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UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Setting the scene: Public participation in radioactive waste management
Public Participation in Radioactive Waste Management, EESC, Brussels, 7.9.15
Dr Paul DorfmanEnergy Institute
University College London (UCL)
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
2011/70/EURATOM
• Establishing a Community framework for the responsible and safe management of spent fuel and radioactive waste.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
2011/70/EURATOMArticle 10: Transparency
• ‘Member States shall ensure that the public be given the necessary opportunities to participate effectively in the decision-making process regarding spent fuel and radioactive waste management in accordance with national legislation and international obligations.’
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
2011/70/EURATOM
• ‘Transparency is important in the management of spent fuel and radioactive waste’.
• ‘Transparency should be provided by ensuring effective public information and opportunities for all stakeholders concerned, including local authorities and the public, to participate in the decision-making processes’.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
2011/70/EURATOM
• ‘Radioactive waste management means all activities that relate to handling, pretreatment, treatment, conditioning, storage, or disposal of radioactive waste, excluding off-site transportation.’
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
EU legal framework
• EU Directive on Public Participation in Environmental Plans and Programmes.
• EU Public Participation Provisions of the Aarhus Convention.
• EU Directive on Strategic Environmental Assessment.• EU Directives on Integrated Pollution and Prevention
Control, and Environment Impact Assessment.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
No longer an optional ‘add-on’
• Ensures that future policy meets the needs of the EU public.
• Ensures that policy options are socially, culturally and politically acceptable - as well as technologically feasible.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
People and RWM
• Given the scale of long-term investments that are now needed - EU publics should play a key role in taking these critical, social, ethical, environmental and economic decisions.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
and
• Governments and industry understand that public acceptance of RWM is essential.
• People want to get involved in things that effect them.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Balancing ‘expert knowledge’ with ‘everyday knowledge’
• For controversial issues.• For complex problems with uncertain futures.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
If done right
• Agree and deliver national, regional, city, and local strategic objectives - at at a lower cost to the public purse and with less bureaucracy than traditional processes.
• Integration of public, policy, and expert knowledge allows for greater accountability, transparency, much better ‘take-up’ of change and improved long-term likelihood of more flexible adaption.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Trust-building is the key
• Straightforward and open negotiation.• Clarity about purpose, mechanisms and scope.• Inclusion of diverse stakeholders.• Balanced information and knowledge sharing.• Independent expertise.• Good mechanisms for accountability.• Appropriate oversight and evaluation.• Fair distribution of resources.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Public understanding
• Research shows that people can work with complex data.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Tools
• Scenario building and modelling.• Participatory multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA).• Virtual reality techniques - 3D visualization and
geographic information systems [GIS] mapping.• Stakeholder dialogues, public meetings, citizens’
panels, events, forums, workshops, interactive web-sites.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Works well for
• ‘What if’ questions and ‘trade-off’ options, risks and outcomes.
• Framing boundaries.• Exploring scenarios through quantitative
modeling.• Evaluation and review.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Broad participation
• Policymakers, government departments, devolved administrations, local government and local authorities, regulators, operators, industrial corporations and businesses, trade associations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), local community based organisations (CBOs), independent experts, and academic institutions.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
‘Joined-up’ thinking
• Innovation at political, administrative, economic, social and environmental levels.
• Influence at local, regional and central governance levels.
• Connects central representative democracy to direct participation at ‘grass-roots’.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
So what’s the problem ?
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
UK ‘Flowers Dilemma’
• Does disposal ‘concept’ a priori imply new-build?
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
There’s no ‘free lunch’
• Not a simple task to encourage citizens and industry to participate co-operatively.
• Tensions can arise over the framing of boundary conditions, whether all main stakeholders are involved and included, even-handed resourcing, access to information, the acceptance of all stakeholders as equal contributors, and over perceived openness to serious policy influence.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
2011/70/EURATOM
• ‘Member States shall ensure that the national framework require licence holders to provide for and maintain adequate financial and human resources to fulfil their obligations with respect to the safety of spent fuel and radioactive waste management’.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Aarhus Convention
• Three central pillars of the Aarhus Convention:• Access to information.• Access to public participation.• Access to justice.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
BEPPER
• Fourth pillar: Access to resources• Essential requirement for effective and
constructive public participation.• Vital to ensure ongoing and enduring civil society
participation in RWM processes.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
And back to EURATOM…
• Considering ‘lessons learned’.• Ways forward.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
UK response
• United Kingdom National report on Compliance with European Council Directive 2011/70/Euratom, Aug 2015.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
However
• Managing Radioactive Waste Safely: Implementing Geological Disposal, 2013.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
DAD is dead - steer away fromUNCLE
• Decide, Announce, Defend.• Unlimited Nuclear Consultation Leading to
Exhaustion.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
So keep an ‘open mind’
• Coherent and timely ‘upstream’ involvement strategy is necessary.
• But if you ‘close down’ options, people will worry.• And if people worry, the process may fail.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Get it right
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Submarine Dismantling Project (SDP)UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), 2014
• ‘Public Consultation on Site for the Interim Storage of Intermediate Level Radioactive Waste’.
• https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/submarine-dismantling-project-site-for-the-interim-storage-of-intermediate-level-radioactive-waste
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
SDP
• ‘SDP ILW interim storage site selection : public and stakeholder engagement’, 2014
• https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/364187/20140909-SDP_ISS_Approach_to-public_and_stakeholder_engagement-_PSE_v2_1_FINAL.PDF
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Prepare to meet ‘stakeholders’
• Be agnostic about outcomes.• It’s the process that counts.• Success is a function of trust-building, and how
the process works with and integrates the knowledge, experience and ideas of people in their country, region, city, town, or community.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Democratically legitimate RWM process
• Public acceptance is key to RWM.• EU, MS, and industry want to communicate with
European citizens about RWM.• Communication is a two-way process.• Participatory governance can achieve a shared,
knowledge-based, democratically legitimate EC and MS RWM policy process.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Participation as a function ofRWM
• Public participation framework to allow MS to evolve viable RWM policy.
• In order to make RWM work (viable investment plans).
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
It works
• Clear evidence that engaging people in a meaningful way can change attitudes, behaviour and actions.
• When participation is clearly connected to representative and regulatory democratic decision-making processes.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Strategic goal of publicinvolvement in RWM
• Given the long time-scales involved, the strategic goal of public participation in RWM may not be to find the single ‘right technical answer’.
• Rather to bring people together, and keep them talking to each other, to ensure that better decisions are made in future.
• Go a little slower to get there quicker.
UCL ENERGY INSTITUTEUCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
Overview and ‘Toolkit’Dorfman et al, EESC, 2012.
• ‘Future national energy mix scenarios: Public engagement processes in the EU and elsewhere’.
• http://www.eesc.europa.eu/resources/docs/20121212-final-report-eesc-comm-05-2012_formatted.pdf
Thank You
www.ucl.ac.uk/energy