Demonstrating safety – validating new build: the enduring template of Swedish nuclear waste management

Abstract

Since the 1970s, the template for Swedish nuclear waste management has been for industry to deliver “nuclear fuel safety” after first demonstrating to government authority how and where it can be achieved. In other words, nuclear fuel safety has been something to be publicly witnessed before it is decided whether or not industry should be allowed to carry on implementing its plans. From the outset, these industry plans encompassed the completion of the Swedish nuclear power programme itself, as this was made contingent upon a demonstrated solution to the waste problem. However, after a national referendum on the future of nuclear power in 1980, industrial progress in nuclear fuel safety became directly connected with a safe phase out of a 12-reactor programme within 25 years of its completion. As plans for such a phase out have in turn grown subject to indefinite postponement, and as opposition to nuclear power has progressively mellowed, so the nuclear industry's highly resilient nuclear fuel safety programme appears set again today to validate nuclear new build both at home and abroad. Drawing on studies of three specific management tools – safety analyses, EIA consultations and alternative “dialogue projects” – this article seeks to chart the unremitting and indomitable Swedish commitment to the mediation of nuclear waste management through industrial demonstration as this has withstood various attempts to introduce a greater element of public dialogue into the policy process in response to both siting conflicts and new environmental legislation.

Keywords:

• nuclear waste
• Sweden
• safety
• mediation
• demonstration
• dialogue

1. Introduction

The link between nuclear waste management and the political and environmental sustainability of nuclear power is well-established in Sweden. It dates back to the 1970s when new government legislation was introduced making the completion of a nuclear power programme dependent upon the immediate provision of a demonstrable safe long-term solution to the nuclear waste problem. This legislation was framed in such a way that no confusion could exist over who was responsible for the safe handling and disposal of nuclear waste, or what a failure to show sufficient skill and dedication in achieving this objective would result in. The Swedish reactor owners were given no choice: either they must make nuclear waste management part of their core business, or they must expect the future of nuclear power generation in Sweden to be short-lived (Sundqvist 2002).

In the face of merciless legislative demands, the proposed long-term nuclear waste management solution that the Swedish reactor owners jointly devised after 9 months intensive research in 1977 was christened “KärnBränsleSäkerhet” – KBS, which translates into English as “Nuclear Fuel Safety”. Although widely recognized today as coinciding with a well-established concept, or technical blueprint, for the geological disposal of spent nuclear fuel, the intention in this article is to address the Swedish quest for “nuclear fuel safety” as always having implied something decidedly more than this. We wish to argue that the industry-run KBS programme has, as was patently clear at the outset, always been concerned with validating nuclear power generation on Swedish soil through persuasive industrial demonstrations of the practical attainability of “nuclear fuel safety”.

What does it mean for the activity of nuclear waste management when it is organized as a means to demonstrate the practical attainability of “nuclear fuel safety”? As shall be argued in this article, an overriding institutional focus on mediating nuclear waste management through industrial demonstration leaves little space for open discussion and broader involvement in the design of nuclear waste policy solutions. Such discussion and involvement are encouraged now in Sweden after the introduction of the Environmental Code in 1999 (Soneryd 2002). However, due to the overriding influence of the earlier Act on Nuclear Activities from 1984 over the conduct of Swedish nuclear waste management, the concern with industrially demonstrating nuclear fuel safety continues to dominate. Nuclear waste management as the pursuit of nuclear fuel safety is not something to publicly discuss in Sweden so much as publicly observe. Therefore, the challenge of expanding public participation in Swedish nuclear waste management in line with new environmental legislation has been first addressed as a challenge of enlarging and securing an appreciative public audience for ready-made industrial solutions. Although the relative success of nuclear waste management in Sweden compared to other countries has tended to be associated with a highly robust technical concept for the geological disposal of spent fuel, we wish to argue that this success should rather be ascribed to the surprising robustness of a particular way of publicly mediating the practical attainability of nuclear fuel safety through demonstration. This is a process of mediation whose lasting strength has depended upon the long-term ability of the industry body SKB (Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Co.) – the company jointly owned by the nuclear industry – to skillfully enlarge the captive audience for its programme of nuclear fuel safety from a group of government regulators to a collection of “local stakeholders” deriving from two municipal authorities hosting a significant proportion of Sweden's nuclear activities.

