Erik Laes

Short-Rotation Coppice of Willow for Phytoremediation of a Metal-Contaminated Agricultural Area: A Sustainability Assessment

Large areas of land contaminated with cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), and zinc (Zn) are currently in agricultural production in the Campine region in Belgium. Cadmium contents in food and fodder crops frequently exceed legal threshold values, resulting in crop confiscation. This imposes a burden on agriculture and regional policy and, therefore, encourages proper soil management. One way to increase agricultural income and improve soil quality is by growing alternative nonfood crops such as willows in short-rotation coppice (SRC) systems that remediate the soil. This paper compares SRC of willow with rapeseed and energy maize regarding four attributes: metal accumulation capacity, gross agricultural income per hectare, CO2 emission avoidance potential, and agricultural acceptance. Based on multicriteria decision analysis, we conclude that, although SRC of willow has a high potential as an energy and remediating crop, it is unlikely to be implemented on the short term in Flanders unless the economic incentives for the farmers are improved.

Multi-criteria Group Decision Support with Linguistic Variables in Long-term Scenarios for Belgian Energy Policy

Real world decisions often made in the presence of multiple, conflicting, and incommensurate criteria. Decision making requires multiple perspectives of different individuals as more decisions are made now in groups than ever before. This is particularly true when the decision environment becomes more complex such as sustainability policies study in environmental and energy sectors. Group decision making processes judgments or solutions for decision problems based on the input and

Public participation processes related to nuclear research installations: what are the driving factors behind participation intention?

This article addresses organised public participation processes related to installations for nuclear research. The aim was to determine predictors that could provide an empirical insight into the motivations underlying people’s intended level of involvement. The results highlight attitude towards participation and moral norm as the strongest predictors for participation intention. Other significant predictors were time constraints, attitude towards nuclear energy, subjective and descriptive norms, and knowledge. An opposing relationship is noted between participation intention and attitude towards nuclear energy. At the same time, people who are more knowledgeable about the nuclear domain seem more willing to get involved. The analysis also revealed that financial benefits do not influence people’s intended involvement in participation processes related to nuclear research installations. The results reported here are based on empirical data from a large-scale public opinion survey (N = 1020) carried out in Belgium during May–June 2011.

Trust as a central paradigm for advisory science: the case of the Belgian nuclear phase-out

The Belgian parliament has decided to phase out the existing nuclear power plants as part of the governments strategy to achieve sustainable development. According to the authors, this nuclear phaseout can be regarded as belonging to a class of unstructured problems in science for policy-making, i.e. problems where there exists a debate on the scientific facts as well as on the values at stake. When society is confronted with unstructured problems, insights from recent risk research literature point at the overriding importance of trust in arrangements at the cutting edge of science and policy. We investigated the Belgian science–policy interface from the point of view of trust building, also guided by insights from interviews with members of the Belgian Federal Council for Sustainable Development. The results were analysed on three levels of discourse: the cognitive, the reflective and the design or planning discourse. On each level, flaws in the trust-building fabric could be demonstrated.

“On the Uses and Disadvantages of History” for Radioactive Waste Management

In this paper we propose a critical investigation of the epistemological, ontological, and moral foundations for the legitimacy of the (internationally accepted) permanent geological disposal option for high-level radioactive waste. We do so through a reading of Nietzsches second untimely meditation, “On the uses and disadvantages of history for life.” In particular, we offer an interpretation of some of the central concepts in this text and Nietzsches work in general—perspectivism, pluralism, active forgetting, etc.—and investigate the effects of the confrontation between these lines of thought and present practices in the management of medium- and high-level long-lived radioactive waste (categories B and C). Furthermore, we argue that this untimely meditation comes at a timely moment, i.e., at a time when modernitys way of dealing with waste could be undergoing a major transformation. The paper ends with some preliminary reflections on our nuclear inheritance and its link with nuclear power of the future (GenIV).

Addressing uncertainty and inequality in nuclear policy

Purpose – This paper analyses the justification of technological choices and options in the context of nuclear energy policy. We argue that “society” increasingly demands a justification with regard to the level of uncertainty and inequality a certain technological choice induces. We aim to demonstrate that policy makers in fact do address these issues, but depending on how they define the problem, this is done in a more explicit (overt) or implicit (covert) way.Design/methodology/approach – First, the changing context with regard to the justification of technological choices is briefly sketched. We draw the attention to the link between the way a certain (energy) policy problem is defined, and the way the framework for political decision‐making is set up in response to the problem. In order to clarify this observation, we make use of a scheme derived from policy sciences, mapping out policy problems in two dimensions: the (lack of) certainty concerning the kinds of knowledge a problem may require, and th...

Methodological Challenges in Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Foresight Methods for Sustainable Energy Futures: The SEPIA Project

This chapter presents a reflection on the challenges of combining participatory fuzzy-set multi-criteria analysis (MCA) with narrative scenario building and energy modelling, in the context of the SEPIA project. SEPIA aims to investigate participatory decision support systems for sustainable energy policymaking. More precisely, SEPIA elaborates on aspects of sustainability assessment (SA) in the energy policy context in order to reach consensus among the stakeholders involved. SEPIA provides the basis for an SA procedure adapted to the context of Belgian energy governance.

Fuzzy-Set Decision Support for a Belgian Long-Term Sustainable Energy Strategy

1 Expertise Group ‘Society and Policy Support’ (SPS), Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK•CEN), Boeretang, Belgium elaes@sckcen.be, gmeskens@sckcen.be, druan@sckcen.be 2 Faculty of Information Technology, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Broadway, NSW, Australia jielu@it.ets.edu.au, zhangg@it.ets.edu.au, fengjiew@it.ets.edu.au 3 Energy Institute, Faculty of Applied Mechanics and Energy Conversion, University of Leuven (KULeuven), Heverlee, Belgium william.dhaeseleer@mech.kuleuven.be 4 Brussels EU Chapter, Club of Rome (CoR-EU) raoul.weiler@skynet.be

Planning for Sustainability in the Belgian Electricity Sector: A Multi-criteria Mapping Exercise

The Belgian parliament has recently voted a law to progressively phase out existing nuclear power plants1. This decision has roused quite some contestation between a number of historically active social groups in the energy policy debate. Referring to this relatively controversial climate, the research reported here aims to stretch the scope of the debate outside the boundaries of political (parliamentary) decision making. Broadly speaking, we attempt to shed some light on the question whether nuclear electricity generation can contribute to the transition towards a sustainable energy future for Belgium, and, if so, under which conditions. In this chapter, we will not go into the details of the substantial answers to these questions, but rather focus on some methodological aspects of the project.

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).