Changing the System Culture: Mobilizing the Social Sciences in the Swedish Nuclear Waste System

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how competence in the humanities and social sciences has been introduced into the system culture of the Swedish nuclear waste system (SNWS) traditionally dominated by scientists and engineers. In the spring of 1980, fierce local protests were directed against drilling teams sent out to investigate the geology of potential locations for a repository of spent nuclear fuel. This demonstrated the political and ethical dimensions of the waste issue and the limitations of the technocratic approach that had hitherto dominated the system culture of the SNWS.

In order to counter this tendency, the government established an advisory board, Samrådsnämnden för kärnavfall (abbreviated KASAM), in 1985 with the task to widen the perspectives on the nuclear waste issue. KASAM engaged social scientists and humanists and started organizing annual workshops inviting engineers and scientists working with the waste issue to discuss its ethical and political dimensions. In the early 1990s, SKB, the Swedish implementer organization responsible for the management of nuclear waste, changed its strategy for finding suitable locations for a repository of spent nuclear fuel. Approval from the local population became a key condition. In the early 2000s, only two municipalities remained, both of them already housing nuclear power plants. After careful investigations and many deliberations, one of them was eventually chosen.

The combination of KASAM’s activities to broaden the discussion and the local protests in many communities initiated a gradual change of the system culture within the SNWS. The initial technocratic approach was broadened to encompass ethical, social, and political aspects, and the main organizations now acknowledge that not only technical and scientific skills but also competence from social science and the humanities were of essence.

Keywords:

• Nuclear waste system
• system culture
• social science competence
• local opposition
• advisory board

I. INTRODUCTION

Sweden and Finland are often looked at as models for nuclear waste management, and many countries attempt to follow their approaches. However, in order to emulate them, it is necessary to understand their nuclear waste systems in a broad sense including not only the technical solutions but also the organizational and institutional setups and the system culture. This paper—which deals with only Sweden, not Finland—focuses on how and why the system culture of the Swedish nuclear waste system (SNWS) gradually changed from the mid-1980s and onward by including competence from the humanities and social sciences.

Our analysis of the SNWS is inspired by Thomas P. Hughes, the historian of technology. In his book Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930 (1983), Hughes analyzes the establishment and development of electrical power systems in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Defining power systems as sociotechnical systems, consisting of both technical components and social institutions, he shows that the power systems in the three countries developed distinct styles due to differing geographical, political, managerial, and cultural characteristics. Furthermore, different system cultures developed based on the world views and values of their respective system builders, the most influential individuals and organizations designing and developing the systems (Ref. 1, pp. 15–17).

We believe that these concepts and in particular system culture are fruitful for analyzing the developments of the SNWS. To that end and to better understand changes within the Swedish system for managing nuclear waste, we will use them heuristically. However, it is not our ambition in this paper to further develop the concepts or theoretical frameworks used here.

In the late 1970s, a system for managing the Swedish nuclear waste was designed mainly by scientists and engineers. The system culture they imposed was fairly technocratic in the sense that the problems identified and the problems proposed relied on competence in science and engineering rather than humanities or social sciences. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze how and why this system culture gradually transformed from the mid-1980s onward and how this enabled the launch of an improved nuclear waste management program. We argue that this transformation was spurred by fierce local opposition to geological investigations of potential sites for a spent nuclear fuel repository, demonstrating the political and ethical dimensions of the waste issue and the limitations of a technocratic approach. Moreover, we argue that a transdisciplinary national advisory body to the Swedish government, introduced in the mid-1980s, was crucial for presenting perspectives from the humanities and social sciences to other actors in the system and to gradually make them aware of the advantages and values these contributions may contain. A central finding is that it is not enough to introduce complementary competence in the humanities and social sciences in one or a few nodes of the nuclear waste system. Instead, in order not to become a sidelined special interest, such knowledge needs to be acknowledged as important by all the main actors including implementers, regulators, local communities, and other stakeholders.

This paper presents a historical study based mainly on previous research as well as public sources such as government commissions, technical reports, evaluations, and newspaper articles. In general, our study confirms some of the insights produced by social scientists who have studied the management of spent nuclear fuel. Much of this research has dealt with public participation in radioactive waste management, especially when it comes to siting processes.^2–5 In addition, safety, retrievability, near- and long-term governance of repositories and managing the long term, not the least informing future generations about repositories, have been researched from the perspectives of the social sciences.^6,7 A conclusion has been that public participation has often been organized and implemented in a technocratic framing, more to seek confirmation of decisions made than to redefine or change them.^4,8–11

The focus of this paper is the Swedish case. However, a number of comparisons of national systems for nuclear waste management over the past 30 years have been conducted where the Swedish case is included.^5,12–16 These studies may enable future comparisons of the findings in this paper with experiences from other countries.