Historically-speaking, the Swedish nuclear industry's ability to demonstrate “nuclear fuel safety” within practical reach was crucial for the completion of a nuclear programme of 12 reactors after 1977. However, in the aftermath of the 1980 national referendum on nuclear power, a phase-out of these reactors was planned by 2010 (Sundqvist 2002). Therefore, during the 1980s, it seemed as if the persuasive demonstration of attainable nuclear fuel safety had led to little more than a pyrrhic victory for a Swedish nuclear industry given only 25 years to live. However, in June 2010 a new Parliamentary decision on nuclear new build was taken allowing for the replacement of old nuclear power plants on existing sites reversing the 1980 decision. Effectively divorced from a planned phase-out of nuclear power in Sweden, the KBS project today can be viewed as serving as a global demonstration of the practical manageability of nuclear waste management. By having perennially demonstrated nuclear fuel safety practically within our reach for so long, the KBS programme controlled jointly today by Vattenfall, E.on and Fortum, assumes a new significance as a harbinger of a politically and environmentally sustainable nuclear renaissance.

In this article we shall focus on three specific waste management tools – safety analyses, EIA consultations and alternative “dialogue projects” – in order to chart the unremitting Swedish commitment to the mediation of nuclear waste management through industrial demonstration. Safety analyses have been the cornerstone of Swedish nuclear waste management as a historical mission of industrial demonstration. Therefore, in the next section (2) we shall address three central safety analyses that SKB has produced since the initiation of the KBS programme. In the following section (3), we turn to the public consultations co-ordinated by SKB in compliance with environmental legislation introduced in the 1990s. Here, we seek to show how the dialogic potential of these consultations is limited as SKB predominantly uses these meetings to further demonstrate and inform upon the strengths and virtues of the waste management solutions they are proposing. In the next section (4), we discuss several “dialogue projects” initiated by actors other than SKB with the intention of moderating the overriding focus on the public mediation of nuclear waste management through industrial demonstration. Here, we wish to argue that these alternative dialogue projects have not so much challenged the KBS programme as helped to safeguard it from more serious forms of public criticism. In conclusion, we provide a summary of arguments combined with further reflections concerning the tentative reconnection of the KBS programme with nuclear new build today, both at home and abroad.

2 SKB's safety analyses: the core of mediation through demonstration

Demonstrations attempt to impress directly upon the mind's eye of their audiences, reducing the need for further discussion and dialogue. Mediation through demonstration is about showing, displaying and pointing out things. Andrew Barry (2001; see also Shapin 1984; Collins 1988; Elam et al. 2009) talks of demonstrations as both sights and sites of truth. Demonstrations can be events to be witnessed by smaller or larger publics; they are typically directed at, and intended to hail, a particular assenting audience. Thus, an arm's length division between demonstrator and audience is a constitutive feature of this form of public communication. This division is also hierarchical, as demonstrators are either attempting to point things out to a laity, or trying to prove something to a panel of judges. The role of the audience is limited to witnessing demonstrations and to reacting to what they are being shown.

The Nuclear Power Stipulation Act, passed by the Swedish Parliament in 1977, made the completion of a nuclear power programme contingent upon demonstrated progress in nuclear waste management; a field of endeavour the nuclear industry rechristened “nuclear fuel safety” (KBS). 1 What this Act did was to serve the nascent nuclear industry with a combined political and technical ultimatum: either it is shown how and where nuclear waste can be finally disposed of with absolute safety, or the fuelling of further reactors will not be permitted (SFS 1977; Sundqvist 2002: ch. 4). Thus, Swedish nuclear waste management can be viewed as a precursor of new institutional arrangements, which for example, replace direct state control with indirect regulated control (Hood 1991). Continuous progress in nuclear waste management is something ordered and overseen by state authority after 1977 and compliantly delivered by the nuclear industry itself.

In what follows three particular SKB safety analyses evidencing progress in waste management are presented and analysed, each of them carried out at critical junctures in the Swedish nuclear waste management process. First, the KBS safety analysis, presented in 1977 in direct response to the requirements of the Nuclear Power Stipulation Act. As such it became a strategic tool for gaining permission to fuel nuclear reactors already under construction. Second, the safety analysis SKB 91 that was presented in 1992 when SKB formulated a new siting strategy after the company had met strong resistance in their efforts to find the best bedrock conditions for geological disposal of spent fuel. Third, the safety analysis SR-Can presented by SKB in 2006 as a dress rehearsal for the coming SR-site safety analysis that will become a vital part of the final application, due to be sent to the government at the end of 2010, for the licensing of a final repository for spent fuel. In the following we focus on these three studies, their foundations and how they have been carried out, discussed and communicated.

