isolated site with suitable geological and hydrological features for restricting radionuclide movement (OCRWM, 1998). Yet Nevada was also politically weak, and the site was a federally-owned nuclear oasis (weapons testing) (Colglazier and Langum, 1988). The continued decide announce defend approach prompted federal/state policy grid-lock (Kraft, 2000), criticism of the limits of quantitative Nuclear waste management The multiple avenues of third-party appeal in the US federalist system of checks and balances has resulted in adversarial and competitive activity remaining the dominant style of interaction risk assessment (Shrader-Frechette, 1993), citizen dissent in public hearings (Kraft and Clary, 1991), and widespread distrust of the DOE and its Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) (Freudenberg, 1993). Much of this history suggests concerted efforts to skip straight to the bargaining stage of organizational activity, pitting stronger federal-level entities against weaker State resources. Yet the multiple avenues of third-party appeal in the US federalist system of checks and balances has resulted in adversarial and competitive activity remaining the dominant style of interaction. The third juncture involved Congress approving the Yucca Mountain site in 2002, potentially enabling a shift from studying the site to licensing, building and operating a repository. This attempt to shift the issue from competitive to bargaining activity has continued to encounter technical, legal and political obstacles (Macfarlane and Ewing, 2006). One of the informative failures (Freudenburg, 2004) of this policy history is said to be the activity of the organizations responsible for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel in the USA: the DOE and OCRWM (established in 1982). Program delays have been attributed to the OCRWM s inherited organizational tradition (centralized and inflexible), political posture (avoid acknowledging uncertainties) (Cook et al, 1990), and inability to utilize available policy analysis (Kraft, 1992). Notwithstanding calls for new and independent organizational direction (Carter, 2006), understanding the current organizational direction necessitates an appreciation of how the OCRWM positions itself as a mediator between science and politics. The decision-making autonomy of the OCRWM is constrained by external governing authorities and obligations, including the DOE and its legislative and regulatory obligations, Congress, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the Environmental Protection Agency, oversight bodies, public opposition groups, and a Congressional mandate to develop a waste management plan that merits public confidence (OCRWM, 2004: Appendix 1). The OCRWM seeks to maximize its discretion by internalizing decisions about the boundaries between science and politics, thereby mitigating the threat of externally set boundaries being imposed upon the organization. Science and Public Policy August

6 Nuclear waste management For instance, the OCRWM altered technical parameters of the projected disposal system: from a wet disposal vault (utilizing reducing conditions, where no oxygen is present and thus corrosion of fuel is minimized) to a dry disposal vault (minimizing the possibility of spent fuel coming into contact with water); and from using geological site selection criteria (the setting of favourable and unfavourable conditions) to a performance assessment criteria (construct a model of the overall system and see if the proposed system meets particular standards). Macfarlane has argued these changes show how new technical knowledge and changing political obligations mutually co-produce each other (2003). Others have sought to maintain a clear division between policy (defines adequate safety and risk acceptability) and science (optimizes repository design and quantifies residual uncertainties) (Peterson, 2002). Eschewing such reified boundaries, Macfarlane shows how setting boundaries between things simultaneously constitutes those things, though Macfarlane does not assume science and politics, nor engineering and geological barriers, trade-off against each other. Rather, the criteria underpinning decisions is shown to admit of degrees of importance. Thus Macfarlane shows a shift in OCRWM performance assessment weighting: from geological (eg water transport) to engineered (eg waste packaging) barriers as more important for system safety. The advantage of the latter is that the OCRWM claims they can prescribe and control the engineered barriers. Both the DOE/OCRWM and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission place more trust in control by design engineering features (Macfarlane, 2006: 94 95). Such claims advance organizational discretion because safety is tied to the level of organizational control over engineered barriers. Having settled such matters internally, the OCRWM seeks to control uncertainty about what is a political issue should matters progress to the bargaining stage of organizational activity. Thus Macfarlane also found two activities apparent in OCRWM work: public participation programs that are more like rituals than serious venues to receive, process, and incorporate input from the public and