Trust as a Determinant of Opposition to a High-Level Radioactive Waste Repository: Analysis of a Structural Model

Residents in the State of Nevada hold strong opinions about the federal government's proposal to site the nation's first high-level radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The model developed in this study is designed to examine the relationship between public perceptions of risk, trust in risk management, and potential economic impacts of the current repository program using a confirmatory multivariate method known as covariance structure analysis. The data used to test the model was collected in a 1989 statewide survey of Nevada residents. The results indicate that, for a statewide sample, perceptions of potential economic benefits do not have a significant role in predicting support or opposition to the repository program. On the other hand, risk perceptions and the level of trust in repository management are closely related to each other and to positions on Yucca Mountain. Trust directly influences risk perceptions which, in turn, have a direct effect on the attitude toward the repository, and an indirect effect through perceived stigma effects.     

The Nevada Initiative: A Risk Communication Fiasco

The U.S. Congress has designated Yucca Mountain, Nevada as the only potential site to be studied for the nation's first high-level nuclear waste repository. People in Nevada strongly oppose the program, managed by the U.S. Department of Energy. Survey research shows that the public believes there are great risks from a repository program, in contrast to a majority of scientists who feel the risks are acceptably small. Delays in the repository program resulting in part from public opposition in Nevada have concerned the nuclear power industry, which collects the fees for the federal repository program and believes it needs the repository as a final disposal facility for its high-level nuclear wastes. To assist the repository program, the American Nuclear Energy Council (ANEC), an industry group, sponsored a massive advertising campaign in Nevada. The campaign attempted to assure people that the risks of a repository were small and that the repository studies should proceed. The campaign failed because its managers misunderstood the issues underlying the controversy, attempted a covert manipulation of public opinion that was revealed, and most importantly, lacked the public trust that was necessary to communicate credibly about the risks of a nuclear waste facility.     

Managing Nuclear Waste from Power Plants

National strategies to manage nuclear waste from commercial nuclear power plants are analyzed and compared. The current strategy is to try to operate a repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, to dispose of high-level nuclear waste underground. The main alternatives involve temporary above-ground storage at a centralized facility or next to nuclear power plants. If either of these is pursued now, the analysis assumes that a repository will be built in 2100 for waste not subsequently put to use. The analysis treats various uncertainties: whether a repository at Yucca Mountain would be licensed, possible theft and misuse of the waste, innovations in repository design and waste management, the potential availability of a cancer cure by 2100, and possible future uses of nuclear waste. The objectives used to compare alternatives include concerns for health and safety, environmental and socioeconomic impacts, and direct economic costs, as well as equity concerns (geographical, intergenerational, and procedural), indirect economic costs to electricity ratepayers, federal government responsibility to manage nuclear waste, and implications of theft and misuse of nuclear waste. The analysis shows that currently building an underground repository at Yucca Mountain is inferior to other available strategies by the equivalent of $10,000 million to $50,000 million. This strongly suggests that this policy should be reconsidered. A more detailed analysis using the framework presented would help to define a new national policy to manage nuclear waste.     

Equity, Efficiency, Uncertainty, and the Mitigation of Global Climate Change

Policies to mitigate potential damages from global climate change impose costs on the current generation to provide benefits to future generations. This article examines how comparisons among three stylized policies-business-as-usual, mitigation of climate change, and compensation for climate damages-depend on social preferences with respect to risk and intertemporal equity. Also examined is the opportunity-cost criterion, which asserts that mitigation should not be chosen if its net present value is smaller than that of business-as-usual. Analysis reveals that the discount factor used to evaluate whether mitigation satisfies this criterion depends on preferences regarding risk and intertemporal inequality of consumption, and on the risk of the compensation policy. Risk aversion favors mitigation over business-as-usual. If society is neutral to inequality, risk aversion disfavors compensation, but if society is inequality averse, the effect of risk aversion on preferences between compensation and business-as-usual is ambiguous. Inequality aversion tends to favor business-as-usual over both alternative policies provided that, roughly speaking, the anticipated future improvements in welfare exceed the anticipated climate damages.     