Safety analyses, as they have been developed in Sweden and elsewhere, are characteristically divided into three parts (cf. Swedish National Council for Nuclear Waste 2007a: p. 12): Safety requirements – norms and criteria – are specified usually following standards set by domestic and international authorities. The Descriptions of the features of the barriers and the processes and events influencing these features are specified. Finally, calculations are provided offering a picture of what will happen to the waste facility over time.

Carried out in 1976 and 1977, the KBS safety analysis brought together around 450 scientists and technicians. This expert group was recruited in order to produce an irreproachable waste management solution connected to the Swedish nuclear power programme. In answer to the new legislation, the aim was to present nothing less than an absolutely safe solution. The radiation protection criterion to be satisfied was set at a maximum dose rate of 10 millirem per person per year for the most exposed group of people (see SSI review in DsI 1978b; cf. KBS 1977: p. 11). The features of the different barriers are described in detail and various failures are presented based on specific assumptions. In relation to the canister, two main cases are analysed, based on specific assumptions regarding the features of this barrier: (i) initial damage to one canister – counted as a total lack of protection – and (ii) encapsulation break through after 1,000 years for all canisters. The transportation of groundwater from the repository to the biosphere is set to 400 years, and retardation for different nuclides is specified (KBS 1977: pp. 84–99).

The main conclusion drawn on the basis of calculations is that the most severe case – a drilled well for drinking water close to the repository – implies an individual dose of 0.4 rem during 30 years, which will not happen during the first 200,000 years (KBS 1977: p. 108). The last sentence in the safety analysis report concludes that “the proposed method for the final disposal of vitrified high-level nuclear waste is considered absolutely safe” (KBS 1977: p. 109).

The safety analysis SKB 91, was presented in 1992 in support of a new siting strategy toning down the importance of bedrock conditions. In 1985 SKB's programme of geo-scientific investigations had been cancelled as public protests against test drillings escalated. Matters had come to a head when SKB called in the police to remove demonstrators from a drilling site near Uppsala and the ensuing confrontations received widespread publicity. Thereafter, the Minister for the Environment, actually living in Uppsala, a university city north of Stockholm, announced that SKB should refrain from using the police to protect its investigations (Holmstrand 2001: 29; Anshelm 2006: p. 107). In this context, the SKB 91 analysis was vital for justifying a more flexible view on bedrock conditions and opening the way for what could be advertised as a voluntary siting process.

However, as in the case of the KBS safety analysis, the SKB 91 analysis did not allow for any extended discussion of the processes, events, reference cases or alternatives calculated. It is not clear from the report how the reference case was selected. Moreover, the canister defects calculated for in the KBS safety analysis are very different from the ones in SKB 91. In the KBS analysis the defect is assumed to mean a total lack of encapsulation, while in SKB 91 the assumption is a hole of 5 mm 2 (SKB 1992b: p. 8). It is hard to understand how the assumptions and selection of reference case alternatives have been chosen.

In SKB 91, geological factors are only deemed of importance during construction when the repository is locally adapted to the surroundings (SKB 1992a: p. 40). SKB explicitly objects to demands for a geologically driven site selection procedure (SKB 1992b: p. 17). A more flexible view on the choice of site is argued for allowing for the adoption of a radically new site selection process for a geological repository.

The safety analysis SR-Can presented by SKB in 2006 was first planned to be a safety analysis concentrating on the canister for disposal and the encapsulation plant (where the waste will be sealed in canisters), but was then expanded to include also site-specific data from the two municipalities Oskarshamn and Östhammar voluntarily participating in the SKB repository siting programme. This safety analysis is due to be further developed into the SR-Site safety analysis that will be the safety study included as part of the application to the Government presenting SKB's favoured site in Östhammar as a safe site.