the construction of a boundary between itself as a producer and the public as a user of knowledge (Macfarlane, 2003: ). Sustaining the latter internally produced boundary limits the range of legitimate meanings obtainable from public participation, thus justifying ritual programs, but also undercutting the potential competitive position of public groups. Such organizational activity serves to shift decision-authority toward the level of entrenched institutional interests and processes. The OCRWM is developing its own notions of the good (eg engineered barriers and a dry vault as technically proper ) and seeking to impose such conceptions on designated repository sites. Such activity undercuts the industry in retreat thesis, as for instance the implicit assumption in Blowers (1999) that notions of the good will be developed in interaction with nuclear oases. Britain: starting (late) with a blank slate In the UK the old iron triangle suffered a legitimacy crisis and gave way to a competitive political framework, led noticeably by an organization practicing something in between bargaining and co-optation organizational activities. The old iron triangle consisted of a tightly knit group of technical (UK Nirex Ltd, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd [BNFL]), policy (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [DEFRA]), and regulatory (such as the Environment Agency and the Nuclear Industries Inspectorate) actors. Nirex had been established in 1982 to develop and operate a disposal facility (to replace the shipping of waste to Sellafield, in Cumbria). Following protests against exploratory drilling in the 1980s (Blowers et al, 1991), in 1988 Nirex followed the US example of isolating a site (Sellafield) to house a rock characterization facility (RCF), but in 1997 local and national level opposition resulted in Cumbria County Council refusing planning permission for the RCF. Similar to the US experience, the 1997 RCF failure stemmed from poor public consultation efforts by Nirex throughout the 1980s (Kemp et al, 1986), with local opposition defying NIMBY stereotypes of emotional and uninformed critique (Kemp, 1990). The UK Government thus conducted a public consultation effort, Managing Radioactive Waste Safely ( ), resulting in a recommendation to establish an independent body to oversee research on radioactive waste management (DEFRA, 2002). The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) was established and carried out extensive public consultation from 2004 to CoRWM members were appointed on the basis of individual skills and experience rather than stakeholder or interest group representation. CoRWM thus approximates the notion of arm s length from government and industry; as a boundary organization it seemed uniquely placed to claim it can ensure accountability and transparency. CoRWM s accountability extends to both government (report delivered in July 2006) and the public. Given a mandate to inspire public confidence, CoRWM approached the public with a blank sheet of paper (what issues concern the public?) (CoRWM, 2004: 24, 2006b: 2). The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee thought attention was thus being diverted from investigating the right scientific and technical solution, though it commended CoRWM for its objectives of openness, transparency and inclusivity. Contrasting the spectre of global warming with the small uncertainties associated with radioactive waste disposal, the committee both drew a link between increased 520 Science and Public Policy August 2007

7 prospects for new nuclear build via a solution to high-level waste disposal (House of Lords, 2004: 4 7) and suggested those opposing waste disposal did so solely to halt nuclear expansion (House of Lords, 2005). Opponents of the blank slate approach thus constructed the science politics relation as both a trade-off (the more facts known, the less public consultation is needed; the more resources going to public consultation, the less to technical work) and a normative recommendation (science before politics). Public participation initiatives thus inevitably involve political balancing acts between the desire for broad consultation and the cross-cutting desire for government and industry discretion. Although meaningful public dialogue, via bargaining activity (direct interaction), secured a more decisive role in defining the waste disposal issues, participation in assessment and evaluation remains negligible (Chilvers, 2005). A boundary between the scope of the waste disposal issue and assessment criteria (which presumably is left to competitive choice rather than negotiated bargaining) was thus erected, though none of this hinged on explicit control over organizational membership per se. Chilvers analysis suggests participation became an end in itself because the government was not committed to translating conclusions about broad issues into either assessment and evaluation criteria themselves or the mechanisms for deciding upon them. This situation indicates the importance of mapping how internal organizational boundary work can interact with boundary-spanning activities. What CoRWM did was solicit public input to define the broad issues, shifting a previous boundary