The Vulnerability of the Nevada Visitor Economy to a Repository at Yucca Mountain

This article reviews the studies commissioned by the Nevada Nuclear Waste Project Office to estimate the economic impact of a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. Case studies found that visitor impacts occur for some analogous facilities, but not for others. Assessments of behavioral intent indicate that at least some economic agents would avoid visiting Nevada under repository scenarios. A third set of studies tested the risk-aversion and negative-imagery models of visitor decision making; people avoid visiting places associated with either a significant health risk or negative imagery, but it has yet to be shown that a repository would induce these perceptions in nearby places. In sum, the NWPO-sponsored studies suggest the potential for visitor impacts, but do confirm that these effects will occur.     

Sizing Up a Superstorm: Exploring the Role of Recalled Experience and Attribution of Responsibility in Judgments of Future Hurricane Risk

Research suggests that hurricane‐related risk perception is a critical predictor of behavioral response, such as evacuation. Less is known, however, about the precursors of these subjective risk judgments, especially when time has elapsed from a focal event. Drawing broadly from the risk communication, social psychology, and natural hazards literature, and specifically from concepts adapted from the risk information seeking and processing model and the protective action decision model, we examine how individuals’ distant recollections, including attribution of responsibility for the effects of a storm, attitude toward relevant information, and past hurricane experience, relate to risk judgment for a future, similar event. The present study reports on a survey involving U.S. residents in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York (n = 619) impacted by Hurricane Sandy. While some results confirm past findings, such as that hurricane experience increases risk judgment, others suggest additional complexity, such as how various types of experience (e.g., having evacuated vs. having experienced losses) may heighten or attenuate individual‐level judgments of responsibility. We suggest avenues for future research, as well as implications for federal agencies involved in severe weather/natural hazard forecasting and communication with public audiences.     

On-Site Storage of High Level Nuclear Waste: Attitudes and Perceptions of Local Residents

No public policy issue has been as difficult as high-level nuclear waste. Debates continue regarding Yucca Mountain as a disposal site, and—more generally—the appropriateness of geologic disposal and the need to act quickly. Previous research has focused on possible social, political, and economic consequences of a facility in Nevada. Impacts have been predicted to be potentially large and to emanate mainly from stigmatization of the region due to increased perceptions of risk. Analogous impacts from leaving waste at power plants have been either ignored or assumed to be negligible. This paper presents survey results on attitudes of residents in three counties where nuclear waste is currently stored. Topics include perceived risk, knowledge of nuclear waste and radiation, and impacts on jobs, tourism, and housing values from leaving waste on site. Results are similar to what has been reported for Nevada; the public is concerned about possible adverse effects from on-site storage of waste.     

Perceived Risk, Stigma, and Potential Economic Impacts of a High-Level Nuclear Waste Repository in Nevada

This study investigates the potential impacts of the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, upon tourism, retirement and job-related migration, and business development in Las Vegas and the state. Adverse impacts may be expected to result from perceptions of risk, stigmatization, and socially amplified reactions to "unfortunate events" associated with the repository (major and minor accidents, discoveries of radiation releases, evidence of mismanagement, attempts to sabotage or disrupt the facility, etc.). The conceptual underpinnings of risk perception, stigmatization, and social amplification are discussed and empirical data are presented to demonstrate how nuclear images associated with Las Vegas and the State of Nevada might trigger adverse economic effects. The possibility that intense negative imagery associated with the repository may cause significant harm to Nevada's economy can no longer be ignored by serious attempts to assess the risks and impacts of this unique facility. The behavioral processes described here appear relevant as well to the social impact assessment of any proposed facility that produces, uses, transports, or disposes of hazardous materials.     