II. NUCLEAR WASTE BECOMES A POLITICAL ISSUE

In the early 1970s, there was a growing antinuclear movement in Sweden. One of its core arguments was that there was no solution for how to handle the spent nuclear fuel that was estimated to be harmful to humans due to the ionizing radiation it emits for about 10 000 years. As the reasoning went, it would thus be immoral to build and operate nuclear power plants (Ref. 17, pp. 39–41).

A government commission (the so-called AKA Committee, a Swedish acronym for Använt Kärnbränsle och radioaktivt Avfall) was appointed in 1973 to analyze the issue. In the United Kingdom, the influential Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution had been established in 1970 and published a nuclear report 6 years later where it was stated that there should be no large program for nuclear power until it had been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that the long-lived waste could be contained indefinitely (Ref. 3, p. 19). In Sweden, the AKA Committee published its final report in April the same year, in 1976. All five political parties in Parliament were represented among the Committee members, a group that also included scientists from the fields of radiobiology and industrial safety. In addition, affiliated experts of the AKA Committee represented the fields of geology, nuclear technology and physics, radiation protection, biology, and environmental protection. The final report became a blueprint for how future nuclear waste should be handled, including general principles for legislation, financing, and organization and the technical components of the system (Ref. 17, pp. 57–63, and Ref. 18, pp. 67–68) (Ref. 19).

The parliamentary elections in September 1976 led to the formation of a three-party coalition, with one party wanting to phase out nuclear power and two parties in favor of an expansion. A compromise was the adoption of a new law, the Nuclear Stipulation Act in May 1977. This Act stipulated that reactor owners had to demonstrate that they would be able to handle the spent fuel from their reactors with “absolute safety” to get permission to commission new reactors (Ref. 18, p. 77). This Act spurred the Swedish power companies to form a co-owned subsidiary company, SKB (the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company), with the task of pursuing an intensive research project to design a method for the final disposal of spent fuel—alternatively, of the high-level waste produced if the fuel was reprocessed. In the fall of 1978, SKB presented the result of its research: Nuclear Fuel Safety, Kärn Bränsle Säkerhet (abbreviated KBS in Swedish). It included two alternative methods, both including deep geological disposal: KBS-1 for reprocessed nuclear fuel and KBS-2 for nonreprocessed nuclear fuel. On March 27, 1979, the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate (SKI) approved the KBS methods and thus also the commissioning of additional Swedish reactors (Ref. 17, pp. 77–95, and Ref. 18, p. 91).

However, the commissioning of additional reactors had to wait for a year. The accident at Three Mile Island close to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, occurred the day after the approval of SKI thus, spurring antinuclear sentiments. This in turn led to a decision to hold a referendum on the future of nuclear power in March 1980. The final outcome was a kind of compromise when Parliament made a decision to use the reactors that were completed or under construction but to phase out nuclear power by 2010 (Ref. 17, pp. 95–101, and Ref. 18, pp. 92–94).

III. THE SNWS

In the first half of the 1980s, the principles for how to handle nuclear waste, which had been sketched out by the government AKA Committee in 1976, were gradually implemented.¹⁸ Here, we highlight five key components—both technical and social—of the SNWS. The first has to do with the organizational setup. The nuclear power plant owners established a joint company as an implementer, SKB, which is the key responsible entity for handling nuclear waste. Two existing state agencies, SKI and the Radiation Protection Institute (SSI), were given the task to regulate and control different aspects of SKB’s work. In addition, the Nuclear Fuel Agency (SKN) was established in 1981 with the assignment to conduct some complementary research, in addition to the research conducted by SKB, and to coordinate the monitoring and approval process of SKB’s research programs.

The second component is legislation. The Nuclear Stipulation Act of 1977 was in 1984 replaced by a new Act on Nuclear Activities, which clarified the responsibilities of the main actors involved. It is the task of the nuclear reactor owners (through SKB) to actually manage all the waste. This includes developing methods for final storage, then building the necessary facilities, and finally to actually storing all radioactive waste in these facilities in a safe way. The Act also clarifies the regulating and monitoring responsibilities of the government agencies and the principles for the financing of the waste facilities (Ref. 20, pp. 216–220).