in which the framing of the problem itself was denied to the public, yet (inadvertently or not) erecting a new boundary between setting the agenda and influencing the basis of assessment and evaluation. CoRWM s final report (2006b) recommended deep geological disposal, implemented in stages and with interim storage a central feature, but aiming for early repository closure and close partnership with potential repository sites. CoRWM thereby suggested a bargaining arrangement between an overseeing body and an implementation authority to undertake the work itself (CoRWM, 2006c: points 55 59, ). CoRWM evidently saw itself as the natural candidate for the oversight role, and as such it is important to note how CoRWM constructed its role to date: having interpreted the 1997 RCF failure as an opportunity to wipe the slate clean, to deliberate in public, CoRWM nevertheless protected its right to ultimately integrate the variety of knowledge streams in making its final recommendations (CoRWM, 2006b: 6 7). CoRWM itself would mediate the boundaries between science and politics, applying its own internal organizational discretion in a context of broad external accountability. Yet several instances of this integration indicate how enabling the political discretion of established policy and industry elites can circumscribe the Nuclear waste management discretion available to the interested public. For instance, CoRWM admitted that while public groups wanted the issue of new nuclear builds on the agenda, CoRWM s limited remit and neutrality compelled it to recommend such matters be discussed in a separate forum. Such matters were thus considered the preserve of formal institutions of government. CoRWM also debated closing the proposed repository early (early closure) or over an extended time-frame (phased), recommending early closure despite strong citizen support for phased closure (CoRWM, 2006b: 7 10, 49, , ). The choice between early or phased closure corresponded to divergent judgments about long-term safety estimates; early closure was consistent with trusting the estimates, while phased closure was consistent with less trust and confidence in the estimates. Such assessments of predictive control reflect discretionary judgments about which set of social actors to trust more. Moreover, CoRWM s argument for early closure hinged on the organization s judgment that sufficient flexibility was built into the system because of the inevitability of a staged (up to 100-year-long) closure process that would include storage. Hence despite the elaboration of a partnership approach that suggests public participation in deliberation about the implementation process, CoRWM s own internal boundary work regarding what constituted sufficient flexibility implicitly predefined the kind of social object (the repository implementation process) subject to deliberation and independent oversight. The rhetoric of partnership aside, the implementing of repository options seems to be an occasion to institutionalize competitive organizational environments, in which partial control over political discretion eliminates arbitrary actions but favours the entity with greater resources. This can be seen in that CoRWM may have made a boundary mistake in deferring to the broader political process and situating new nuclear build outside of their discretionary purview. CoRWM sought to further justify their deference by drawing an ethical and political distinction between legacy waste and new waste (2006b: 42, 2007: points 16 18), with their recommendations applying primarily to legacy waste. Politically speaking, CoRWM (2006a: 81, 87 88) represented the making of recommendations for legacy waste alone as a means to forestall solutions to waste disposal being taken as legitimation for creating new waste. Yet this approach perpetuates the view that solutions to waste disposal and proposals to build new reactors can be meaningfully separated, an assumption shown to be wrong by the government s response. The government White Paper of May 2007 noted that the previous (2003) policy on new nuclear build was that poor economics, plus legacy and future nuclear waste, made new reactors an unattractive option. Improved economics (due to changes in expected gas prices) and a proposed solution to the nuclear waste issue (after CoRWM s report) were Science and Public Policy August

8 Nuclear waste management Put simply, it makes no sense to pretend waste disposal solutions and new reactor development can be separated cited as new developments, with nuclear power thus potentially able to contribute to a diverse and flexible energy mix (Department of Trade and Industry, 2007a: ). Put simply, it makes no sense to pretend waste disposal solutions and new reactor development can be separated. Further confirmation of this proposition can be found in the government response to CoRWM s report, which established the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) as the implementing organization (incorporating Nirex as well), and indicated CoRWM would be an advisory body alone rather than an overseeing body (Department of Trade and Industry, 2007a: 185). The NDA had been established in July 2004, and is derived from a liability management authority