Waste Package Performance Evaluations for the Proposed High-Level Nuclear Waste Repository at Yucca Mountain

The evaluation studies of the proposed repository for long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, are underway. Fulfillment of the requirements for limiting dose to the public, which includes containment of the radioactive waste emplaced in the proposed repository and subsequent slow release of radionuclides from the Engineered Barrier System (EBS) into the geosphere, will rely on a robust waste container design, among other EBS components. Part of the evaluation process involves sensitivity studies aimed at elucidating which model parameters contribute most to the waste package and overlying drip shield degradation characteristics. The model parameters identified for this study include (1) general corrosion rate parameters and (2) stress corrosion cracking (SCC) parameters. Temperature dependence and parameter uncertainty are evaluated for the general corrosion rate model parameters while for the SCC model parameters, uncertainty treatment of stress intensity factor, crack initiation threshold, and manufacturing flaw orientations are evaluated. Based on these evaluations new uncertainty distributions are generated and recommended for future analyses. Also, early waste package failures due to improper heat treatment were added to the waste package degradation model. The results of these investigations indicate that the waste package failure profiles are governed by the manufacturing flaw orientation model parameters.     

Public Reliance on Risk Communication Channels in the Wake of a Cryptosporidium Outbreak

In the spring of 1993, about 39% of Milwaukee-area residents suffered through a nationally publicized illness brought about by cryptosporidium, a parasite that had infested the metropolitan drinking water supply. Our study, based on a telephone survey of 610 local adult residents, indicates that worry about becoming ill in the future with cryptosporidiosis relates more strongly and consistently to public reliance on, and use of, media for cryptosporidium information than do a range of risk perception and experience variables. We propose that more studies should take an audience-centered approach to understanding risk communication.     

Assessing the Cost of Large‐Scale Power Outages to Residential Customers

Residents in developed economies depend heavily on electric services. While distributed resources and a variety of new smart technologies can increase the reliability of that service, adopting them involves costs, necessitating tradeoffs between cost and reliability. An important input to making such tradeoffs is an estimate of the value customers place on reliable electric services. We develop an elicitation framework that helps individuals think systematically about the value they attach to reliable electric service. Our approach employs a detailed and realistic blackout scenario, full or partial (20 A) backup service, questions about willingness to pay (WTP) using a multiple bounded discrete choice method, information regarding inconveniences and economic losses, and checks for bias and consistency. We applied this method to a convenience sample of residents in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, finding that respondents valued a kWh for backup services they assessed to be high priority more than services that were seen as low priority ($0.75/kWh vs. $0.51/kWh). As more information about the consequences of a blackout was provided, this difference increased ($1.2/kWh vs. $0.35/kWh), and respondents' uncertainty about the backup services decreased (Full: $11 to $9.0, Partial: $13 to $11). There was no evidence that the respondents were anchored by their previous WTP statements, but they demonstrated only weak scope sensitivity. In sum, the consumer surplus associated with providing a partial electric backup service during a blackout may justify the costs of such service, but measurement of that surplus depends on the public having accurate information about blackouts and their consequences.     

Public hospitals: an assessment and plan for the future.

We are currently living in very difficult times for most health care providers. Even though we have always known it, the fact that resources for health care are limited is now abundantly apparent to consumers, health care providers, fiscal intermediaries, government (local, state, and federal), health care planners, and policy makers. Hospitals, especially, are being severely pressured to reduce resource consumption and costs. Conditions that are difficult for nonpublic hospitals are critical for public hospitals in general and nearly fatal for rural public hospitals. Fortunately, nonpublic hospitals are beginning to realize for the first time that their future depends, to a significant degree, on a strong and financially healthy public hospital system. If the public hospital, the hospital of last resort, closes, medically indigent patients will have to be treated in nonpublic hospitals, with the resultant medical, financial, economic, political, and social consequences. Therefore, the importance of public hospitals has to be even better recognized and appreciated and these institutions actively supported in order for the private and total health care systems to be successful.     