A third component concerns financing. In 1981, the Swedish Parliament decided on the financing of the future costs for handling nuclear wastes. Every reactor owner has to pay a fee for every produced kilowatt hour to a state Nuclear Waste Fund in order to guarantee the financing of the future repository and other facilities necessary for managing the waste. This Fund provides the monetary support for SKB’s efforts. To receive payments, SKB has to present research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) programs for its activities every 3 years, and these programs have to be assessed by the regulating agencies and formally approved by the government (Ref. 20, pp. 220–222).

A fourth component is the design and construction of the various facilities needed. This is the task of SKB. It includes not only a spent fuel repository and a repository for long-lived low- and intermediate-level waste (SFL) but also a central interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel (Clab), a repository for short-lived radioactive waste (SFR) including low- and intermediate-level waste, and facilities for the transport of radioactive material. SKB started a research and development program encompassing all these aspects in 1977, and it has continued ever since. Two large research facilities have also been built: the Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory decided in 1988 and inaugurated in 1995 for testing deep rock caverns and the SKB Canister Laboratory for testing copper canisters in which the spent nuclear fuel is to be contained before being transported to and placed in the repository (Ref. 18, pp. 152–162).

A fifth component has to do with finding suitable locations for all the facilities and getting permissions from local, regional, and national authorities. This siting process started in 1980 with drilling teams sent to locations that seemed to have favorable geological conditions. These teams often met strong local opposition from environmental groups, and finding a suitable place where the population and the local politicians would be willing to host a repository turned out to be difficult (Ref. 18, pp. 109–171) (Ref. 21).

All of these five components interact, and there have been changes in all of them. For example, the ownership structure of the nuclear reactors has changed, which has affected the ownership of the SKB (Ref. 22). Some state agencies have merged. The legislation has been modified, and a new law, the Environmental Act from 1998, now also applies to nuclear waste facilities (Ref. 23, pp. 19–22; Ref. 24, pp. 292–302; Ref. 25, pp. 123–133) (Ref. 26). The designs of the various facilities have been modified, and in the mid-1980s, KBS-3 became the reference option for the final repository (Ref. 17, pp. 115–120) (Ref. 27). Moreover, the principles for finding suitable locations have changed (Ref. 18, pp. 143–215) (Refs. 9, 22, and 28). Despite all these changes and modifications, it is also important to stress that the SNWS has proved to contain a large measure of conservatism and momentum regarding its key characteristics.^29,30

IV. KASAM AND THE SYSTEM CULTURE OF THE SNWS

The first designers of the SNWS, its system builders, were the expert members of the AKA Committee. They were mainly engineers and scientists, and they were convinced that the SNWS ought to be created by people like themselves with expertise in geology, hydrology, radiation, materials science, engineering, and similar fields. From the very start the system culture of the SNWS thus became technocratic in the sense that it primarily relied on and promoted scientific and engineering competencies to establish safe management of nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel. As a result, SKB was mainly staffed by engineers and scientists and focused its research on studying geological and hydrological properties of deep rock formations; on chemical properties and long-term behavior of materials in the various barriers surrounding the nuclear waste, like bentonite and copper; and on technologies for building deep rock caverns, canisters, and other parts of the repository. Furthermore, they made risk assessments of potential leakage from the future waste facilities similar to those that utilities had been doing regarding nuclear power plants. Also, the government regulating agencies were dominated by engineers and scientists and thus largely shared a technocratic system culture with the implementer.

In the mid-1980s, a process started that gradually changed the technocratic character of this culture. In the following, we will analyze the key actors in this process and how they tried to bring about a change in the system culture.

In 1982, the Social Democrats won the parliamentary elections, and Birgitta Dahl became Minister of Energy and thus responsible for nuclear waste management. After some time in office, she felt that the responsible organizations for handling nuclear waste had too narrow an engineering perspective. One sign of this was SKB’s site selection process for a repository of spent nuclear fuel. The company sent out drilling teams without informing the local communities in advance resulting in local protest groups, which were able to gain support from the local population as well as from local politicians. These local groups soon formed a national network called the Waste Network, which engaged university geologists as counter experts that strongly questioned the intended design of the repository. The leading engineers in SKB were not good at handling this growing opposition (Ref. 17, pp. 102–108; Ref. 21, pp. 46–57; Ref. 28, pp. 19–20) (Ref. 31).

Fig. 1. Camilla Odhnoff (in the middle) appointed the first KASAM chair in 1985, visiting the Volvo assembly plant in Olofström during its inauguration in June 1991. (Source: Olofströms Kommun; http://bildarkiv.olofstrom.se/user?picture=3091, October 1, 2020.)