During the million years analysed in SR-Can, two main variants concerning external conditions are taken into account: one where the glacial cycles are expected to be similar to the most recent one and repeated seven times (in cycles of 120,000 years), and one where climate change and the effects of anthropogenic gas emissions are taken into account during the first 200,000 years (SKB 2006a: p. 201). The consequences are summarized as follows: a loss of buffer material is expected to increase over time, leading to possible canister failures over the million year period, but the consequences of this are “well below the regulatory risk limit” (SKB 2006a: p. 20). Based on the results from the SR-Can study it is argued that both the sites in Oskarshamn and Östhammar fulfil the regulatory requirements, but it is not possible to decide which one is the best. 2

2.1 Demonstrations with national regulators as the target audience

All three safety analyses have been produced by SKB and have resulted in unequivocal claims regarding the safety of the waste solutions analysed. The main objective of the analyses has been to evidence safety for the purposes of regulatory compliance. This process of evidencing has been continually supported by an expert review process of some description. When the KBS safety analysis was completed and became a part of a formal application for fuelling new nuclear reactors, the Swedish government set up a review process. The KBS report was sent to 24 Swedish and 23 foreign authorities and organizations (DsI 1978a: p. 29). These reviewers, consisting of universities and technical authorities, gave “safety” (or “absolute safety”) a technical definition relating to whether a technical method, under presumably realistic conditions, could lead to a storage system meeting specific radiation protection standards.

The SKB 91 analysis was reviewed, but only by the two Swedish state authorities in the field, the Nuclear Power Inspectorate (SKI) and the Radiation Protection Authority (SSI). SKI conducted a highly critical review and argued that SKB's general conclusion that a KBS repository “fulfils the safety requirements suggested by the authorities with ample margin” (SKB 1992b: p. 178) was a direct consequence of the assumption of the long-term stability of the technical barriers. In such a case, no calculations are needed to prove the safety issue. SKI argued that, to be useful as a safety analysis, less favourable cases should have been analysed. This would have made it possible to assess the natural barrier independently of other barriers and thereby also to discriminate between different sites (SKI 1992: pp. 40–41).

Six months after the publication of the SR-Can report, a report of more than 600 pages, a popular version of less than 100 pages was published. While the main report was directed to SKI and SSI, the targeted audience for the popular version was said to be politicians and citizens in the two municipalities where site investigations are being carried out. The popular summary report is not, however, intended to advance an “extended peer review” of SR-Can as it is stated that it is hard for lay people, lacking specialist knowledge, to understand the validity of the calculations and thereby the results of the safety analysis. This understanding is only available to experts, foremost those from the state authorities, while laypeople have to trust these experts (SKB 2007: p. 96). In the main report, however, SKB argue – when discussing how to choose relevant scenarios, which is a crucial part of a safety analysis – that uncertainties in the safety analysis relate to scenario selection and that “[t]he selection of scenarios is a task of subjective nature, meaning that it is difficult to propose a method that would guarantee the correct handling of all details of scenario selection” (SKB 2006a: p. 61). This means that the kind of subjectivity that the selection of relevant scenarios presupposes is an open question. If SKB would take this statement seriously they would also have to reconsider the questions of mediation and participation in their work with safety analyses. From the outset, SKB has been in control of the safety analyses and has managed to create distance to an audience that has been narrowly defined. The role of the audience is to react to ready-made analyses.

3 SKB and public consultations: demonstrations disguised as dialogue?

In contrast to mediation through demonstration, mediation through dialogue is about acknowledging the contingency of the facts and the realities often shown through demonstrations. It is accepted that there is more than one way of looking at things, and that there might be other, currently unknown and unrecognized, things worth publicly pointing out. It is no longer about one party trying to show other parties something irrefutable. Mediation by dialogue implies collective suspensions of judgement and “extended peer review” where existing expert frames and reasoning for and against a particular technology are “stretched”, and weakly or strongly contested by alternative forms of expertise and lay knowledge which have previously been ruled “out of court”. This means that standards of truth, reliability and safety are potentially opened up for broader and more inclusive negotiation (Elam et al. 2009).

The Swedish Environmental Code that came into force in 1999 stipulates that an application for a permit for activities that impact on the environment must include an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). However, this is not coordinated with the safety requirements regulated by the Act on Nuclear Activities from 1984. The EIA should provide a description of the activity's location, design and scope as well as a description of alternatives (The Environmental Code, Chapter 6, 7 §). The Code stipulates that the process should start early and that consultations should be held with those affected and the general public. In the Swedish legislation, the developer is responsible for carrying out the EIA. Since the law does not prescribe in detail how an EIA process should be organized, there is a high degree of freedom for the developer to define who the affected people are, and how, and to what extent they and the general public can be feasibly included in the process. The consultation process could potentially support public dialogue capable of opening up standards of truth, reliability and safety for broader and more inclusive negotiation. However, this remains a question of how consultations are designed and framed in practice.

