Factors Affecting Public and Political Acceptance for the Implementation of Geological Disposal

The main objective of this report is to identify conditions which affect public concern (either
increase or decrease) and political acceptance for developing and implementing programmes
for geologic disposal of long-lived radioactive waste. It also looks how citizens and relevant
actors can be associated in the decision making process in such a way that their input is
enriching the outcome towards a more socially robust and sustainable solution. Finally, it
aims at learning from the interaction how to optimise risk management addressing needs and
expectations of the public and of other relevant stakeholders.
In order to meet these objectives, factors of relevance for societal acceptance conditions are
identified, described and analysed. Subsequently these factors are looked for in the real world
of nuclear waste management through cases in several countries. The diversity of
characteristics of such contexts — institutional frameworks/ cultural traditions — increases
insight in the way society and values of reference are influencing technological decision
making. These interrelated factors need to be integrated in step by step decision making
processes as emerging the last years in HLW disposal management.
In Section 1, six stages of a repository development and implementation process are
identified: policy development, framework, concept elaboration, underground investigations
and assessment research, site suitability analysis and last but not least realisation of the
repository itself. These are described in much greater detail in section 2. Historically, the
dynamics from one stage of this process to the next has seldom been smooth. Technical
feasibility as well as public and political acceptance issues had to be addressed continuously
in an integrated way. Political decision making at different levels (national, regional, and local
levels) interacted. These circumstances caused significant delays in many Member States and
sometimes even caused an abrupt halt of programmes. In others they allowed to improve
technical options. Indeed, reaching a particular stage in the development and implementation
process was no guarantee that a programme would not be compelled to retreat to an earlier
stage or even be forced to restart the process anew. In Section 3, a set of four factors —
technical, structural, process, and behavioural — are proposed and discussed, whereas section
4 outlines illustrative case studies of the development and implementation process in 13
Member States.
In the conclusions, proposals about the effect of each factor on acceptance are derived from
the empirical record. The main effect is the interaction of these factors throughout the whole
time consuming process. In the course of carrying out this analysis, it became clear that
acceptance had a different meaning in the first three stages of the process than in the last two
stages, while few experience exists on the last stage. The first three stages mainly involve
generic considerations, dialogue, and debate. It means that deliberations surrounding these
stages are not site-specific. Consequently, decisions most often are made at policy level
between authorities and affected stakeholders. The political acceptance process seems to be
the key issue. Members of the general public and representatives of local communities are
essentially involved in the last three stages are, by their very nature, site-specific. They
recognize that they have a clear stake in the outcomes of decisions and almost always seek to
have their views taken into account by the higher policy levels. This time, both public and
political acceptances appear to be crucial.
The major challenge however remains to build confidence in a technology without definitive
demonstration, as we are dealing with geological time scales. Further, the time period, largely
exceeding the time scope of human civilisation, confronted the technical nuclear science
community with other value judgements in society. In this context acceptance cannot be obtained through a technical process only. Experience as clearly addressed in this report has
shown that a feasible solution has its technical dimension but that “an acceptable solution”
always will have a combined technical and social dimension. The latter dimension is focussed
by the underlying report, but it can not be considered separately from the technical one.
More than providing tentative answers to the central question how factors affect public and
political acceptance, this report aims at illustrating the added value of broadening the
technical dimension with social dialogue and insight in value judgements. Other recent
international projects and activities, in spite of being developed with different approaches,
provide similar results and recommendations.