Dahl concluded that there was a need for a forum for wider discussions and reflections on the nuclear waste issue. In 1985, she decided to establish a small entity called Coordinating Council for Nuclear Waste Questions (Samrådsnämnden för kärnavfall, abbreviated KASAM), a national advisory body to the Swedish government. The purpose of KASAM was to bring in wider perspectives on nuclear waste, to inform the general public, and to create a forum for consultation between the various actors involved in the nuclear waste issue. With these assignments, it was to be a complement to the three then existing state authorities dealing with nuclear waste management, SKI, SSI, and SKN (Ref. 32, p. 11). KASAM consisted of a committee of academics and experts appointed by the government but without a permanent secretariat. This was a rare construct and an exceptional entity in the context of SNWS. It marked a departure from the previous technocratic styles of nuclear waste management. Dahl carefully chose Camilla Odhnoff as KASAM chair (see Fig. 1). Odhnoff had an unusually broad background with an early career as a university researcher in plant physiology followed by a career as a politician. In 1967, she was appointed minister for family, youth, and immigration in the government, and in 1974, she became governor in Blekinge County. In addition to Odhnoff, the KASAM committee consisted of experts in geology, hydrology, chemistry, radiation, etc., but also in social sciences and humanities. A theologian, Anne-Marie Thunberg, became a particularly influential committee member raising and discussing ethical questions connected to nuclear waste management.

KASAM and its successor from 1992, the Swedish National Council for Nuclear Waste, gradually developed into a nexus for the nuclear and social sciences, providing an arena where the “hard core” engineers and scientists could meet and discuss with experts in social sciences and humanities. It is thus an interesting organization from our point of view despite its small size and limited formal power. Nevertheless, we argue that it played a crucial role in transforming the dominant technocratic system culture within SNWS.

Formally, KASAM was to regularly publish state-of-the-art reports on different themes within radioactive waste management as well as to review the RD&D programs of SKB every 3 years (Ref. 33, p. 20). But, a more important instrument in KASAM’s toolbox for slowly transforming the SNWS system culture was the annual workshops that it organized on important topics during the 1980s and early 1990s. They had two categories of participants: on one hand, the KASAM committee members and leading representatives from regulators and implementers, that is, SKI, SSI, SKN, and SKB, and on the other hand, selected researchers from universities with expertise in the questions discussed at the respective workshop. A workshop titled “Ethics, Radioactive Waste and Uncertainty” was organized in 1987. A second workshop the following year dealt with the question “Are there definite answers: The scientific knowledge base for final disposal of spent nuclear fuel.” The third workshop in the spring of 1990 was titled “Decisions Under Uncertainty in Relation to the Nuclear Waste Issue.” At a fourth workshop, organized in 1992, decision makers from local communities and stakeholders were also invited (Ref. 32, pp. 16 and 20, and Ref. 33, pp. 20–22). These workshops, attracting some 40 to 50 participants each, were rigorously curated and lasted for 2 or 3 days, and the papers and discussions were published afterward in special reports.

Many of the participants of these seminars later on have emphasized their importance. For instance, Claes Thegerström, engineer and CEO of SKB 2003–2012, has stressed that at KASAM´s seminars, he and his colleagues “met other people than those that are part of the machinery and we have appreciated that a lot. It has broadened the view over this area […] and this has been very valuable for an organization like SKB” (Ref. 32, p. 81). The seminars contributed to a growing realization among leading actors within the SNWS that a technocratic approach to nuclear waste was not sufficient and that nontechnical questions were of utmost importance. Moreover, KASAM’s seminars provided opportunities for informal, unbiased discussions among people with different roles in the SNWS and for a gradual transformation of the system culture. However, this transformation was slow as the SNWS had acquired a sizable momentum, which is another concept introduced by Hughes to characterize processes in sociotechnical systems. The momentum of a system derives from the investments made in physical facilities, professional skills, and organizational structures, which make it increasingly difficult to change the direction in which the system develops. Both the implementing and regulating organizations would continue to be dominated by engineers and scientists with a predominantly technocratic perspective on the challenges involved when realizing a repository for spent nuclear fuel, but the activities of KASAM nevertheless contributed to a broader and more heterogeneous system culture of the SNWS.

V. SEARCHING FOR A LOCATION FOR THE FINAL REPOSITORY FOR SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL

In the early 1990s, several changes occurred in the nuclear waste system. By this time, a number of the key facilities had been completed and were operating. Clab, the central interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, was inaugurated in Oskarshamn in 1985, and SFR, the final repository for short-lived radioactive waste including low- and intermediate-level waste, was opened in Forsmark in 1988, both sites already hosting commercially operating nuclear power plants (Ref. 28, pp. 17–19). A purpose-built vessel, M/S Sigyn, had been delivered in 1982 for transporting nuclear fuel and waste between the nuclear power plants and the interim storage. SKB now focused on the final repository for spent nuclear fuel, primarily on its design and on finding a suitable location.

