In Whose Backyard? The Wicked Problem of Siting Nuclear Waste Repositories

Abstract

This article focuses on the “wicked problem” of siting nuclear waste repositories. It addresses the question of why local communities are not willing to host nuclear waste facilities, and what factors play a decisive role for acceptance and voluntarism. We discuss the extent to which compensations together with trust could be decisive in easing the decision making processes for a site search. Starting from the assumption that voluntary processes have been the preferred path in countries in an advanced stage of planning or constructing a repository, we question whether the factors that allowed for success in siting in Finland, Sweden and France or for failure (United Kingdom) can be of use in other contexts, e.g., in Germany. By analyzing the relationship between government, industry and the communities willing to host repositories, we discuss different forms of voluntarism in combination with various site typologies, i.e., Blowers′ “nuclear oases”; “communities with industry awareness”; “nuclear communities”, and “Springfield communities.”

Crafting effective oversight for the long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel on sites at risk of climate and coastal hazards

“…America's prospective "nuclear renaissance" (Duffey and Pioro, 2019;Hochman and Hochman, 2022;Nuttall, 2022) conflicts with climate change and the nationwide SNF impasse. Where the "wicked problems" of climate change (Incropera, 2015) and nuclear waste (Di Nucci and Brunnengräber, 2017;Brunnengräber, 2019) intersect, a unique opportunity exists to craft effective oversight to rectify SNF management deficiencies by future-proofing SNF storage sites from the harms of climate change. The same opportunity may apply more broadly to other climate mitigation technologies, including carbon capture and storage and carbon dioxide removal.…”