![Sample our Communication Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, 2013 & 2014 volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5927/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Information-Science2.jpg"})
Abstract
There is an ongoing controversy in the Czech Republic over where to site a deep geological repository for the country’s radioactive waste. Recently, the negotiations between municipalities and state authorities responsible for radioactive waste management experienced a sharp turn: after several years of dialogue guaranteed by the promise of the state authorities not to start site investigations at preselected sites without the consent of affected municipalities, the state authorities suddenly decided not to keep this promise, and to start site investigations without the municipalities’ consent, saying that time for dialogue will come after the site investigations will have been completed. This article explores the period of the failed dialogue with respect to how risks and uncertainties were treated in the negotiations. Drawing on two strands of scholarship on risk and uncertainty, the risk governance school and the STS perspectives on sociotechnical controversies, two paradigms for dealing with risk and uncertainty are outlined. These are used as a framework to analyse how implementers and local stakeholders articulated possible risk or uncertainty issues in negotiations about the Czech geological disposal between 2009 and 2013. The analysis shows that whereas the implementers adopt (sometimes even an extreme version of) the risk-based paradigm, the positions of the local stakeholders seem to be mixed. These observations lead to two conclusions: first, at the theoretical level, perhaps some of the STS literature was too quick to assume that people ‘want’ uncertainty. Second, at the practical level, it is suggested that in the light of the failed dialogue, it might be worth for the implementers to take a lesson from the uncertainty-based paradigm, and consider the possibility that perhaps still more work needs to be done in order to turn uncertainty into risk.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Marijke Hermans, Zdeněk Konopásek, Yannick Barthe and two anonymous reviewers for providing valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank all partners within the InSOTEC project for discussions that inspired writing this paper.
Notes
1. According to the Czech ‘Atomic Act’ passed in 1997, the state is responsible for radioactive waste management. The Act establishes the Radioactive Waste Repository Authority (SÚRAO) as an organisation implementing radioactive waste management policies. SÚRAO is subordinate to the Ministry of Industry and Trade. As will become apparent later in the text, at some moments of the negotiations, representatives of the Ministry came forward to speak instead of SÚRAO. Therefore, in this text the word ‘implementers’ is used to denote state authorities acting towards geological disposal implementation, where it makes no difference whether these are SÚRAO or the Ministry.
2. Moreover, scholars in science studies have introduced different variants of uncertainty, to account for its different possible ‘degrees’. For instance Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe (Citation2009) speak of ‘radical uncertainties’, whereas Wynne (Citation1992) speaks of ‘ignorance’ and ‘indeterminacy’ as different flavours of uncertainty.
3. At this point, the difference between the theoretical foundations of the two perspectives becomes apparent in the very notion of ‘constructivism’ – both of the paradigms have engaged with the issue of risk construction, but in completely different ways. Representatives of the risk-based paradigm have discussed the question whether risk is constructed or whether it is real, and they have arrived at the conclusion that it is both constructed and real, and therefore needs ‘a dual strategy for risk management’ (Klinke and Renn 2002, 1076). In contrast, in the uncertainty-based paradigm, the question whether risk constructed or real is irrelevant. Here, the important question is how it is constructed (de Vries, Verhoeven, and Boeckhout 2011, 490).
4. In a very similar manner, Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe conclude that ‘[R]isk is that which remains to be discussed once the work of exploration of technical and political uncertainties has been taken to its end’ (Citation2009, 228).
5. The 2015 deadline was moved to 2018 by a governmental resolution passed on 20 December 2012.
6. The following development is described in more detail in Konopásek and Svačina (Citation2014). For another overview, see Ďurďovič, Vajdová, and Bernardyová (Citation2014).
7. This promise was voiced at many events (e.g. public debates in Věžná on 12 April 2012, in Blatno on 25 October 2012, a seminar in the Senate of the Czech parliament on 24 April 2012, or the OECD-NEA Forum for Stakeholder Confidence in Karlovy Vary on 25 October 2012), and became widely known among the stakeholders.
8. Public meetings in Bukov and Věžná, 7 and 9 January 2013.
9. Meeting of the Working group, 12 March 2013.
10. Cf. Barthe (Citation2009) for a similar research strategy.
11. The same presentation was given during a number of other events, such as the Forum for Stakeholder Confidence in Karlovy Vary (24–26 October 2012).
12. The nuclear fund was established by the Atomic Act of 1997. It is established at the Czech National Bank, and supervised by the Ministry of Finance. All radioactive waste producers are obliged to contribute to this fund; the amount of the contributions was set by a governmental decree in 2002, and has not been changed since then. The nuclear fund is supposed to pay for all radioactive waste management as well as for decommissioning of nuclear reactors; therefore, also the operation of SÚRAO is financed from the nuclear fund.
13. This is apparent for example from SÚRAO annual reports 2010–2013.
14. It can be observed that due to the hypothetical location, a Strategic environmental assessment report would be more appropriate here. Nevertheless, perhaps due to the Czech legislation at the time of publication, the report is written as an EIA report, despite the lack of any site-specific information.
15. This observation supports Wynne’s argument that rather than ‘embracing uncertainties’, which is the conventional view, science in public ‘gives prominence to a restricted agenda of defined uncertainties.’ (Wynne Citation1992, 115).
16. Similar position has been characterised as that of ‘technologies of hubris’ (Jasanoff Citation2003).
17. Not only in the examples presented, but the author has not identified any such cases in the whole data-set.
18. It should be noted that trust in state institutions in the Czech Republic is very low, about 10% below the EU average (cf. e.g. Eurobarometer surveys available at http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/cf/index_en.cfm).
19. This article (Svejkovský Citation2012b) was probably written in response to an article called ‘Geological research: One-kilometre-deep drill is a matter of routine’ published in a SÚRAO leaflet (SÚRAO Citation2012).