that had been established to inherit the nuclear sites owned by British Nuclear Fuel Limited (BNFL) and the publicly owned sites remaining when the saleable part of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) was privatized. The NDA relieves BNFL and the UKAEA of much of their economic liability, making nuclear a more attractive economic option than it might otherwise be, while the NDA benefits commercially from nuclear power activities and development (Thomas, 2004; Greenpeace, 2004). Furthermore, Thomas (2005: 22 23) noted prior to the 2007 White Paper that rumblings of a new policy were strange, given that without unlimited government guarantees (for instance, on construction costs) little had changed in the privatized British electricity market to improve the economic case of the nuclear option. Clearly the UK Government views a proposed solution to the nuclear waste problem a sufficient dent in investor uncertainty to readmit nuclear power to the energy mix discussion. CoRWM s (2007) response to government largely objected to the implicit government attempts to reformulate the boundary-spanning activities available within the nuclear policy arena, as the proposed advisory body would exist in an unsatisfactory triangular arrangement with government and the NDA. The latter two would not only possess greater resources than CoRWM, but also without a formal oversight role there would be nothing to ensure the government would act on any CoRWM misgivings. Thus CoRWM has discovered how its own internal boundary work in and about the science/politics boundary has been subject to co-optation of a particular form: its views were incorporated, but it is threatened by a diminution in its potential jointmember status. Rather than a shift to bargaining between institutionalized equals, approximating a coalition (only approximate, due to the differing goals of watcher/doer), CoRWM s endorsement of a separation between the waste issue and new builds appears to have strengthened the case of new build and undermined the grounds for independent oversight. CoRWM may have been better served actually pursuing the governance tasks of distributed policymaking that it otherwise eschewed. Sweden: from referendum to depoliticization Despite no site having been selected as yet, Sweden is held to be on the verge of repository siting. Prior to the early 1970s the rhetoric of energy selfsufficiency encouraged little government interference in Swedish nuclear industry design and construction. Nevertheless public opposition to nuclear power, and the resulting parliamentary tensions (antinuclear Centre Party and the pro-nuclear Liberal and Conservative Parties), witnessed nuclear power emerge as a divisive voting issue in Swedish elections of 1973, 1976, and The political environment during this time witnessed competitive clashes in the public and media arenas, but with little government strength to act as a leading third-party agent of choice (Sundqvist, 2004: 69). The Nuclear Power Stipulation Act of 1977 required reactor operators to demonstrate a means to handle spent fuel with absolute safety, making a solution to accumulating waste a prerequisite for expansion plans. This political act also legislated that technical elites would be accountable for absolute safety, which in effect granted legitimacy to the concept itself. A boundary organization was established in 1977 to assume responsibility for handling nuclear waste (the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company [SKB; Svensk KärnBränsleHäntering AB], set up and owned by utility operators). After tensions over nuclear power saw the coalition government fall apart in 1978, a 1980 referendum resulted in a decision to phase out nuclear power, effectively removing nuclear power s status as a voter-issue. In 1984 a parliamentary act stipulated that reactor owners ought to be responsible for all research and development required to safely handle nuclear waste. Unlike the UK example where a legitimation crisis led to a public monitoring of science arrangement, in Sweden science was left to regulate itself (Sahr, 1985; Lidskog, 1994; Lidskog and Litmanen, 1997; Lidskog and Elander, 1992; Sundqvist, 2002, 2004). Blowers (1999) suggestion of a specifically geographical context of retreat captures much of Sweden s waste disposal experience. SKB has consistently sought nuclear oases for repository siting. The Stripa mine (Lindesberg municipality) was investigated until 1991, and site investigations have 522 Science and Public Policy August 2007