The way that SKB organizes the public consultation process in connection with the implementation of its KBS programme can be said to subdue rather than support broader public dialogue. One way in which this comes about is through the organization of public consultation meetings as firstly information meetings where SKB stands in front of an audience and presents its current plans and achievements. SKB sets the agenda for the discussions at the public consultation meetings and acts as facilitator. In addition to the public consultation meetings that are open to all, and held once or twice a year in Oskarshamn and Östhammar, SKB also arranges “regional consultation meetings”. These are currently held around four times a year in Oskarshamn and Östhammar as well, and are open to official representatives from the two municipalities hosting site investigations, the county administrators and national regulators. 3

After 2005 and 2006 the two regional consultation forums were opened to the general public, including NGOs, attending as observers. Environmental organizations requested to be recognized as full participants at these meetings but were denied this right by SKB and one of the national regulators, with reference to the need to maintain an efficient meeting format (SKB 2005; SKI 2005). A representative of one of the environmental organization argues that, because they have not been open to all, the regional consultations have not been proper consultations according to the Environmental Code. The same representative argues that it is unfortunate that the partial participation of environmental organizations has given the meetings a higher level of legitimacy:

‘With our participation we make the “consultation meetings” appear as consultation meetings. In some minutes, they [SKB] can show that we had influence on the discussion. At the same time, we are not allowed to talk, we cannot contribute to the material that is sent out to all participants in advance, we cannot send in written statements afterwards and we do not get any written material before the meeting. I believe we have contributed to a watering-down of the process.’ (Interview, environmental organization.)

The regional consultations have been thus, as the quote above illustrates, interpreted by some actors as token forms of participation. The public consultation meetings have been however in principle open to everyone. SKB describes these meetings as characterized by open discussion and a forum for all the consulted parties to raise issues.

To analyse SKB's approach to public consultation we turn the focus to SKB's presentations that invariably precede comments and questions from other participants. SKB's presentations have played a significant part in framing relevant issues for consultation and confining the scope of the questions that can be posed in response. As SKB have relied heavily on PowerPoint slides in their presentations, we can argue that these have served as tools of mediation when, for example, safety analyses and the KBS repository concept have been presented to a wider audience. 4

3.1 Demonstrations witnessed by the general public

A clear division between demonstrator and audience is one of the distinguishing features of mediation by demonstration, and this has also been one of the organizing principles of SKB's consultation meetings. SKB has been criticized by participants at these meetings for spending too much time on their own presentations, leaving little opportunity for public input. Reponding to this criticism, SKB changed the meeting format in 2006 from a 2 h consultation meeting with information from SKB followed by questions, to a 2 h information meeting at which only clarifying questions to SKB can be posed followed by a further 2 h meeting where SKB provides a 30 min summary of the same information before the floor is left open to discussion. Even though more time is now allocated to discussion (as well as to SKB's information), this has not changed the discussion climate. As most of the participants at meetings arrived in time to listen to SKB's information, this still effectively frames discussion and the character of audience participation.

A further reinforcement of the division between demonstrator and audience is seen in SKB's compilation of the minutes from meetings (Soneryd 2007). In the available minutes, speakers are anonymized as questioner (Q) or public (P). Statements from SKB are presented as answers (A). Sometimes authorities or municipal representatives are presented as (S). In the minutes we can read that SKB “answered”, “clarified”, “informed” and “made clear” issues. Members of the public, on the other hand, only pose questions without ever providing any answers, information or clarifications of their own.

With this set up of consultation meetings, based on a division between demonstrator and audience, the “safety” demonstrated through safety analyses is also shown before “live” public audiences. At these meetings, several other aspects of nuclear waste management are also made apparent. For example, the KBS programme as a linear and uninterrupted planning process and the expected environmental impacts resulting from implementation over longer or shorter periods of time are repeatedly outlined (Lidberg and Soneryd 2010).

