Anne Bergmans

Meaningful communication among experts and affected citizens on risk: challenge or impossibility?

Experience to date demonstrates that it remains challenging to engage experts and concerned citizens in a meaningful and mutually comprehensive dialogue on complex and technical risk‐bearing projects. In search of an explanation we found Niklas Luhmanns interpretation of modern society very useful. Luhmann describes modern society as the aggregate of more or less self‐sufficient functional subsystems becoming more and more isolated from each other in a spiral of progressive specialisation. With each system developing its own expectations, language, rationality and ways of observing and interpreting reality, communication between systems becomes progressively problematic; according to Luhmann, even impossible. Contrary to Luhmann, however, we consider communicating human beings (and not communication in itself) the constituting elements of society. From that perspective we see a connection with Ulrich Becks thesis on modern society as an individualised risk society and his call for ‘reflexive science and decision making’. We will use Becks negotiation model to build communicative bridges between (Luhmanns) social (sub)systems, in particular, by engaging as many concerned parties as possible. Further, we will argue that the Belgian experience with the siting of a radioactive waste repository demonstrates that the creation of an environment in which experts and citizens can enter into dialogue as individuals, rather than as representatives of interests or (scientific) disciplines, can help bridge differences in the rationality and jargon of systems, and result in finding common ground.

The participatory turn in radioactive waste management: deliberation and the social–technical divide

National policies for long-term management of radioactive waste have for decades been driven by technical experts. The pursuit of these technocratic policies led in many countries to conflict with affected communities. Since the late 1990s, however, there has been a turn to more participatory approaches. This participatory turn reflects widespread acknowledgement in the discourse of policy actors and implementing organisations of the importance of social aspects of radioactive waste management (RWM) and the need to involve citizens and their representatives in the process. This appears to be an important move towards democratisation of this particular field of technological decision-making but, despite these developments, technical aspects are still most often brought into the public arena only after technical experts have defined the ‘problem’ and decided upon a ‘solution’. This maintains a notional divide between the treatment of technical and social aspects of RWM and raises pressing questions about the kind of choice affected communities are given if they are not able to debate fully the technical options. The article aims to contribute to better understanding and addressing this situation by exploring the complex entanglement of the social and the technical in RWM policy and practice, analysing the contingent configurations that emerge as sociotechnical combinations. Drawing upon empirical examples from four countries that have taken the participatory turn – Belgium, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom – the article describes the different ways in which sociotechnical combinations have been constructed, and discusses their implications for future practice.

Long-term repository governance: a socio-technical challenge

As geological disposal (GD) of higher activity radioactive wastes seems to be moving towards implementation in some countries (most prominently perhaps in Finland and Sweden), this paper reflects on a number of governance questions this raises. We highlight the near long-term governance of such repositories (that is to say the process beginning with construction and finishing when closure is fully completed). This time period comes into view when the implementation process shifts from siting to hosting. The notion of hosting emphasises the relationship between the repository and its host community. A relationship that demands, we argue in this paper, a re-figuration of the geography and temporality of GD. Hosting a geological disposal facility brings with it specific socio-technical challenges, i.e. problems which involve both social and technical adjustments, as well as reconfigurations of the boundary between them. In this paper, we discuss three such challenges, namely complexity (due to the changes in spatial organisation), residual risk (referring to events that are not accidents, but sub-critical in relation to hazards or anomalies in relation to expectations) and perpetual uncertainty (with respect to both scientific knowledge and societal decision-making). As such, the question of the long-term governance of geological repositories is not specific to the post-Fukushima era. However, we do see a strong link between this question and the question of the (long-term) governance of major accident sites, of which Fukushima figures as one of the most poignant examples, and which also face issues of complexity, residual risk and perpetual uncertainty.

Participation in Spatial Planning for Sustainable Cities: The Importance of a Learning-by-Doing Approach

Megatrends like climate change, population growth and economic transitions put cities to the test and impact their future. City governments acknowledge the importance of spatial planning to mitigate the problems they are facing, for example by greening the city, infill development, smart reintegration of making industry in the city, etc. Our contribution focuses on the potential of multi-actor governance in spatial planning for social learning on these challenges.

Advanced Research, Lagging Policy

Belgium developed a rather extensive nuclear research and development (R&D) programme quite early due to the ready supply of uranium from the former colony of Congo and its contribution to the Manhattan project. Belgium, once had the national ambition of developing a full nuclear fuel cycle. Nuclear power provides 52% of the national electricity supply in Belgium in 2014. Belgium’s seven reactors – four in the Flemish municipality of Doel, three in the Walloon municipality of Tihange – became operational between 1975 and 1985. The history of the Belgian nuclear programme is for a large part one of ‘fait accompli’ politics and has been characterized by a general lack of transparent decision making (Laes et al. 2007).

Potential Scenarios for Broadening Stakeholder Involvement in the Implementing Geological Disposal Technology Platform

This paper analyses the potential for the involvement of different types of stakeholders in the Implementing Geological Disposal Technology Platform (IGD-TP). This analysis was conducted as part of the InSOTEC project, a three-year (2011–2014) collaborative research project funded under the 7th Euratom Framework Programme (Grant Agreement nr. 269906).In our analysis, we consider the extent to which the IGD-TP’s practice as regards to stakeholder involvement matches its discourse, and what potential for improvement exists given its structural organisation as a European Technology Platform (ETPs). Technology Platforms (TPs) can be understood as knowledge networks, deliberately set up to influence (research) policy in a specific domain. We therefore use knowledge networks as a conceptual approach and look at the IGD-TP as a complex network which includes actors, knowledge and practices across different countries, focusing on a very specific topic (i.e. implementing geological disposal). We compare the way different stakeholders are involved in the IGD-TP to the practice of other ETPs, and explore how the IGD-TP is viewed by its members and by outsiders to the platform.Applying Callon’s framework of knowledge co-production (1999) we come to define different degrees of interaction between science, society and policy in view of defining research and development (R&D) priorities [1]. Subsequently we describe how these interactions could be conceptualised and interpreted for the IGD-TP. The current approach of the IGD-TP can be mainly understood as classical model involving mainly expert stakeholders and scientists. Where there seems to be a good representation among IGD-TP members of industry, research institutes, and some members of the academic community this is not the case for other types of stakeholders, such as public authorities or civil society. At this stage, the overall approach of the IGD-TP would seem to restrict the scope of stakeholder involvement, as it narrows participation down to uniquely technology experts, hindering socio-technical manifestations. Our analysis nevertheless shows that there is room for engaging with a broader range of stakeholders in the field of radioactive waste management, if this is the intention of the IGD-TP. However, this would require a commitment to developing a common knowledge base including other stakeholders through a process of mutual adjustment and negotiation.© 2013 ASME