9 been underway in municipalities housing reactor complexes (Osthammar since December 2001, and Oskarshamn since March 2002). Interim storage facilities exist in other nuclear neighbourhoods: low and intermediate level waste in the Swedish Final Repository for Radioactive Operational Waste (SFR) located near the Forsmark nuclear power plant (since 1988); high-level waste in the Central Interim Storage Facility (CLAB) near the Oskarshamn nuclear power plant. Municipal opposition to test drilling introduced serious delays in an early final site designation deadline of 1997 (cf. Uggla, 2002). Yet while some Swedish analysts argue the 1980 referendum represented a decisive turn away from the energy syndrome of increased consumption (Sahr, 1985), others argue the referendum left Swedish environmentalism in a vacuum and heralded a steady process of depoliticization. Lidskog (1994) thus argued radioactive waste has been depoliticized and scientized : the referendum both limited nuclear power and removed it from political questioning, simultaneously giving a political solution to the nuclear waste problem. Delegating feasibility and siting decisions to SKB (reactor owners) makes repositories a technical and local issue rather than a national political issue (symbolized by municipal veto being revised, in 1990, to exclude the ability to halt projects in the national interest ). Sundqvist (2004: 68) points out that this delegation occurred in the context of a politically strong public sector and a weak government. The resulting self-regulation approach maximized SKB discretion, as the right expert, regarding how the bargaining exchanges with local communities would be constructed. Sundqvist (2002: , 2004) has analyzed SKB activity, revealing a crucial juncture in which SKB swapped strategies between 1986 and Sweden s nuclear regime has actively constructed a realm of organizational discretion by developing a flexible approach that minimized geological criteria in favour of engineered barriers and social acceptance. Lidskog and Sundqvist (2004) showed that in response to social conflict around test drillings and site characterizations, SKB began to argue that bedrock qualities were less important (for safety) than engineered barriers and municipal voluntarism. Social acceptability seems to have swapped from means to ends at this point, for Lidskog and Sundqvist show that public consultation was a means to pilot preordained ends through the legitimacy machine of local acceptance. Flexibility in the face of municipal demands and a relaxing of stringent requirements to locate the best bedrock conditions, while elevating engineering barriers to a position of prominence, also maximizes SKB discretion. Given that rocks and communities are considered intractable externalities, SKB has shifted to what it can control engineering barriers. In the Swedish case, it matters more to understand what SKB brings to site discussions, in other words, than what the site itself brings forward (such as accounts Nuclear waste management of its geological or hydro-geological properties). Similar to the kind of behaviour engaged in by the US OCRWM and the UK CoRWM, SKB has utilized its organizational discretion as a means to circumscribe the nature of the issues up for grabs in potential bargaining situations. Moreover, by not negotiating the ultimate ends (final disposal), flexibility has been a means to make the situation fit those ends. The Swedish example suggests that nuclear regimes may increase their legitimacy by developing an operational definition of accountability, in this case responsiveness to stakeholder demands. Such co-optation activity absorbs just enough demands to make proposed solutions acceptable to outsiders while in fact varying little from the original technical plans. Canada: from dismissing the public to embracing the public There have been three junctures in the Canadian project. The first period (pre-1990s) witnessed Canada s nuclear elites dismissing public input into decisionmaking, resulting in little competitive pressure from the public arena. The second period ( ) provides some support for the industry in retreat thesis, as the low public credibility of nuclear elites led to diverse policy actors getting involved in a full public inquiry into nuclear waste disposal. Yet the third period, beginning in 2002 when Canada s nuclear boundary organization (the Nuclear Waste Management Organization [NWMO]) emerged to manage public consultation and gain social acceptance for deep geological disposal, illustrates just how much the contemporary nuclear regime can reinvent itself. Until 1990 the Canadian nuclear industry regularly dismissed public opposition groups, with lobby groups and industry spokespersons explaining antinuclear groups as an anti-science back-lash in 1971 (Weller, 1990: 10), as professional malcontents in 1976 (CNA, 1976), and in 1987 as suffering from a bison mentality (allowing fear, dread and irrationality to drive society to extinction, just like prehistoric bison) (Siddall, 1987). Much of this dismissal took place in a context of nuclear Until 1990 the Canadian nuclear industry regularly dismissed public opposition groups, with lobby groups and industry spokespersons explaining anti-nuclear groups as an anti-science back-lash in 1971 Science and Public Policy August