After the massive local opposition against test drillings in many municipalities in the early 1980s, SKB had stopped further drilling in the mid-1980s. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the company reorientated its strategy. Previously, it had tried to identify sites with solid bedrock without cracks through which water and hence radioactive material might reach to the surface. But, now, SKB started to underline that the rock itself was not the single most important barrier but that the other components in a repository, i.e., the copper canisters containing the spent nuclear fuel and surrounded by bentonite clay, were also crucial parts of a multiple-barrier system (Ref. 34, p. 412, and Ref. 35, p. 11). In addition, and as STS scholar Göran Sundqvist has shown, this reorientation meant that it was no longer necessary to search for the best possible geological location in the whole country but that the geology in large parts of the country was sufficiently good. Other factors, like the attitude of the local population and the availability of suitable transport and infrastructure facilities, had become as important as geology.¹⁸

In the fall of 1992, SKB sent a letter to all 286 Swedish municipalities asking whether they were interested in a prestudy of a repository starting with test drillings. SKB emphasized that the process would be based on voluntariness and that no municipality would be forced to accept spent fuel against its will. Eight municipalities in northern Sweden responded positively, and two of these were chosen by SKB for prestudies, Storuman and Malå (Ref. 18, pp. 186–210, and Ref. 28, p. 27). These municipalities had high unemployment figures, and a future repository, estimated to generate 350 jobs during 50 years, seemed an attractive option to local politicians. Existing geological data from previous prospecting for potential mining activities were analyzed in detail, and other conditions were also assessed. SKB came to the conclusion that both places could be suitable for a repository. However, opposition had emerged in both communities and grown strong enough to make politicians organize local referenda, in Storuman in 1995 and in Malå in 1997. In both cases, a clear majority voted against a future repository (Ref. 18, pp. 187–190, and Ref. 28, pp. 28–29) (Refs. 36, 37, and 38).

These events demonstrated that SKB needed political skills when discussing with representatives for the municipalities. Thus, in 1997 SKB appointed a new CEO with a nonengineering background, Peter Nygårds, an economist with ample political experience as former deputy minister in the Ministry of Industry and Commerce. Now, SKB once again reorientated itself to focus on municipalities that were already hosts to commercial nuclear power plants (Ref. 28, p. 31). Preliminary studies indicated that two of these, Östhammar (where Forsmark is located) and Oskarshamn, had the best conditions with inhabitants who were accustomed to living near nuclear facilities and with suitable infrastructure. In 2002, more thorough studies of these two municipalities commenced, including test drillings to investigate if the host rock was of acceptable quality for holding a repository of spent nuclear fuel (Ref. 28, pp. 49–50).

The ensuing process was very different from previous attempts. Instead of dealing with reluctant local stakeholders, SKB now engaged with local opinion groups and individuals who were generally favorable to the idea of their municipality hosting a facility. In the following decade, something of a beauty contest evolved, and local politicians in both municipalities tried to convince SKB about the advantages of their own municipality. SKB arranged a number of meetings and consultations with local stakeholders in both places to inform them about how the repository would be built. In this process, KASAM also played a role in helping to improve transparency (Ref. 26, pp. 984–985). After a long evaluation process, SKB reached the conclusion in 2009 that Östhammar would be the best place for the repository for spent nuclear fuel. The company simultaneously decided that the future encapsulation plant for spent fuel would be located next to the existing central interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, Clab, in Oskarshamn.²²

Some years later, accusations surfaced in the press that the process involved unethical elements. After initiatives from the two municipalities in 2007, the company signed contracts with Oskarshamn and Östhammar in which it declared that SEK 2 billion would be invested in activities of mutual interest. Of this sum, SEK 1.5 billion would be paid to the municipality that would not be chosen as the site for a spent nuclear fuel repository as remuneration for expenditures during the process and to boost growth in the local community. The rest, SEK 500 million, would be paid to the municipality where the site would be proposed in SKB’s license application. The municipalities themselves would have full control of how the transferred sums were used, for instance, on entrepreneurship programs in schools, an example mentioned in the press.³⁹ This later proved to also include salary costs for the municipal director for industrial relations in Östhammar and other related items such as participation in a real estate and property market event in Cannes, France.^40–42 An individual citizen of Östhammar as well as the Swedish Anti-Nuclear Movement filed a report to the police regarding bribery, but the investigation was soon closed by the prosecutor of the National Anti-Corruption Unit at the Swedish Prosecution Authority.^43–45 By then, the mayor of Östhammar and the leaders of the local political opposition had already come together in order to defend the contract with SKB in an opinion piece arguing that it boosted local development plans without interfering with decision making.⁴⁶ The occurrence still shows how a number of factors were involved behind local decisions made regarding sites for the management of spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste.

