Options for Developing Public and Stakeholder Engagement for the Storage and Management of Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) and High Level Waste (HLW) in the United States

This report puts forth a number of options and recommendations for how to engage
stakeholders and other members of the public in the storage and management of spent
nuclear fuel and high level waste in the United States. The options are generated from a
scientific review of existing publications proposing criteria for assessing past efforts to
engage publics and stakeholders in decision-making about risky technologies. A set of
nine principles are derived for evaluating cases of public and stakeholder engagement with
the intention of deriving lessons for spent nuclear fuel and high level waste management in
the United States. We evaluate nine cases, including siting processes for nuclear
repositories in Europe and Canada and interim storage in Utah. We also examined case
studies in the United States about the siting of a carbon capture and storage facility, siting
highly contested marine protected areas in California, cleanup of a former nuclear
weapons facility, and developing consensual regional forest policy in New England. One
of the most important take home lessons is that it is important to view the SNF
management and disposal problem as a system with many interconnected elements.
Moving forward on one element while ignoring others is likely to lead to unsuccessful
outcomes. A second important lesson is the need for a diagnostic and adaptive framework
for designing and implementing public and stakeholder engagement.