10 Nuclear waste management expansion in Canada, with 22 reactors constructed between 1966 and 1992, and Canada s peak reactor start-up point in the mid-1980s. By 1990 federal/provincial conflicts over environmental assessment had produced a resolution to hold a full public inquiry in into a waste disposal concept (Durant, 2008). The old nuclear regime resented the more open political space coming into being. Atomic Energy Canada Limited (AECL, Canada s nuclear R&D corporation) thus argued in 1995 that political approval for permanent disposal was unjustifiably slow, and public consultation unnecessary, because AECL already possessed enough technical knowledge (AECL, 1995). The conclusion of the public inquiry, that AECL s disposal concept was both technically deficient and lacking in social acceptability (CEAA, 1998), thus signaled both the presence of a new political space and the unavoidability of reinvention. The NWMO thus operates in a different political space from the pre-1990 internal policy-making scene (Murphy and Kuhn, 2001) and the inquiry-based consultation practices. Moreover, competitive pressures in Canada s newly restructured electricity market, characterized by managed competition (Doern and Gattinger, 2003; Trebilcock and Hrab, 2005) creates incentives to make the nuclear option as palatable as possible to market investors. Thus NWMO rhetoric now embraces the public and admits limitations: we approach this task with humility in the face of uncertainty and complexity, but also fortified by the inherent wisdom of citizens (NWMO, 2004: 3); What we must not do is pretend that we have all the answers for all time (NWMO, 2005a: 11 12). Yet this magnanimous approach also controls the public, in part by minimizing public opposition claims that the NWMO (comprised of waste owners alone) cannot be trusted. Consider the concept of social safety, which the Seaborn Panel (which ran the public inquiry) suggested as an appropriate standard for evaluating disposal system safety. This standard admitted of no neat divorce between judgments of trust and assessments of safety (Wilson, 2002). Yet the government response transformed the concept into the need to better explain sound science (NRC, 1998; Durant, 2006a). The NWMO can thus claim to fulfill its mandate by better explaining the science, even though this tacitly controls a potentially unruly public and its habit of mixing social considerations about the trustworthiness of implementing institutions with evaluations of technical proposals (Durant, 2007). The boundary status of the NWMO itself, mandated to produce a technically sound and socially acceptable approach and responsible to diverse constituencies (ie policy-makers, technical communities, public opinion), also allows for discretionary control. The NWMO can manage its legitimacy by embracing its external accountability (Durant, 2006a). In several comprehensive discussion documents, the NWMO separated areas of broad social consensus from divergent opinions regarding how to implement those goals (NWMO, 2003). This theme was carried into a second document, in which knowledge and opinions were implicitly grouped into one set that policy-making could be based upon (the common ground existing between technical elites and public groups) and another set that could not inform policy (a diverse set of public values and perspectives not uniquely matching technical elites views) (NWMO, 2004). In this way, the NWMO internalizes negotiations over areas of consensus and disagreement. The NWMO then presents itself as a political actor reflecting whatever consensus exists, and seeking to balance the remaining disagreement; much of which it off-loads onto formal government policy discretion (similar to the UK CoRWM). Such organizational agency attempts to overcome the accountability and legitimacy deficits faced by emerging systems of governance. In effect, the NWMO can exploit the accountability deficit in order to solve the legitimacy deficit, for managing what the organization is in fact accountable for simultaneously constructs a domain of legitimacy. Currently the NWMO has released its final report, recommending an adaptive phased management approach to waste disposal, in which a phased (over 300 years) implementation process would allow for waste retrievability (NWMO, 2005b). The NWMO has strategically shifted emphasis (see Durant, 2006b), in a fashion similar to the UK CoRWM s account of flexibility, for the NWMO has redefined flexibility. Previously the NWMO argued flexibility is really only important when it is necessary to ensure safety (NWMO, 2004: 71), a conception that renders flexibility entirely technical (because it is redundant if safety is achieved). Currently flexibility is a broad concept embracing the inability to completely know specific scientific and engineering questions or the desired options of future political collectives. This redefinition accomplishes in a different way an objective similar to CoRWM s, which was to address the criticism that waste management institutions are using technical criteria to foreclose political choices (ie that any disposal will be used as justification to expand the industry). At public hearings in nuclear industry groups had explicitly argued that the acceptance of deep geological disposal would permit industry expansion (Durant, 2008). The NWMO has been more politically astute, arguing: our study process and evaluation of options were intended neither to promote nor penalize Canada s decisions regarding the future of nuclear power. (NWMO, 2005b: 20) The NWMO thus exploits its boundary status, claiming to defer decisions about nuclear expansion to the broader political process, even while pursuing a technical program the industry thinks will constitute an argument for industry expansion. 524 Science and Public Policy August 2007