The role of long-term planning in nuclear waste governance

Abstract

A central challenge in nuclear waste governance is the long time frame over which institutional control of the waste is needed. Most countries favour some kind of underground storage of the high-level wastes, but have not proceeded far with the implementation, yet. Even in Finland, the first country in which an operating licence for a specific disposal site has been issued, closure of the repository is foreseen for the 2120s. This means that several generations of professionals and citizens will have to deal with the waste and related risks. Scientific knowledge as well as preferences will change over time. Thus, a central question for responsible nuclear waste management is to think about how political decision-makers, public administration, industry and the interested public can co-design a governance process over such a long period of time. With this paper we intend to open the debate on those questions by providing a first problem description.

Keywords:

• Governance
• monitoring
• radioactive waste management
• public planning
• technology assessment
• long-term stewardship

Notes

1. The work presented here is part of the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis’ (ITAS) work package within the project ENTRIA (‘Disposal options for radioactive residues: Interdisciplinary analyses and development of evaluation principles’ (www.entria.de)) funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (15S9082D). The aim of the research project ENTRIA is to compare the advantages and disadvantages of those two options, as well as long-term surface storage, in radioactive waste management and to discuss them also in their social, juridical and philosophical contexts. The original version of this paper has been presented at the PACITA 2015 conference and a short version has been published in the conference proceedings. The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewer, the commentators at the conference and within ENTRIA as well as Elske Bechthold (ITAS at KIT) for support in finishing it.

2. MoDeRn explains the frameworks for monitoring in different international contexts, but does not consider decision-making processes in a satisfying way. They have a clear idea about the steering role of ‘disposal process management decisions’ as well as sketch the relevance of regulations on the one hand and expectations of experts and lay persons on the other, but do not reflect what types of complicated situations can occur over time (MoDeRn 2011, 13–27). Buser (2013) discusses the current debate on human intrusion and marking repository sites. He concludes that there are still several open questions.

3. The basis are several expert interviews with key stakeholders in both countries that were carried through in the context of ENTRIA as well as the empirical work for Kuppler (2017).

4. See SFOE (2008) and SFOE (2011).

5. For a general description of the Swiss history and current status of nuclear waste management see Hocke and Kuppler (2015) and Hadermann, Issler, and Zurkinden (2014).

6. They for example adjusted the schedule several times, also due to requests from the participatory bodies to receive more time to complete their assigned task.

7. See www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bundesrecht/standag/gesamt.pdf (downloaded 19.11.2015). For a general description of the German history and current status of nuclear waste management see Hocke and Kallenbach-Herbert (2015).

8. For institutional stewardship as a concept see also LaPorte (2004, 3–8); Tonn (2001, 267–269) evaluates six institutional designs including a non-profit stewardship organization and local community organizations.

9. E.g. US Department of Energy (1999).

10. Regardless their good intentions, it is an open question whether the federal company for radioactive waste disposal (BGE) as a new implementer in the German process is a learning institution. The staff was mainly recruited from the Federal Office of Radiological Protection (BfS) and the ‘Deutsche Gesellschaft zum Bau und Betrieb von Endlagern für Abfallstoffe’ (DBE).

11. For an overview of the historical development and technical aspects of Asse II see e.g. Möller (2016), Kallenbach-Herbert (2016) and Metz (2016).

12. Scharpf (1999, 6) distinguishes between two types of legitimacy: ‘Input-oriented democratic thought emphasizes “government by the people”. Political choices are legitimate if and because they reflect the “will of the people” – that is, if they can be derived from the authentic preferences of the members of a community. By contrast, the output perspective emphasizes “government for the people”. Here, political choices are legitimate if and because they effectively promote the common welfare of the constituency in question’ (Highlights in original).

13. Retrievability means that the waste can be retrieved from the repository if necessary. A precondition for this is that the waste is in a state in which it can still be handled. A repository with retrievability will be open for longer time span than a repository without (ESK 2011). For the concepts of retrievability see Stahlmann, Leon-Vargas, and Mintzlaff (2014) and NEA (2014).

14. During the operation phase, the underground repository is built and the waste is deposited. ‘Closure’ refers to the period in which parts of the repository or the whole repository are sealed in a way that is supposed to ensure safety and security of the waste for the intended lifetime of the repository (e.g. in Germany: 1 Mio years). In the post-closure period, the repository has been fully sealed and marked. It cannot be accessed any longer.

15. The above-ground option is excluded in this chapter as the natural environment of such a type of facility is much more complex than for underground repositories and therefore the stewardship is more challenging.

16. We do not take into consideration intrusion in this paper, independent from it being intended or unintended. As Buser strengthens, the debate on marking a repository has special relevance for this debate (Buser 2013).

17. This type of institution can also be described as a ‘boundary organization’ as classified by Hoppe, Wesselink, and Cairns (2013, 283–286). This term highlights the necessity for coproduction of knowledge and decisions for action in long-term governance. Another necessity is not reflected in this term, though: different subsystems have to be integrated in the process of coproduction. These are e.g. economy, policy and science – each with different types of knowledge and their own reference systems. The term ‘hybrid organization’ highlights this necessity. Practically, this means that the stewardship institution must employ an in-house team of professionals, which is used to work with the codes and standards of these different subsystems and which has to have the competence to develop intermediary reflection and coproductive action.