Gordon MacKerron

Learning to listen: institutional change and legitimation in UK radioactive waste policy

Over the course of 50 years, UK radioactive waste policy change has been coupled with institutional change, without much progress towards the ultimate goal of safe, long‐term stewardship of wastes. We explain this history as a search for legitimacy against a shifting context of legitimation needs and deficits. Following Habermas, we argue that legitimation is derived from a process of justificatory discourse. In principle, there must be a reasonable exchange of arguments between diverse parties in society, based on common norms, for legitimacy to be achieved. We show that the work of legitimation in UK radioactive waste policy has moved from a focus on factual validity claims towards an increasing emphasis on deliberative processes. This reframing of legitimation needs explains institutional and policy changes in UK radioactive waste policy. The most recent phase of policy and institutional change, which placed public deliberation about long‐term management and disposal options centre‐stage, represents a new step towards bridging legitimation deficits. Plans to build new nuclear reactors in the UK based on a more closed ‘streamlined’ decision process risk reversing the legitimacy gains that have been achieved through growing openness on radioactive waste management.

Nuclear costs : Why do they keep rising?

Nuclear power has performed badly in recent years as a new investment everywhere except Japan and Korea. This has mainly been for orthodox financial and economic reasons. Among the factors contributing to this loss of competitiveness, persistently rising real capital costs have been particularly important. While the nuclear industry has believed it could control and reduce capital costs, increasing regulatory stringency has made designs more complex and correspondingly more costly. These cost increasing factors have far outweighed traditional cost reducing factors (like learning). The only lasting way to meet increasing stringency in safety at acceptably low cost is likely to be the development of new and simpler reactor designs.

Lessons from the UK on Urgency and Legitimacy in Energy Policymaking

This chapter uses the recent history of UK energy policymaking to illustrate wider themes in this book. In the face of the urgency of climate change, the central question for policymaking is how to combine radical action with strengthened legitimacy and consent. The UK case shows how it may be possible to start travelling along this difficult road, but that subsequently it is easy to over-emphasise urgency at the expense of legitimacy and thus risk overall failure.

Is the World Bank approach to structural reform supported by experience of electricity privatization in the UK

Facing financial crisis, and in some cases deteriorating performance, developing countries are being recommended by the World Bank to privatize their electricity systems. While reform is necessary and private capital may help solve financial problems, the experience of privatization in the UK electricity system suggests that privatization in developing countries is unlikely to be accompanied by much competition. This in turn suggests a need not for a straightforward rolling back of the state in developing countries but rather the development of new forms of state activity both in organizing, and in the longer term regulating, the new, privatized institutional structure.

Industrial electricity consumption in the UK: Past determinants and possible futures

The determinants of industrial electricity demand are examined and it is found that more than 40% of demand growth in the period 1959?1980 was caused by factors either unrelated or only indirectly related to growth in industrial output. Factors such as adjustments in industrial structure, technical change and the decline in self-generation of electricity were all important contributors to demand growth. Together with the methodological problems of using price as an explanatory variable, this suggests that those econometric approaches to demand forecasting for industrial electricity which rely solely on projections of industrial output and price are seriously defective. Output level and price are important in future demand, but current methods are not appropriate to capture their effect and more detailed sectoral work is required, which should take into account structural and technical change and developments in self-generation.

Introduction: climate policy is energy policy

Avoiding dangerous climate change is the defining challenge for humanity in the twenty-first century. Since the energy system is both the primary cause of climate change and the primary means of mitigation, the future evolution of energy policy is of critical importance. But energy policy is undergoing significant change for other reasons, including unstable and substantially higher oil and gas prices, conflict and instability in key producing regions such as the Middle East, fears of the economic consequences of declining world oil production and a rising perception of energy insecurity, especially within industrialised countries. While there are precedents for managing these developments, effective response to them all while at the same time redically reducing carbon emissions requires a major rethink of conventional assumptions and practices.

The advanced gas-cooled reactor: A case study in reactor choice

High costs and extremely long and expensive R & D programmes have led to extensive involvement by governments in decisions concerning nuclear reactors. The authors examine the decision-making processes of the British nuclear industry, looking in particular at the history of the Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor (AGR). They conclude that both the institutional framework in which the decision was made and the decision itself give cause for concern. In particular the lack of public discussion and the dual role of the UKAEA as both prototype developer and technical adviser to the government make objective judgement difficult

The international uranium market

Abstract With anxieties about oil has come the recognition that uranium supplies are not inexhaustible and that, like oil, uranium poses problems of import dependence and cartelization. Debate on the long-term prospects for uranium supply and price has centred on the hypothetical, unanswerable question ‘What additional uranium resources will ultimately be discovered and at what prices will they become available?’. The question is unasnwerable because the geological and cost uncertainties are too great. In this article the authors examine the structure, organization and operation of the international uranium market because they believe that in practical terms these factors will be a major influence on uranium availability.

Agriculture in the EEC taking stock

Abstract The focus of this assessment is the European Communitys ‘Stocktaking of the Common Agricultural Policy’. While the CAP has attracted considerable scrutiny and controversy, the Stocktaking represents the most authoritative review of agricultural policy from within the EEC bureaucracy. The authors evaluate first the extent to which the Stocktakings own analysis is a fair reflection of achievements under the objectives which the CAP has set for itself. Second, they ask whether the proposals for policy reform advocated in the Stocktaking are appropriate. They conclude that the Stocktakings proposals — and their subsequent interpretation within the EEC — are not adequate to tackle the problems facing EEC agriculture.

Great expectations: A review of nuclear fusion research

Fusion research policy has recently come under scrutiny, prompted by rising research costs and increasing doubt about the value of such long-term work. This paper reviews the basic principles of fusion, the research and development still required, the costs of research to date, justifications for it, and future policy options; and examines in broad terms some of the ways in which fusion can be and has been evaluated. Throughout, the emphasis is on the need to compare fusion on equal terms with those technological options with which it may compete, and in the context of different energy futures.