Risks of Hazardous Waste Sites versus Asteroid and Comet Impacts: Accounting for the Discrepancies in U.S. Resource Allocation

Approximately $6 billion is spent annually in the United States on the cleanup of sites regulated under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA, or Superfund). The current health risks posed by such sites are thought to be quite small; the expenditures are justified primarily as protecting hypothetical future residents of these sites. Approximately 0.05% of this amount, or $3 million, is spent annually by the U.S. government on the detection of asteroids or comets that could strike the earth. Such damaging impacts do occur from time to time--most recently in 1908 in an unpopulated region of Siberia--but no person is confirmed ever to have died as a result. Anticipated impacts over the course of 1 million years would yield deaths that, when annualized, total approximately 4,000 per year. The risk reduction goal for CERCLA is 15 orders of magnitude greater than that for asteroid/comet detection. A modest increase in resources devoted to asteroid detection would greatly increase the chances of early detection of a threatening object, allowing an effective defense to be attempted. This article argues that the much lower risk-to-resources ratio for CERCLA cleanups than for asteroid and comet detection can be explained by four primary factors: (1) the regard for future generations, since CERCLA benefits mainly the unborn; (2) concrete fears, since toxics are much more feared than asteroids or comets; (3) the source of the threat, since toxic contamination is caused by human beings, unlike impacts from space objects; and (4) the greater political constituencies for hazardous waste cleanup than for space object detection.     

Probabilistic Risk Analysis for a High-Level Radioactive Waste Repository

A probabilistic risk analysis (PRA) for a high-level radioactive waste repository is very important since it gives an estimate of its health impacts, allowing comparisons to be made with the health impacts of competing technologies. However, it is extremely difficult to develop a credible PRA for a specific repository site because of large uncertainties in future climate, hydrology, geological processes, etc. At best, such a PRA would not be understandable to the public. An alternative proposed here is to develop a PRA for an average U.S. site, taking all properties of the site to be the U.S. average. The results are equivalent to the average results for numerous randomly selected sites. Such a PRA is presented here; it is easy to understand, and it is not susceptible to substantial uncertainty. Applying the results to a specific repository site then requires only a simple, intuitively acceptable "leap of faith" in assuming that with large expenditures of effort and money, experts can select a site that would be at least as secure as a randomly selected site.     

Reinhardt on reform. Interview by Donna Vavala

Almost since the federal government took its giant step into health care delivery and financing in 1965 with Medicare and Medicaid, the emphasis in Washington has been on reducing the costs of health care. Almost all federal health law subsequent to those two programs has been aimed at cost control, even when the titles of the bills promised a more noble purpose. The most notable exception is the law establishing end-stage renal disease coverage, but it has become a prime exacerbator of rising costs. Not even the designers of the federal programs envisioned how quickly health care costs would rise and how substantial the increases would be. The federal tab in 1993 was $280.6 billion. In 1960, it was $3 billion and in 1970 it was $17.8 billion. And overall health care costs have followed a similar curve, growing from 5.3 percent of the U.S. GDP in 1960 and 7.4 percent in 1970 to 13.8 percent in 1993. The end is not in sight. Economists are predicting growth to 18 percent of GDP by the next century. Uwe E. Reinhardt, PhD, James Madison Professor of Political Economics in the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, does not believe that the "bite" will become that large, but he does expect increases to continue into the near future. In the interview recorded in this article, Professor Reinhardt assesses both the current and his predicted financial scenario for the health care field.     

Multiple criteria decision analysis of treatment and land-filling technologies for waste incineration residues

In this paper, we present a real-world case realized in Switzerland on behalf of the federal agency in charge of the waste policy. The incineration of urban wastes generates hazardous residues that need specific treatment and/or land-filling technologies. The variety of local situations and appraisals led to the choice of very different solutions. Moreover, proponents were keen to propose new technologies. The purpose of this study was to provide the background for a national policy that would apply to all future projects.     