VI. SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE SITING OF A REPOSITORY

The difficulties SKB experienced in the 1990s of finding a willing host for a repository for spent fuel also made the government agencies realize the importance of this issue. The future municipalities that were to be chosen would be involved in the approval and decision process, but it was not quite clear how decision procedures were to be implemented given the fact that several different laws were applicable. SKI therefore initiated a project in 1990 called the Swedish DIALOGUE-Project in cooperation with Staffan Westerlund, professor of environmental law at Uppsala University, aiming to establish a decision procedure in which all the main actors would have trust. In hindsight, the project can be seen as a milestone when it comes to involving social sciences in the SNWS, its importance further boosted by the fact that it was hosted by SKI. The DIALOGUE-Project was organized as a game in which 14 participants, some representing municipalities, some SKI and SSI, and some environmental organizations, were to review a fictitious application for a repository. The project led to several suggestions for changes in the future decision procedures.^47,48

KASAM continued to organize workshops but broadened the range of participants from 1992 by inviting leading local politicians from the municipalities of Oskarshamn and Östhammar (hosting Clab and SFR, respectively) and representatives from an antinuclear environmental organization. This meant that the number of participants increased to between 60 and 100. In 1992, a workshop dealt with “Acceptance, Tolerance and Participation,” and in 1994 the topic was “Nuclear Waste and the Environment,” focusing on how an Environmental Impact Assessment of a repository could be designed. In 1997, after the two local referenda had been held in Malå and Storuman, a workshop with the title “Nuclear Waste and Decision” was organized on the fitting theme of decision procedures. At this workshop, the procedures in Finland and France were presented as a backdrop (Ref. 33, pp. 22–23).

These workshops broadened the scope of issues discussed and the range of competencies of invited experts with a growing emphasis on political science, legal issues, and sociology. KASAM also began to explicitly argue for more social science research in the nuclear waste domain. There had in fact been some social science research funded by SKN in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but it was of a fairly limited scope and mainly addressed issues like risk perception and risk acceptance. This came to an end when SKN was closed down in 1992. In 2002, KASAM proposed to the government that a research program on nuclear waste issues with a focus on social science and humanities should be started. The suggested program was to address problems related to the ongoing search for a site for the final repository such as the following questions (Ref. 33, pp. 25–26). How should the local decision process be framed? What will be the role of mass media? Are there needs for changes in the legal procedures? What kind of effects would a repository have on the local job market and the municipal economy? Who is responsible in the long run for a repository after closure?

KASAM discussed two alternatives for the organization of such a research program. One option was to make SKB responsible for it in congruence with research oriented toward the sciences and engineering. KASAM, however, argued against this model because “the issues that social sciences and humanities address […] are not of immediate relevance for SKB’s ability to solve its main task as are the technical and scientific issues” (Ref. 33, p. 26). Moreover, it emphasized that the social sciences are relevant for the various public authorities involved in the decision-making process. The second alternative, which KASAM did advocate, was to give the responsibility for the research program to institutions that are independent of SKB, for example, KASAM itself. KASAM further recommended that the program be of the order of about SEK 10 million/year and continue until SKB had received all the permits to start building the final repository. SKB opposed KASAM’s proposal and argued that it should be responsible for social science research on nuclear waste according to the 1984 Act on Nuclear Activities, which gave SKB the responsibility for research and development, while the task of government agencies was to review SKB’s activities and future plans.

SKB won the struggle regarding the organization of the research program for social science and humanities. The government did not provide KASAM with funding. Instead, SKB prepared a social science research program as part of its general RD&D program financed by the Nuclear Waste Fund. SKB invited potential researchers as well as representatives for SKI, SSI, and the municipalities of Oskarshamn and Östhammar to two workshops in 2002 and 2003 with the purpose to identify important areas for social science research. Four such areas were formulated: socioeconomic effects, governance, psychosocial effects, and societal change at large. A research board with three independent university researchers was established with the task to formulate research issues and assess research applications (Ref. 33, pp. 27–29).

