This document summarizes a presentation on assessing and communicating risks associated with spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. It outlines the current need to manage this waste, changes since a 2011 report, and insights for effective risk communication. The key points are: (1) eventually a long-term storage facility will be needed; (2) communities must consent to hosting such facilities; (3) fear of cancer and distrust of industry make waste disposal difficult.

1. Assessment and Perception of Risks
Associated with Spent Fuel and HighLevel Nuclear Waste
Chris Whipple
Presented at the AIChE Annual Conference
San Francisco, November 7, 2013

2. Outline
• Current need for and approach to managing spent
reactor fuel and high-level waste
• What has changed since the Blue Ribbon
Commission report?
• Risk Communication basics applied to nuclear
waste

3. Is a facility needed?
• Quick answer – One will be needed eventually.
• More considered answer – Water reactors and dry cask
storage work well, so we should not let waste
management concerns push us to a nuclear power
system that is not economic or technically mature.
• Need to get spent fuel off sites where power reactors are
closed – this could be done by moving spent fuel to
operating reactor sites or to a central storage facility.
• Need to continue to convert DOE wastes to stable waste
forms.

4. What should the process to develop a
US disposal system look like?
• Selection of a site with local support worked at
WIPP; nuclear waste negotiator efforts to find
volunteer HLW site did not.
• Progress in Finland and Sweden is cited, but
differences in culture (small homogeneous
populations) and political systems (absence of
strong state governments) appear to limit the
analogy.

5. What has changed since the Blue Ribbon
Commission (BRC) report?*
• The BRC concluded that the conflict from the siting approach
defined in the 1987 waste Act Amendments as “a policy that
has been troubled for decades and has now all but completely
broken down.”
• The first (of 8) strategy elements recommended by the BRC is
“A new, consent-based approach to siting future nuclear waste
management facilities.”
*The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future
report is available at
http://energy.gov/ne/downloads/blue-ribbon-commissionamericas-nuclear-future-report-secretary-energy.

6. Why is Radioactive Waste Disposal
Difficult?
• Fear of cancer
• Mystique of radiation
• Linkage to nuclear power and nuclear weapons
• Perceived unfairness to nearby residents
• Non-health concerns, e.g., property values,
institutional durability and integrity

7. It Could Be Worse!
• Operating experience of U.S. nuclear power plants
has been excellent for the past several decades
• Concerns with other energy sources are visible,
e.g., CO2, opposition to fracking
• Medical benefits of radiation-based technologies
appreciated

8. What Not to Do
Risk Communication and Nuclear Power
• Presumed that quantitative risk estimates determine
attitudes toward technology
• Comparisons chosen to trivialize nuclear risks, e.g.,
“safer than riding a bicycle”
• Implicit argument: people are irrational to worry
about small risks such as from nuclear power

9. What Not to Do, continued
• Public disagreements between industry and Nuclear
Regulatory Commission brought competence of
regulators into question
• Concern that plant would blow up like nuclear
bomb not addressed because such accidents are
physically impossible

10. Insights for Radioactive Waste
Communications
1. When possible, make risks controllable,
voluntary, and well-managed - Look for issues on
which to give the community some control
– Emphasize independent oversight
– Explain monitoring plans and monitoring requirements measurable concentrations are more controllable than
invisible risks – understand the value of monitoring and
openness about data
– Emphasize benefits

11. Insights for Radioactive Waste
Communications
2. Understand that the community expects to be
protected and accept this responsibility
– Don’t “trivialize” the risks; this indicates complacency
– Don’t expect hazardous substances to be “innocent until
proven guilty”
– Don’t expect national benefits to justify local risks
– Don’t mix cancer and cost in the same sentence

12. Insights for Radioactive Waste
Communications
3. Treat people’s concerns with respect and
compassion
– Fear of cancer and substances that might add to cancer
risk is reasonable
– Don’t be defensive or have a closed mind to the possibility
that not every contingency has been considered
– Personalize your responses when appropriate

13. Insights for Radioactive Waste
Communications
4. Protect your credibility
– Associate your position with that of more credible sources
regarding risk
– Don’t send engineers to discuss medical issues (especially
low dose radiation health risks) or M.D.s to discuss
hydrogeology
– Say “I don’t know” when you don’t, and follow up with
information later

14. Insights for Radioactive Waste
Communications
5. Don’t make enemies out of potential allies
– Keep your workers informed about your risk issues and
how you are managing them
– Recognize that you and your regulators have a common
interest in safety and in good relations with the community