Living with Nukes

September 30th, 2008

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Posted by ChrisG at 9:14 pm

To London, for a presentation at the Royal Society about this 5-year project, which centred on a detailed series of interviews with local residents living near the ageing nuclear power stations at Oldbury and Bradwell, and a survey of residents living near Oldbury and Hinkley Point. One of the main purposes of the project was to investigate how people who live with a facility like this on their doorstep make sense of the uncertainties it brings – and to suggest what lessons the results might yield for policymakers about to hurl us all into an exciting new age of nuclear unknowns.

The full report can be downloaded here [PDF] – I’d suggest you read it, or at least this press release, rather than rely on, say, the Guardian’s garbled precis, which manages to suggest somehow that the overall message of the study is, erm, full speed ahead for Mr Brown’s fleet of shiny new toys. The reality appears to be a good deal more complex: a good deal of fatalism about the legitimacy of any upcoming public consultation on siting of new stations is married with an overwhelming demand for proper consultation well in advance of any siting decisions. Further, a majority (54%) of respondents to the interviews and survey either strongly opposed new nuclear power stations or could offer only very qualified support for them – indicating a level of support which could potentially evaporate very quickly indeed if the Government treads clumsily.

Which means that their plan to “streamline” the planning system for major infrastructure projects will probably turn out to be the equivalent of them donning 72-hole Dr Martens and dancing a polka through a fragile truce between the nuclear industry and the public, one which is largely dependent on the social networks of plant workers and non-workers who live near stations like those in the study.

In discussion after the report presentation, the public concerns about legitimate consultation detailed in the study were echoed by comments by members of an expert panel, including representatives and advisors of CoRWM, who added that the Government had essentially misrepresented their committee’s findings on the viability of deep geological disposal, by suggesting that CoRWM had argued that legacy waste and waste from new build should be treated in the same way. In fact, the committee had identified these as representing two entirely distinct ethical and social problems, with legacy waste as the pressing issue. Just because geological disposal might be chosen as the least bad option for getting rid of legacy waste, it did not follow that the use of this method would then itself validate the decision to go ahead with new nuclear stations.

Still, the CoRWMites stuck to the official line in one respect: in response to my question about the inherent uncertainties of geological disposal, they informed me that they had decided deep burial should be chosen, “based on the best available science”. Ho hum.