SKB sent out a call for research proposals in the spring of 2004, and by the end of the year, eight research projects had been granted funding by the research board. In the following 5 years, new calls for proposals were made, and in total, SKB funded 18 projects between 2004 and 2011 involving prominent scholars from political science, sociology, economics, law, philosophy, and history.⁴⁹ SKB furthermore emphasized the dissemination of the results. All projects were obliged to present reports in Swedish, and annual workshops were organized with participation by all scientists involved as well as representatives from SKB, regulators, municipalities, and other stakeholders (Ref. 33, pp. 33–42). The research program was terminated in 2011, mainly because SKB in the spring of that year submitted a formal license application for both a repository for spent nuclear fuel to be constructed in Forsmark, in the municipality of Östhammar, and an encapsulation facility in Oskarshamn. This submission started a very complex licensing process, which still has not been determined.

VII. THE LICENSE APPLICATION PROCEDURE

SKB’s voluminous license application had to be examined according to both the Act on Nuclear Activities from 1984 and the Environmental Act from 1998. In 2008, SKI and SSI had been amalgamated into one regulating agency, the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, SSM, and it was the task of SSM to coordinate the review according to the former act while it was the task of the Land and Environment Court to examine it according to the latter act. This court, which was established when the new Environmental Act had been adopted, was not made up of nuclear experts but of experts in environmental law. Several other parties, such as the two municipalities, regional authorities, government agencies, the academic world, and civil society, were to provide SSM and the court with their opinions.

The review by the SSM was an internal affair conducted by its experts without much transparency while the Land and Environmental Court organized a 5-week-long hearing in the fall of 2017. During the hearing, SKB presented a number of aspects of the application, and different stakeholders were invited to air their opinions, including representatives of environmental organizations and academic experts. In 2004, two environmental organizations focusing on the nuclear waste issue had been established, MKG, the Swedish NGO Office for Nuclear Waste Review (Miljöorganisationernas kärnavfallsgranskning), and Milkas, the Swedish Environmental Movement’s Nuclear Waste Secretariat (Miljörörelsens kärnavfallssekretariat), both receiving economic support from the Nuclear Waste Fund. In the 1980s and 1990s, the environmental movement, for example, the Waste Network, had mainly consulted expertise in geology and engineering and thus in a way adopted the technocratic system culture of the SNSW, although they strongly questioned the KBS-3 design. During the licensing process and the court hearing, particularly MKG had broadened its approach, for instance, by also engaging a spokesperson with expertise in environmental law.

In addition, academic experts have played an active part in the hearing. Many university researchers, i.e., geologists, hydrologists, chemists, etc., were involved in the preparations of SKB’s license application, and many social scientists were involved indirectly through the social science program. However, some critical scientists have chosen to stay independent from SKB’s funding. An especially profiled group of corrosion researchers at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology has been doing studies of copper canisters, arguing that the speed of corrosion will significantly exceed the rate estimated by SKB in its license application and that the license application thus needs to be complemented or the design of the canisters altered.

The hearing organized by the Land and Environmental Court was closely followed by mass media making the licensing process more public. On the last day of hearings, all stakeholders expressed their appreciation of the process. In fact, each and every speaker thanked the court for a well-organized and transparent process.

In January 2018, both SSM and the Land and Environmental Court sent their respective reviews to the government. SSM approved SKB’s license application, while the environmental court demanded some clarifications. For instance, it stated that SKB had not convincingly demonstrated the durability of the copper canister and that a further clarification from SKB was needed. In addition, the court called for a more thorough description of the long-term responsibility for the repository after closure. After SKB submitted further investigations of copper corrosion and new review rounds were carried out, the license application is now under review by the Swedish government. Both proponents and opponents of the repository are waiting for a government decision.

VIII. HAS THE SYSTEM CULTURE OF THE SNWS CHANGED?

Let us now return to the question posed at the beginning of this paper: Has the system culture of the SNWS changed since the 1970s when it came into being, and if so, how and why? We claim that it indeed has changed and that the narrow technocratic approach in the early years has gradually been broadened. The experts of the AKA Committee in the mid-1970s were engineers and scientists, believing that the building of a system for nuclear waste was primarily a technical and scientific challenge. This technocratic approach was first challenged by an external factor: the strong local opposition that SKB met in the early 1980s when the company started geological investigations in different potential sites for a spent nuclear fuel repository. This clarified the contested nature of the waste issue and spurred Minister of Energy Dahl to establish KASAM in 1985. KASAM became an internal force for change within the SNWS initiating a process in which also scholars in humanities and social sciences were engaged in serious analyses and deliberations regarding the management of nuclear waste in Sweden. An important instrument applied by KASAM to influence the key actors in the SNWS—the management of SKB, SKI, and SSI—was the organization of recurrent workshops to which they were invited and where they could discuss ethical, political, sociological, legal, and other aspects of nuclear waste management.

