(February 4, 2000) Untill now, plans for storage of nuclear waste followed the same pattern: first the government and the nuclear industry decided on a location to store the waste and consequently the locations were announced. This "decided, announce and defend" approach led to much resistance. Therefore, there is an international attempt to find ways to increase the involvement of the public.
(524.5131) Laka Foundation - Involving the public in finding locations for storage of nuclear waste will only succeed if the discussion is guided by an independent panel and if the use of nuclear energy is also on the agenda. These are some of the conclusions of the report "Discussions on Nuclear Waste; a Survey on Public Participation, Decision- Making and Discussions in Eight Countries", which was published by Herman Damveld (independent researcher and publicist) and Robert Jan van den Berg (researcher at the Laka Foundation). It was made on request of the Dutch Commission for Radioactive Waste Disposal (CORA). The CORA studies the storage of nuclear waste either underground (salt domes and clay formations) or aboveground during f.i. 300 years. Within half a year, CORA will make a proposal for further developments.
Up to the present, the authors find this traditional decision-making method of "decided, announce and defend" in use in Belgium, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. A classic example of this is the plan for disposal in the salt dome in Gorleben, Germany. The salt dome was selected in 1977, the decison was consequently announced, and the decision was defended afterwards. From the very beginning, this gave rise to differences of opinion that resulted into the coalition agreement of the current government for a moratorium on research at Gorleben. The traditional policy did not result in public acceptance. A move towards other approaches can be observed in many countries.
Nuclear energy is an important source of nuclear waste. Therefore, it is obvious that the issue of nuclear energy will play a role in every discussion about the storage of nuclear waste. Environmental organisations in many countries state that ending nuclear energy, either immediately or within the foreseeable future, is a necessary condition for a discussion about how to handle the nuclear waste that was inevitably produced. A so-called Consensus Conference was organised in the UK, where the citizen's panel recommended that there should be no increase in nuclear energy capacity. In Germany, environmental minister Jürgen Trittin mentioned the end of nuclear energy as a condition for public acceptance for a solution of the nuclear waste problem. In Canada, nuclear energy also played a role in the nuclear waste discussion.
The discussion in Canada had been guided by a commission, independent of the nuclear industry and environmental organisations. That raised enough confidence and many groups were willing to participate. Canada was the only country which succeeded in organising a discussion with such broad dimensions and participation. However, the government handed the next phase of the discussion over to the nuclear industry. Not suprisingly this led to protests from environmental organisations, because they fear independence will be lost in this way.
The eight countries surveyed in the report are Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. The report "Discussions on Nuclear Waste; a Survey on Public Participation, Decision- Making and Discussions in Eight Countries", (January 2000, 130 pages) can be obtained from the Laka Foundation.
A second report by the same authors entitled "Nuclear Waste and Nuclear Ethics. Social and ethical aspects of the retrievable storage of nuclear waste" was also published in January. The objective was to clarify the different opinions and dimensions that play a role in ethics, sustainability and public acceptance of risks. The report is published in Dutch but a summary in English is available.
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