At a public consultation meeting, in Forsmark on June 1st 2006, the theme was Alternative Methods, the Siting Process and Society's Future Ability to Take Care of Spent Nuclear Fuel. At this meeting, one of SKB's consultants presented the results from a study of society's future capacity to take care of spent nuclear fuel. The consultant showed a series of slides, that illustrated that the KBS repository concept was the only reasonable alternative within a time span where society's development remained foreseeable (which the consultant argued was around 50 years) (SKB 2006b). Other methods, it was argued, would need more than 50 years to be developed to the same degree of technological maturity as KBS. The slide showed a time line over society's future development and time lines over the development of KBS, and four alternatives to KBS (i) the zero-alternative, the waste continues to be deposited in the central interim storage, (ii) surveilled dry deposit, (iii) deep boreholes and (iv) transmutation.

The message was that the KBS method is the only method that is fully compatible with the development of society. Although the possibility of implementing any of the alternative methods was presented as stretching into an indefinite future, the time needed for implementing the KBS method, and the time period that societal development was considered foreseeable, were both presented as being around 50 years. This is a clear example of mediation by demonstration: the slide speaks for itself and leaves the audience with an impression that KBS is the only choice. The day before at the equivalent public consultation meeting about alternative methods held in Oskarshamn, the same picture was shown in connection with a list of requirements in legislation and international conventions, for example that safety should be based on multiple barriers; that the final disposal should not require monitoring and service, and that the goal should be to avoid burdening future generations. The connection to legislative requirements reinforces the impression that there is only one method that can be chosen, because none of the others can cope with all the requirements put forward.

The legally stipulated public consultations are expected to focus on environmental impact. Different kinds of environmental impact are visualized in SKB's PowerPoint slides. There are slides that on a relatively high level of detail show expected increases in road transport or calculations of noise pollution during the construction phase. Maps and tables are used in order to show the expected environmental impact of the planned nuclear waste storage. SKB's presentations are however restricted to what happens above ground, mainly during the construction phase, and not for a longer time period than the first 100 years or so. When it comes to repository performance over a 100,000-year period, this is not presented in terms of environmental impacts, but long-term safety relating back to calculations and estimates made in SKB's safety analyses. Through their PowerPoint slides, SKB communicate results and ready-made facts, not the background behind them. Since a dialogue over the values, uncertainties or decisions behind the results is never encouraged, consultation meetings are treated by SKB more as dissemination meetings and opportunities to “give off” information. SKB presents already defined problems and results from studies already completed.

SKB staff talk about the consultation process as providing opportunities for “dialogue” and that all participants have the possibility to raise issues and to influence the process. Because of the format of these meetings and the amount of information presented by SKB that frames participants more in terms of a passive audience, we argue that the consultation process can be characterized rather as demonstrations disguised as dialogue. The next section will describe other activities that have aimed to be more dialogue-oriented and that have been initiated on the nuclear waste issue, by actors other than SKB.

4 The turn to dialogue: dialogue as repair work

In the 1980s, SKB became ensnared in a geology driven siting strategy for a KBS repository where the best possible bedrock conditions were sought after, but where local people and environmental groups occupied drilling sites preventing SKB from gathering the necessary geological data to enable a comparison of sites. Local “rescue groups” formed in practically every location where drillings were initiated or planned, and these different groups soon joined up to form a national network of local community groups (the so-called Avfallskedjan) (Lidskog 1994; Holmstrand 2001).

As already described, the SKB 91 safety analysis became an important tool for SKB in their efforts to move beyond the impasse of a geology driven siting strategy for a KBS repository. According to SKB, the safety analysis offered scientific evidence that bedrock is of less importance for safety and therefore sites could be sought more freely. After 1992, SKB adopted what they called a voluntary siting strategy where they would only enter a municipality after the latter had “volunteered” itself as a potential site for a KBS repository (Sundqvist 2002: p. 186). No municipality was excluded from volunteering itself. After 1995 SKB carried out eight local “feasibility studies” in volunteer communities for a KBS repository. Six of these studies were carried out in communities already hosting nuclear facilities or neighbouring such established nuclear communities, while two studies were carried out in the sparsely-populated, far north of Sweden.

