Paul Dorfman: "Setting the scene: Radioactive waste management – its perception and acceptance"

UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE

Setting the scene: Public participation in radioactive waste management

Public Participation in Radioactive Waste Management, EESC, Brussels, 7.9.15

Dr Paul DorfmanEnergy Institute

University College London (UCL)

UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE

2011/70/EURATOM

• Establishing a Community framework for the responsible and safe management of spent fuel and radioactive waste.


2011/70/EURATOMArticle 10: Transparency

• ‘Member States shall ensure that the public be given the necessary opportunities to participate effectively in the decision-making process regarding spent fuel and radioactive waste management in accordance with national legislation and international obligations.’


2011/70/EURATOM

• ‘Transparency is important in the management of spent fuel and radioactive waste’.

• ‘Transparency should be provided by ensuring effective public information and opportunities for all stakeholders concerned, including local authorities and the public, to participate in the decision-making processes’.


2011/70/EURATOM

• ‘Radioactive waste management means all activities that relate to handling, pretreatment, treatment, conditioning, storage, or disposal of radioactive waste, excluding off-site transportation.’


EU legal framework

• EU Directive on Public Participation in Environmental Plans and Programmes.

• EU Public Participation Provisions of the Aarhus Convention.

• EU Directive on Strategic Environmental Assessment.• EU Directives on Integrated Pollution and Prevention

Control, and Environment Impact Assessment.


No longer an optional ‘add-on’

• Ensures that future policy meets the needs of the EU public.

• Ensures that policy options are socially, culturally and politically acceptable - as well as technologically feasible.


People and RWM

• Given the scale of long-term investments that are now needed - EU publics should play a key role in taking these critical, social, ethical, environmental and economic decisions.


and

• Governments and industry understand that public acceptance of RWM is essential.

• People want to get involved in things that effect them.


Balancing ‘expert knowledge’ with ‘everyday knowledge’

• For controversial issues.• For complex problems with uncertain futures.


If done right

• Agree and deliver national, regional, city, and local strategic objectives - at at a lower cost to the public purse and with less bureaucracy than traditional processes.

• Integration of public, policy, and expert knowledge allows for greater accountability, transparency, much better ‘take-up’ of change and improved long-term likelihood of more flexible adaption.


Trust-building is the key

• Straightforward and open negotiation.• Clarity about purpose, mechanisms and scope.• Inclusion of diverse stakeholders.• Balanced information and knowledge sharing.• Independent expertise.• Good mechanisms for accountability.• Appropriate oversight and evaluation.• Fair distribution of resources.


Public understanding

• Research shows that people can work with complex data.


Tools

• Scenario building and modelling.• Participatory multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA).• Virtual reality techniques - 3D visualization and

geographic information systems [GIS] mapping.• Stakeholder dialogues, public meetings, citizens’

panels, events, forums, workshops, interactive web-sites.


Works well for

• ‘What if’ questions and ‘trade-off’ options, risks and outcomes.

• Framing boundaries.• Exploring scenarios through quantitative

modeling.• Evaluation and review.


Broad participation

• Policymakers, government departments, devolved administrations, local government and local authorities, regulators, operators, industrial corporations and businesses, trade associations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), local community based organisations (CBOs), independent experts, and academic institutions.


‘Joined-up’ thinking

• Innovation at political, administrative, economic, social and environmental levels.

• Influence at local, regional and central governance levels.

• Connects central representative democracy to direct participation at ‘grass-roots’.


So what’s the problem ?


UK ‘Flowers Dilemma’

• Does disposal ‘concept’ a priori imply new-build?


There’s no ‘free lunch’

• Not a simple task to encourage citizens and industry to participate co-operatively.

• Tensions can arise over the framing of boundary conditions, whether all main stakeholders are involved and included, even-handed resourcing, access to information, the acceptance of all stakeholders as equal contributors, and over perceived openness to serious policy influence.


2011/70/EURATOM

• ‘Member States shall ensure that the national framework require licence holders to provide for and maintain adequate financial and human resources to fulfil their obligations with respect to the safety of spent fuel and radioactive waste management’.


Aarhus Convention

• Three central pillars of the Aarhus Convention:• Access to information.• Access to public participation.• Access to justice.


BEPPER

• Fourth pillar: Access to resources• Essential requirement for effective and

constructive public participation.• Vital to ensure ongoing and enduring civil society

participation in RWM processes.


And back to EURATOM…

• Considering ‘lessons learned’.• Ways forward.


UK response

• United Kingdom National report on Compliance with European Council Directive 2011/70/Euratom, Aug 2015.


However

• Managing Radioactive Waste Safely: Implementing Geological Disposal, 2013.


DAD is dead - steer away fromUNCLE

• Decide, Announce, Defend.• Unlimited Nuclear Consultation Leading to

Exhaustion.


So keep an ‘open mind’

• Coherent and timely ‘upstream’ involvement strategy is necessary.

• But if you ‘close down’ options, people will worry.• And if people worry, the process may fail.


Get it right


Submarine Dismantling Project (SDP)UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), 2014

• ‘Public Consultation on Site for the Interim Storage of Intermediate Level Radioactive Waste’.

• https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/submarine-dismantling-project-site-for-the-interim-storage-of-intermediate-level-radioactive-waste

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/submarine-dismantling-project-site-for-the-interim-storage-of-intermediate-level-radioactive-waste




SDP

• ‘SDP ILW interim storage site selection : public and stakeholder engagement’, 2014

• https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/364187/20140909-SDP_ISS_Approach_to-public_and_stakeholder_engagement-_PSE_v2_1_FINAL.PDF

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/364187/20140909-SDP_ISS_Approach_to-public_and_stakeholder_engagement-_PSE_v2_1_FINAL.PDF





Prepare to meet ‘stakeholders’

• Be agnostic about outcomes.• It’s the process that counts.• Success is a function of trust-building, and how

the process works with and integrates the knowledge, experience and ideas of people in their country, region, city, town, or community.


Democratically legitimate RWM process

• Public acceptance is key to RWM.• EU, MS, and industry want to communicate with

European citizens about RWM.• Communication is a two-way process.• Participatory governance can achieve a shared,

knowledge-based, democratically legitimate EC and MS RWM policy process.


Participation as a function ofRWM

• Public participation framework to allow MS to evolve viable RWM policy.

• In order to make RWM work (viable investment plans).


It works

• Clear evidence that engaging people in a meaningful way can change attitudes, behaviour and actions.

• When participation is clearly connected to representative and regulatory democratic decision-making processes.


Strategic goal of publicinvolvement in RWM

• Given the long time-scales involved, the strategic goal of public participation in RWM may not be to find the single ‘right technical answer’.

• Rather to bring people together, and keep them talking to each other, to ensure that better decisions are made in future.

• Go a little slower to get there quicker.


Overview and ‘Toolkit’Dorfman et al, EESC, 2012.

• ‘Future national energy mix scenarios: Public engagement processes in the EU and elsewhere’.

• http://www.eesc.europa.eu/resources/docs/20121212-final-report-eesc-comm-05-2012_formatted.pdf

Thank You

www.ucl.ac.uk/energy

Paul Dorfman: "Setting the scene: Radioactive waste management – its perception and acceptance"

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