Determinants and Mapping of Collective Perceptions of Technological Risk: The Case of the Second Nuclear Power Plant in Taiwan

Nuclear power is a highly controversial and salient example of environmental risk. The siting or operating of a nuclear power plant often faces widespread public opposition. Although studies of public perceptions of nuclear power date back to 1970s, little research attempts to explain the spatial heterogeneity of risk attitude toward nuclear power among individuals or communities. This article intends to improve the knowledge about the major factors contributing to nuclear power plant risk perceptions by mapping the geographical patterns of local risk perception and examining the determinants in forming the nature and distribution of the perceived risk among potentially affected population. The analysis was conducted by a case study of the Second Nuclear Power Plant (SNPP) in Taiwan by using a novel methodology that incorporates a comprehensive risk perception (CRP) model into an ethnographic approach called risk perception mapping (RPM). First, we examined the determinants of local nuclear power risk perceptions through the CRP model and multivariate regression analysis. Second, the results were integrated with the RPM approach to map and explain the spatial pattern of risk perceptions. The findings demonstrate that the respondents regard the nuclear power plant as an extremely high‐risk facility, causing them to oppose the SNPP and reject the compensation payment to accept its continuing operation. Results also indicate that perceptions of nuclear power risk were mainly influenced by social trust, psychological and socioeconomic attributes, proximity, and the perceived effects of the SNPP on the quality of everyday life.     

Local Acceptance of a High-Level Nuclear Waste Repository

The siting of nuclear waste facilities has been very difficult in all countries. Recent experience in Sweden indicates, however, that it may be possible, under certain circumstances, to gain local support for the siting of a high-level nuclear waste (HLNW) repository. The article reports on a study of attitudes and risk perceptions of people living in four municipalities in Sweden where HLNW siting was being intensely discussed at the political level, in media, and among the public. Data showed a relatively high level of consensus on acceptability of at least further investigation of the issue; in two cases local councils have since voted in favor of a go-ahead, and in one case only a very small majority defeated the issue. Models of policy attitudes showed that these were related to attitude to nuclear power, attributes of the perceived HLNW risk, and trust. Factors responsible for acceptance are discussed at several levels. One is the attitude to nuclear power, which is becoming more positive, probably because no viable alternatives are in sight. Other factors have to do with the extensive information programs conducted in these municipalities, and with the logical nature of the conclusion that they would be good candidates for hosting the national HLNW repository.     

Prevention,Adaptation, and Threat Denial: Flooding Experiences in the Netherlands

Delta areas such as the Netherlands are more and more at risk of future flooding due to global climate change. Motivating residents living in flood-prone areas to effectively cope with local floods may lead to minimization of material losses and loss of life. The aim of this research was to investigate whether the extent to which residents had been exposed to flooding in the past was a key factor in motivating residents to effectively cope with future flooding. We also focused on the psychological variables that mediated this relationship. We conducted a survey (N = 516) among flood victims and nonvictims. We assessed subjective experiences due to past flooding, affective and cognitive appraisals, and coping responses. Results show that victims reported stronger emotions (negative and positive), and the receipt of more social support due to past flooding than did nonvictims. Moreover, victims worry more about future flooding, perceive themselves as more vulnerable to future flooding, perceive the consequences of future flooding as more severe, and have stronger intentions to take adaptive actions in the future than nonvictims. Structural equation modeling reveals that the latter effect was fully mediated by specific experiences and appraisals. Insights into factors and processes that have the potential to motivate residents to effectively cope with future floods may prove helpful in developing interventions to inform residents how to act effectively in case of an imminent flood.     

Informing the Public About Uncertain Risks

Many problems arise in connection with the communication of risk information. In this article the content of the information communicated is taken as a starting-point for analyzing the risk communication process. We studied the way in which authorities communicated health risks to local residents in Dutch soil pollution situations and found that communication problems were characterized more by misunderstanding and conflict between parties with different views and interests than by a lack of understanding. Therefore, it is important to look more closely at the way the communicators of information (in our cases, officials) select risk information from risk assessments, and to study the effects that the information selected has on the receivers (in our cases, residents). Both the process of selection by the officials and the process of interpretation by the residents will be shown to be influenced by the different institutional backgrounds. The article presents a new approach to risk communication. Both the risk information presented by the authorities and the public reactions to this risk information are considered to reflect the institutional background of authorities and residents, and can be analyzed in these terms. Such an approach has consequences for the study of risk communication and the manner in which it is practiced.