To establish local connections and community trust was the main aim of SKB's “voluntary turn” in the 1990s. Although presented in terms of a nationwide search by the nuclear industry for “local acceptance”, voluntarism effectively allowed SKB to present the two nuclear communities of Oskarshamn and Östhammar as selecting themselves as the two most feasible locations for nuclear waste facilities in the country. These two locations had already been earmarked by industry and state for the geological disposal of high-level waste in the mid-1970s, before the ill-fated search for ideal bedrock conditions had been initiated (Elam and Sundqvist 2009). Now through the “voluntary turn”, Oskarshamn and Östhammar could be given every encouragement to recognize themselves as the two most important “local stakeholders” in the country for the solution of the national waste problem.

Even if SKB adopted a voluntary siting process after 1992, they still saw little need to publicly discuss their plans for nuclear fuel safety. Volunteer communities were volunteering as local audiences for SKB's demonstrations of KBS to complement the national audience of regulating bodies. However, the national regulators SKI and SSI were more prepared at the beginning of the 1990s to see local political protests as signalling the need for a more “dialogical”, as opposed to an exclusively demonstrative, approach to nuclear waste management. To this end, SKI initiated in 1990 the so-called Dialogue Project attempting to bring together industry, regulators, municipalities and environmental organizations to work towards a consensual approach to the formulation of waste management solutions (SKI 1993). This project running between 1990 and 1993 was organized as a simulated review process of an application concerning the final disposal of nuclear waste, seeking permission to construct a final disposal system of KBS type. Although the Dialogue Project still sought to gain public consent for SKB's programme of nuclear fuel safety, it promised to open up the programme to new forms of public criticism as environmental organizations were directly invited into the policy process for the first time. When SKB chose not to participate this confirmed the identity of the project as a purely “simulated” exercise, not a real one.

By arranging a succession of other “dialogue projects” after this initial one the national regulators have regularly tried to make nuclear waste management a matter of broader public concern. However, it can be argued that none of the dialogue projects that has been initiated has gone beyond simulating an alternative policy process to the overriding one of mediating waste management solutions through industrial demonstration. We would argue that rather than making a lasting challenge to the KBS programme, alternative dialogue projects have primarily served to help safeguard it from more serious forms of public criticism. Behind the Dialogue Project, the internationally well-known Oskarshamn's Model of local stakeholder involvement and other participatory initiatives in Sweden we find the same handful of consultants and “experts of community” picking up on SKB's recurring failure to stimulate sufficient public discussion around the nuclear fuel safety they unrelentingly present as speaking for itself (Oskarshamn 2007).

Following this established pattern, the Swedish National Council for Nuclear Waste's Transparency Programme (Swedish National Council for Nuclear Waste 2007b; see also Andersson 2007) can be seen as a direct response to SKB's failure to pursue stipulated EIA discussions of alternative methods and sites of nuclear waste management other than through national and local demonstrations of KBS, and of one method and only two possible sites already chosen.

A key difference between the public hearings held through the new Transparency Programme and SKB's public consultation meetings, is that the former encompass a broader range of expert commentators allowing SKB's demonstrated solutions to be to some extent publicly debated and questioned by other experts. However, other than helping SKB to publicly prosecute themselves more rigorously, and thereby better accommodate environmental legislation, the significance of the debate staged through the Transparency Programme is difficult to judge.

5 Concluding discussion

Swedish nuclear waste management has always remained primarily committed to generating knowledge and agreement over the development of policy through a process of mediation by industrial demonstration. Although derailed for several years during the late 1980s, mediation by industrial demonstration has never been seriously questioned, or ever come close to being abandoned, as the dominant approach to advancing nuclear waste management policy.

SKB's KBS programme is about amassing an irrefutable body of free-standing evidence concerning an unquestionable ability to deliver nuclear fuel safety. In this context, safety analyses are literally intended to “speak for themselves” to those with the qualified ability to understand them. Over the years, various attempts have been made to make SKB's industrial demonstrations and SKI's and SSI's interrogation of them more publicly transparent. If onlookers can neither comprehend SKB's safety analyses, nor SKI's and SSI's evaluation of them, then how can public confidence in Swedish nuclear waste management be maintained? This problem remained most acute of course prior to the securing of a number of municipalities prepared to participate in the siting of major waste facilities.

