Setting the scene: Radioactive waste management – its perception and acceptance - Presentation made by Paul Dorfman at the EESC Workshop on 7 September 2015.

1. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Setting the scene: Public participation in
radioactive waste management
Public Participation in Radioactive Waste
Management, EESC, Brussels, 7.9.15
Dr Paul Dorfman
Energy Institute
University College London (UCL)

2. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
2011/70/EURATOM
• Establishing a Community framework for the
responsible and safe management of spent fuel
and radioactive waste.

3. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
2011/70/EURATOM
Article 10: Transparency
• ‘Member States shall ensure that the public be
given the necessary opportunities to participate
effectively in the decision-making process
regarding spent fuel and radioactive waste
management in accordance with national
legislation and international obligations.’

4. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
2011/70/EURATOM
• ‘Transparency is important in the management
of spent fuel and radioactive waste’.
• ‘Transparency should be provided by ensuring
effective public information and opportunities
for all stakeholders concerned, including local
authorities and the public, to participate in the
decision-making processes’.

5. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
2011/70/EURATOM
• ‘Radioactive waste management means all
activities that relate to handling, pretreatment,
treatment, conditioning, storage, or disposal of
radioactive waste, excluding off-site
transportation.’

6. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
EU legal framework
• EU Directive on Public Participation in
Environmental Plans and Programmes.
• EU Public Participation Provisions of the Aarhus
Convention.
• EU Directive on Strategic Environmental
Assessment.
• EU Directives on Integrated Pollution and
Prevention Control, and Environment Impact
Assessment.

7. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
No longer an optional ‘add-on’
• Ensures that future policy meets the needs of the
EU public.
• Ensures that policy options are socially, culturally
and politically acceptable - as well as
technologically feasible.

8. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
People and RWM
• Given the scale of long-term investments that are
now needed - EU publics should play a key role in
taking these critical, social, ethical, environmental
and economic decisions.

9. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
and
• Governments and industry understand that public
acceptance of RWM is essential.
• People want to get involved in things that effect
them.

10. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Balancing ‘expert knowledge’
with ‘everyday knowledge’
• For controversial issues.
• For complex problems with uncertain futures.

11. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
If done right
• Agree and deliver national, regional, city, and local
strategic objectives - at at a lower cost to the
public purse and with less bureaucracy than
traditional processes.
• Integration of public, policy, and expert knowledge
allows for greater accountability, transparency,
much better ‘take-up’ of change and improved
long-term likelihood of more flexible adaption.

12. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Trust-building is the key
• Straightforward and open negotiation.
• Clarity about purpose, mechanisms and scope.
• Inclusion of diverse stakeholders.
• Balanced information and knowledge sharing.
• Independent expertise.
• Good mechanisms for accountability.
• Appropriate oversight and evaluation.
• Fair distribution of resources.

13. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Public understanding
• Research shows that people can work with
complex data.

14. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Tools
• Scenario building and modelling.
• Participatory multi criteria decision analysis
(MCDA).
• Virtual reality techniques - 3D visualization and
geographic information systems [GIS] mapping.
• Stakeholder dialogues, public meetings, citizens’
panels, events, forums, workshops, interactive
web-sites.

15. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Works well for
• ‘What if’ questions and ‘trade-off’ options, risks
and outcomes.
• Framing boundaries.
• Exploring scenarios through quantitative
modeling.
• Evaluation and review.

16. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Broad participation
• Policymakers, government departments, devolved
administrations, local government and local
authorities, regulators, operators, industrial
corporations and businesses, trade associations,
non-governmental organisations (NGOs), local
community based organisations (CBOs),
independent experts, and academic institutions.

17. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
‘Joined-up’ thinking
• Innovation at political, administrative, economic,
social and environmental levels.
• Influence at local, regional and central governance
levels.
• Connects central representative democracy to
direct participation at ‘grass-roots’.

18. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
So what’s the problem ?

19. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
UK ‘Flowers Dilemma’
• Does disposal ‘concept’ a priori imply new-build?

20. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
There’s no ‘free lunch’
• Not a simple task to encourage citizens and
industry to participate co-operatively.
• Tensions can arise over the framing of boundary
conditions, whether all main stakeholders are
involved and included, even-handed resourcing,
access to information, the acceptance of all
stakeholders as equal contributors, and over
perceived openness to serious policy influence.

21. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
2011/70/EURATOM
• ‘Member States shall ensure that the national
framework require licence holders to provide for
and maintain adequate financial and human
resources to fulfil their obligations with respect to
the safety of spent fuel and radioactive waste
management’.

22. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Aarhus Convention
• Three central pillars of the Aarhus Convention:
• Access to information.
• Access to public participation.
• Access to justice.

23. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
BEPPER
• Fourth pillar: Access to resources
• Essential requirement for effective and
constructive public participation.
• Vital to ensure ongoing and enduring civil society
participation in RWM processes.

24. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
And back to EURATOM…
• Considering ‘lessons learned’.
• Ways forward.

25. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
UK response
• United Kingdom National report on Compliance
with European Council Directive
2011/70/Euratom, Aug 2015.

26. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
However
• Managing Radioactive Waste Safely:
Implementing Geological Disposal, 2013.

27. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
DAD is dead - steer away from
UNCLE
• Decide, Announce, Defend.
• Unlimited Nuclear Consultation Leading to
Exhaustion.

28. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
So keep an ‘open mind’
• Coherent and timely ‘upstream’ involvement
strategy is necessary.
• But if you ‘close down’ options, people will worry.
• And if people worry, the process may fail.

29. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Get it right

30. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Submarine Dismantling Project (SDP)
UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), 2014
• ‘Public Consultation on Site for the Interim
Storage of Intermediate Level Radioactive Waste’.
• https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/submar

31. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
SDP
• ‘SDP ILW interim storage site selection : public
and stakeholder engagement’, 2014
• https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploa

32. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Prepare to meet ‘stakeholders’
• Be agnostic about outcomes.
• It’s the process that counts.
• Success is a function of trust-building, and how
the process works with and integrates the
knowledge, experience and ideas of people in
their country, region, city, town, or community.

33. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Democratically legitimate RWM process
• Public acceptance is key to RWM.
• EU, MS, and industry want to communicate with
European citizens about RWM.
• Communication is a two-way process.
• Participatory governance can achieve a shared,
knowledge-based, democratically legitimate EC
and MS RWM policy process.

34. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Participation as a function of
RWM
• Public participation framework to allow MS to
evolve viable RWM policy.
• In order to make RWM work (viable investment
plans).

35. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
It works
• Clear evidence that engaging people in a
meaningful way can change attitudes, behaviour
and actions.
• When participation is clearly connected to
representative and regulatory democratic
decision-making processes.

36. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Strategic goal of public
involvement in RWM
• Given the long time-scales involved, the strategic
goal of public participation in RWM may not be to
find the single ‘right technical answer’.
• Rather to bring people together, and keep them
talking to each other, to ensure that better
decisions are made in future.
• Go a little slower to get there quicker.

37. UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Overview and ‘Toolkit’
Dorfman et al, EESC, 2012.
• ‘Future national energy mix scenarios: Public
engagement processes in the EU and elsewhere’.
• http://www.eesc.europa.eu/resources/docs/20121
212-final-report-eesc-comm-05-
2012_formatted.pdf

38. Thank You
www.ucl.ac.uk/energy