Looking at the politics of nuclear waste, this book examines the subject from an international standpoint. Other works by the author Andrew Blowers include "The Limits of Power" and "Something in the Air", and he has been co-editor on books such as "Nuclear Power in Crisis".
The question of what to do with radioactive waste has dogged political administrations of nuclear-powered electricity-producing nations since the inception of the technology in the 1950s. As the issue rises to the forefront of current energy and environmental policy debates, a critical policy analysis of radioactive waste management in the UK provides important insights for the future. Nuclear Waste Politics sets out a detailed historical and social scientific analysis of radioactive waste management and disposal in the UK from the 1950s up to the present day; drawing international comparisons with Sweden, Finland, Canada and the US. A theoretical framework is presented for analysing nuclear politics: blending literatures on technology policy, environmental ethics and the geography and politics of scale. The book proffers a new theory of "ethical incrementalism" and practical policy suggestions to facilitate a fair and efficient siting process for radioactive waste management facilities. The book argues that a move away from centralised, high capital investment national siting towards a regional approach using deep borehole disposal, could resolve many of the problems that the high stakes, inflexible "megaproject" approach has caused across the world. This book is an important resource for academics and researchers in the areas of environmental management, energy policy, and science and technology studies.
This volume examines the national plans that ten Euratom countries plus Switzerland and the United States are developing to address high-level radioactive waste storage and disposal. The chapters, which were written by 23 international experts, outline European and national regulations, technology choices, safety criteria, monitoring systems, compensation schemes, institutional structures, and approaches to public involvement. Key stakeholders, their values and interests are introduced, the responsibilities and authority of different actors considered, decision-making processes are analyzed as well as the factors influencing different national policy choices. The views and expectations of different communities regarding participatory decision making and compensation and the steps that have been or are being taken to promote dialogue and constructive problem-solving are also considered.
Environmental concerns have pushed the decarbonisation of the European economy high on the EU political agenda. This has renewed old debates about the role of nuclear energy in the European economy and society that gravitate around the issues of nuclear safety and radioactive waste management (RWM). RWM carries many elements of technical complexity, scientific uncertainty and social value, which makes policy decisions highly controversial. Public participation is usually believed to improve these decisions, ease their implementation by solving substantial conflicts, and enhance trust and social acceptance. Drawing upon sources including Euratom and the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, the author offers a detailed overview of public involvement in RWM in the EU, analysing the implementation of national policies through official programmes and the views of stakeholders from all Member States. This book highlights the key successes and challenges in the quest for greater participation in RWM, and extrapolates insights for other contested energy infrastructures and controversies in land use. This book will be of great relevance to students, scholars and practitioners with an interest in radioactive waste management, energy policy, and EU environmental politics and policy.
In 1979, provoked by the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, governors of states hosting disposal facilities for low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) refused to accept additional shipments. The resulting shortage of disposal sites for wastes spurred Congress to devolve responsibility for establishing new, geographically diffuse LLRW disposal sites to states and regional compacts, with siting authorities often employing socio-economic and political data to target communities that would give little resistance to their plans. The communities, however, were far from compliant, organizing nearly 1000 opposition events that ended up blocking the implementation of any new disposal sites. Sherman provides comprehensive coverage of this opposition, testing hypotheses regarding movement mobilization and opposition strategy by analyzing the frequency and disruptive qualities of activism. In the process, he bridges applied policy questions about hazardous waste disposal with broader questions about the dynamics of social movements and the intergovernmental politics of policy implementation. The issues raised in this book are sure to be renewed as interest grows in nuclear power and the disposal of the resulting waste remains uncertain.
The promise and peril of nuclear power have been a preoccupation of the modern age. Robert Duffy now examines the politics of nuclear power over the last 50 years, relating broad trends in American politics to changes in the regulation of the nuclear industry to show how federal policies in this area have been made, implemented, and altered.
Since its enactment in 1970, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has become one node of a massive, sprawling, multibillion-dollar regime that is considered essential to slowing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and weapons technology. However, according to Shampa Biswas, these well-intentioned efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons deflect attention from a hierarchical global nuclear order dominated by powerful states and capitalist interests that benefit from the status quo. In Nuclear Desire, Biswas proposes that pursuit and production of nuclear power is sustained by this unequal global order whose persistent and daily harmful effects are experienced by some of the most vulnerable bodies around the world. Making a compelling case for nuclear abolition, she shows that the path to nuclear zero is more successfully traversed through the perspective of postcolonialism and the political economy of injustice?rather than through the prism of “security.” In the end, the nonproliferation regime maintains a hierarchy of haves and have-nots, one that reinforces inequalities that run counter to the NPT’s broader goal. Innovative, forcefully argued, and long overdue, Nuclear Desire moves beyond conventional critiques to give scholars and students of international relations new insights into how a more secure world might simultaneously be more peaceful and just.
This book examines the complex political, legal, and scientific issues relating to the disposal of nuclear waste, an issue that is gaining attention as demands for energy increase exponentially.
In the early 1990s, Russian President Boris Yeltsin revealed that for the previous thirty years the Soviet Union had dumped vast amounts of dangerous radioactive waste into rivers and seas in blatant violation of international agreements. The disclosure caused outrage throughout the Western world, particularly since officials from the Soviet Union had denounced environmental pollution by the United States and Britain throughout the cold war. Poison in the Well provides a balanced look at the policy decisions, scientific conflicts, public relations strategies, and the myriad mishaps and subsequent cover-ups that were born out of the dilemma of where to house deadly nuclear materials. Why did scientists and politicians choose the sea for waste disposal? How did negotiations about the uses of the sea change the way scientists, government officials, and ultimately the lay public envisioned the oceans? Jacob Darwin Hamblin traces the development of the issue in Western countries from the end of World War II to the blossoming of the environmental movement in the early 1970s. This is an important book for students and scholars in the history of science who want to explore a striking case study of the conflicts that so often occur at the intersection of science, politics, and international diplomacy.
This book presents the universal issue of radioactive waste management from the perspective of the German legal system, analysing how lawmakers have responded to the problem of nuclear waste over the course of the last seventy years. In this book, Robert Rybski unwraps and explains the perplexing legal and social issues related to radioactive waste. He takes readers through the entire ‘life-cycle’: from the moment that radioactive material is classified as radioactive waste, through to the period of interim storage, and right up to its final disposal. However, this last step in radioactive waste management (that of final disposal) has not yet been achieved in Germany, or anywhere in the world, and has been the subject of hefty public debate for dozens of years. As a result, the book analyses the most recent regulations in place to enable final disposal. This book will be of interest to energy policy experts, academics and professionals who work in the area of nuclear energy.