Timothy O’Riordan

Attitudes, Behavior, and Environmental Policy Issues

How many Americans, I wonder, remember the long lineups to obtain gas in the latter part of January 1974? The impact of that national crisis is a distinct memory for some, perhaps, but probably not for the majority. And what about the effect of such recollections on current energy consumption? Surprisingly, little, even though prices have doubled for all kinds of energy compared with two years ago. For example, gasoline consumption has remained steady, almost oblivious to the 50% increase in prices since 1973, and while thermostats were lowered by 2°F or even 3°F during the winter of 1974, this practice did not persist. In any case it reduced domestic fuel demand by less than 2% since substantial heat losses still occurred due to inadequate insulation, a legacy of the era of cheap fuel and improperly scrutinized building codes (Ford Energy Policy Project, 1974, pp. 119–120).

The Precautionary Principle in UK Environmental Law and Policy

In the last decade the precautionary principle has entered into the lexicon of modern environmentalism with remarkable speed and stealth. Nowadays, it appears regularly in national legislation, in international statements of policy and in the texts of international conventions and protocols. More recently, it has been adopted as a guiding principle of environmental policy in both the EU and the UK, and it makes an appearance in the 1992 Rio Declaration (a statement of principles and general obligations to guide the international community towards actions that promote more environmentally sustainable forms of development). So frequently is the term invoked that Cameron and Abouchar (1991: 27) go as far as to posit that, if the present rate of proliferation is sustained into the future, precaution may well become ‘“the” fundamental principle of environmental protection policy and law at the international, regional, and local scales’ (emphasis in original). Even the more cautious of the principle’s advocates suggest that ‘the concept has at least approached the status of a rule of customary international law’ (Hey, 1992: 307).

Research priorities for managing the impacts and dependencies of business upon food, energy, water and the environment

Delivering access to sufficient food, energy and water resources to ensure human wellbeing is a major concern for governments worldwide. However, it is crucial to account for the ‘nexus’ of interactions between these natural resources and the consequent implications for human wellbeing. The private sector has a critical role in driving positive change towards more sustainable nexus management and could reap considerable benefits from collaboration with researchers to devise solutions to some of the foremost sustainability challenges of today. Yet opportunities are missed because the private sector is rarely involved in the formulation of deliverable research priorities. We convened senior research scientists and influential business leaders to collaboratively identify the top forty questions that, if answered, would best help companies understand and manage their food-energy-water-environment nexus dependencies and impacts. Codification of the top order nexus themes highlighted research priorities around development of pragmatic yet credible tools that allow businesses to incorporate nexus interactions into their decision-making; demonstration of the business case for more sustainable nexus management; identification of the most effective levers for behaviour change; and understanding incentives or circumstances that allow individuals and businesses to take a leadership stance. Greater investment in the complex but productive relations between the private sector and research community will create deeper and more meaningful collaboration and cooperation.

Coping with the Risks of Nuclear Power Plants in the United Kingdom

Risk management is only one element in any national energy policy. There is a possibility that too much emphasis is currently being placed on nuclear-related safety issues at the expense of wider political considerations relevant to a national energy strategy. Of equal, and possibly of greater significance, are the following factors: 1. Institutional inertia and political expectations have been built into existing commitments to a particular mix of energy supply options. In Britain, the coal industry supplies about 80% of the current electricity output, and the electricity supply industry in turn takes about 70% of U. K. coal production. Some 225,000 miners are thus dependent on the U. K. electricity industry, and it would be politically suicidal to substantially alter that commitment in a hurry. Already the National Union of Mineworkers has forced the present government to alter declared policy of running down the old, uneconomic pits in favor of a £400 million investment in existing and new coal mines [1].

Safety and Public Trust

This exchange between Mr Brooke and Stephen Reed, Mayor of Harrisburg Pennsylvania, the community most immediately affected by the notorious TMI incident encapsulates the motivations behind much of the examination before the Sizewell B Inquiry with regard to the safety aspects of the CEGB’s application. The Inspector and his Assessors knew that the Inquiry could not examine the safety case in depth (261, 99A). They had neither the resources nor the expertise to do that. In any case, the public inquiry is not designed to undertake such a task, which is the function of the statutory licensing proceedings. The Generating Board itself only chose to present what it called the ‘highlights’ of its mammoth documentation on safety aspects in its Statement of Case and Proofs of Evidence. The totality of the safety case ran to 26 volumes and over three hundred supporting documents. Yet these were for only one stage, the pre-construction safety review, of what is essentially a continuing and evolving process (CEGB, P.10, 3).

The Tactics of the Sizewell B Inquiry

This chapter concentrates on how the Inquiry went about its tasks of reporting fully, fairly and thoroughly to the Secretary of State. While our central theme will be to emphasise the innovative and investigatory aspects of the Inquiry tactics or working practices, we stress that these elements were built onto and indeed were in a sense an extension of, the more conventional adversarial procedure and legal formalities found in the mainsteam of British public inquiries. These processes have been described in Chapters 2 and 3.

The Appraisal of Need and Economics

There is no more damning indictment of a major construction proposal than successfully to argue that it is not required at all, or that there are other means of providing the same benefits claimed by the proponents, means that are both cheaper and more socially acceptable. These are the ‘need’ and ‘economics’ critiques that have become commonplace in inquiries into major projects. Such accusations against energy development proposals were raised at both the Windscale and Belvoir Inquiries though not officially regarded as matters relevant for consideration by authorising ministers.

Uranium, Plutonium and Decommissioning

The nuclear fuel cycle is conventionally used to describe the life history of uranium fuel from mining to refining and enrichment, to fuel fabrication, fission, reprocessing and eventual disposal. We concentrate here on only four related areas, namely uranium mining, reprocessing and the alleged linkage between civil nuclear fuel use and its deployment or diversion into military weapons, the transportation of irradiated fuel, and the decommis-sioning of spent reactors. Figure 8.1 illustrates how these topics connect to the nuclear fuel cycle. The nature of the topics discussed in this chapter is significant. They raise profound moral and political issues. The Inquiry broke new grounds by dealing with such issues and the objecting groups undoubtedly used the Inquiry as a political forum. They also exploited the investigatory nature of the Inquiry to extract information and concessions from the Board. The pattern of evidence is illustrated in Figure 8.2.

The Procedures and Calendar of the Sizewell B Inquiry

The conduct of most public inquiries is governed by statutory rules of procedure or at least a code of practice. For the Sizewell B Inquiry, the Electricity Generating Stations and Overhead Lines (Inquiries Procedure) Rules 1981 (the 1981 Rules), were promulgated as the Inquiry itself was being established. These rules, like all inquiries procedure rules, are drafted to provide only a broad outline. The most important rule is Rule 8(1) which states that ‘Except as otherwise provided in these rules, the procedure at the inquiry shall be such as the appointed person shall in his discretion determine’. Given the backing of the sponsoring department, the Inspector has the scope to innovate and fashion the procedures as appropriate.

Setting the Scene for the Sizewell B PWR

The application by the CEGB to seek consent from the Secretary of State for Energy to build Britain’s first pressurised water reactor promoted a major engineering project of awesome complexity, the successful construc-tion of which set the pattern for British electricity policy for the life of at least two Parliaments. The Sizewell B decision was therefore an intensely political matter, the more so because of the post-Chernobyl atmosphere in which it was finally taken. Sizewell B began as a bipartisan reactor, but will be constructed as purely a Conservative Party project. Sizewell B was also the outcome of energy and economic policies, many of which had little or nothing to do with nuclear power per se.