The opposition from local communities made SKB realize that finding a suitable place for a repository was not only a geological and technical issue but also a political one.¹⁸ It changed its strategy for finding a suitable location in the early 1990s, making approval from the local population a key condition. In the early 2000s, only two municipalities remained, both of them already housing nuclear power plants, and SKB started a process of deliberations and consultations with local stakeholders in both places. When SKB furthermore launched its social science research program in 2004, it addressed a number of issues in which SKB lacked competence and wanted more knowledge about.

In parallel, the regulators, SSI and SKI, began to broaden their perspectives, partly due to the workshops organized by KASAM. In the early 1990s, SKI became involved in the issue of finding a location for the repository, and the director, Lars Högberg, initiated the DIALOGUE-Project aiming to improve the future license application review process. Thus, the management of these organizations often enough seem to have realized the importance of nontechnical issues. The new Environmental Law in 1998 and the creation of the Land and Environmental Court would also contribute to a more open and transparent license application process in which more voices were heard.

KASAM, which changed its name to the Swedish National Council for Nuclear Waste in 2007, has continued its work as an advisory body to the government in nuclear waste issues, closely following the work of SKB. The Council continues to stimulate discussions on such issues with recurrent workshops involving transdisciplinary perspectives. Moreover, other stakeholders have also broadened their perspectives. The Nuclear Waste Fund has funded two environmental organizations, MKG and Milkas, which have been able to establish permanent secretariats. Both organizations have critically followed SKB’s plans and activities and have participated in the court hearings concerning SKB’s license application. Besides geological and technical expertise, they have also used social science expertise in their critique. Finally, the research program of SKB between 2004 and 2010 spurred many academic social science researchers throughout the country to acquire competence in issues related to the management of nuclear waste, which could be used by the organizations of the SNWS.

There are thus many signs that the system culture in the SNWS has indeed broadened as a result of a combination of external pressures in the form of local opposition and of internal pressure mainly from KASAM. But, there are also instances of divergent developments, implying that a system culture consisting of experts from a broad range of disciplines and fields of competence still lies far ahead. For instance, the license application submitted by SKB in 2011 focused on scientific and engineering challenges while organizational and other relevant topics demanding complementary competencies were largely absent, something pointed out by some of the reviewing bodies. Moreover, changes within an organizational culture can easily “snap back,” for example, when a new leadership is appointed. This seems to have happened within SKB after a new CEO was appointed in 2012. Four years later, SSM made an inspection concerning the safety management of SKB. The inspection report was very critical:

SSM deems that there are clear signs of deficiencies in the openness of the organization. The directors of SKB do not actively ask for diverging opinions and alternative perspectives. The leadership has shown behavior that does not encourage open and frank deliberations that support independent opinions. Employees signal that the working climate lately has transformed, that employees have become silent and do not to the same extent raise issues that are of importance for the safety.⁵⁰

The findings of the report indicated that the organizational culture within SKB had become less open-minded and more technocratic. Four months after the publication of this report, the CEO of SKB was replaced on short notice. Although no official reasons for the replacement were given, the critique from SSM may in practice have played a role.⁵¹

To sum up, the case of Sweden shows that competence in the humanities and social sciences can indeed be introduced into the sociotechnical system for the management of nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel and contribute to a change of the system culture of the national nuclear waste system. In the Swedish case, the establishment of a government advisory board that was able to form an arena for extensive deliberations and reflections on different challenges with broad participation from researchers, implementers, regulators, and later also municipalities and other stakeholders proved to be a success factor. However, the large majority of people working in the SNWS still have a background in technology and natural sciences, implying that the change in the system culture described here needs further consolidation in the future, especially after approval of a license application. More social scientists and humanists need to be recruited, and engineers and natural scientists should get further training to broaden their perspectives.

Our study has dealt only with Sweden. We have not made any comparisons with other countries, nor have we tried to uncover the influence from other countries or international organizations like the Nuclear Energy Agency within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. We hope that our study will inspire colleagues in other countries to make similar studies of the system culture of their nuclear waste systems, which would enable comparative and transnational studies in the future.

Acknowledgments

Thomas Kaiserfeld is a member of The Swedish National Council for Nuclear Waste. The authors wish to thank three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.