From the early 1990s onwards, SKI and SSI were prepared to treat alternative patterns of mediation by dialogue rather more openly and experimentally than SKB, approaching the overall scope and relevance of dialogue as itself largely negotiable. Although, due to their original identity as the counterparts to SKB in mediation by industrial demonstration, neither SKI nor SSI ever went so far as to suggest that mediation by dialogue should become the dominant mode of mediation. The SKI and SSI position resembles one where mediation by industrial demonstration is seen in need of self-protection through the addition of a participatory façade acting as something like a political safeguard helping to guarantee the broader legitimacy of the long-term joint state-industry project of securing nuclear fuel safety.

Swedish nuclear waste management was born under adversarial circumstances during the 1970s and established as an organized confrontation between state and industry. The fledgling nuclear industry was legally obliged to demonstrate a practical solution to the waste problem to state authority to avoid stillbirth. As the Act on Nuclear Activities superseded the Nuclear Power Stipulation Act in 1984, so the mediation of Swedish nuclear waste management through industrial demonstration was further entrenched. However, after 1984, industrial demonstrations of nuclear fuel safety were no longer validating new build, but evidencing an effective phase out of nuclear power.

Today the tables have been turned again. In February 2009, the Swedish Centre Party officially relented in its historical opposition to nuclear power dating back to the early 1970s (Svenska Dagbladet 2009) paving the way for a Parliamentary decision in June 2010 to allow nuclear new build. In this context, industrial demonstrations of nuclear fuel safety are set once again to become as crucial for validating new build as they were during the period 1976–1984.

A major difference today, however, is that the nuclear activities and ambitions of the current owners of SKB and the KBS programme – Vattenfall, E.on and Fortum – stretch far beyond Swedish soil. The KBS programme has already since the mid-90s served as a technical and organizational blueprint for Finnish nuclear waste management where its importance for once again validating new build is arguably already possible to observe. SKB have in recent years also had growing contact with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) in the UK supplying them with a reference concept for the geological disposal of high-level waste. Connections helping again to strengthen the case for new build, if not to directly validate it at the present time. Also in relation the European Commission Sixth Framework Programme, SKB have been a central player in the so-called CARD Project (European Commission 2008) – a co-ordinated action on research, development and demonstration priorities and strategies for geological disposal of nuclear waste – an initiative serving to wed the long-standing KBS programme with a new European “technology platform” for geological disposal of nuclear waste. As the quest for KBS – nuclear fuel safety – moves beyond its original homeland, it is worth reflecting over what is actually in motion. While it may appear that we are talking first about a particular technical design concept for the geological disposal of nuclear waste, nuclear fuel safety as it has progressed in Sweden has come to entail much more than this. It entails the public mediation of nuclear waste management through industrial demonstration, combined with a voluntary siting process for key facilities, something favouring their construction on established nuclear sites. This is combined with a commitment to promoting local stakeholder involvement and “dialogue projects” as a participatory façade protecting the core work of industrial demonstrations of safety from more threatening forms of public criticism.

Notes

1. When the Act came into force in 1977, six nuclear reactors were already in operation and had been fuelled without any special requirements on how to dispose of the waste. In addition, four reactors were under construction and three more planned. In 1977, the Swedish nuclear power programme was in the middle of completion.

2. Even if it was not possible to distinguish between the two sites of Oskarshamn and Östhammar in the SR-Can safety analysis, geology has motivated SKB's preference for Östhammar as their proposed site for the final repository for Swedish spent nuclear fuel – drier bedrock with fewer fractures. SKB's choice was presented in June 2009 but the formal application is planned to be sent to the Government late in 2010. The application has then to be responded to by the Municipality of Östhammar, which has a right of veto, it will then be reviewed by nuclear authorities as well as the Environmental Court before the Government finally decide on the issue, which is expected to take place in the year 2013 (Dagens Nyheter 2009).

3. In the beginning of the year 2010, SKB declared the public consultations as closed. However, the Swedish NGO Office for Nuclear Waste Review (MKG) has questioned this and has insisted on public consultations in connection with the presentation of the upcoming SR-Site safety analysis (MKG 2010).

4. Our analysis is based on all of SKB's PowerPoint presentations that have been made at consultation meetings or at information meetings arranged in connection to these meetings from 2003 to 2008, these are available at SKBs website ( www.skb.se) (see also Lidberg and Soneryd 2010). We have also notes from our participant observations from 10 consultation meetings and around 10 interviews with SKB, environmental organizations and authorities. On the basis of our analysis of this large material (over 1500 PP slides) we illustrate our results with a few examples.