Stigma Happens: Social Problems in the Siting of Nuclear Waste Facilities

The paper by Metz challenges the view that stigma associated with a nuclear waste repository might lead to significant economic losses to the host region. We have been invited to comment on the general issues raised by this paper. We find that much of the evidence presented in the paper consists of factual and conceptual errors and misrepresentations of the research literature. Based on our review of evidence documenting the social and economic impacts of perceived risk, we conclude that stigma is an important phenomenon that is symptomatic of fundamental problems with the way in which nuclear waste facilities are sited.     

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.     

Decision-Making, Time Horizons, and Risk in the Very Long-Term Perspective

Some decisions made today have far-reaching consequences as exemplified by those concerning nuclear power and spent nuclear fuel. The investigation presented here uses a decision theoretic framework in which time horizons and the discounting of negative consequences play significant roles. The results indicated wide variations in the lengths of the planning horizons judged to be adequate not only across a number of activities, including nuclear waste management, but also across groups of subjects (e.g., engineering students, retired people, and nuclear fuel experts). The paper reports typical judgments and correlations between different variables for different groups of subjects. The differences across groups reflect potential sources of conflict, depending in part on different values and different perceptions of more or less uncertain facts. Discounting functions for negative consequences in the future were also established. A range in differences in the speed of discounting were found and illustrated. Furthermore, it was found that substantial proportions in all groups regarded negative consequences related to nuclear waste as nondiscountable. When asked about the effect of time until outcome on acceptable probability of a negative outcome, many subjects used the probability concept in an incoherent way, illustrating the great difficulty in communicating small probabilities in a long-term risk context.     

美国"大规模报复战略"出台成因初探

20世纪 5 0年代美国“大规模报复战略”出台的成因首先是时代的产物 ,即冷战的产物 ;其次 ,它是由战后美国两党斗争、麦卡锡主义等诸多政治因素的压力促成 ;再次 ,也是战后美国经济发展中经济波动压力的结果 ;最后 ,美国核武器及运载系统等方面军事技术的领先 ,是其出台的技术基础。     

核威慑的四大风险及其应对

风险社会中的核威慑自身具有很大的不确定性,容易引发技术风险、信任风险、政治风险和道德风险。对立的主客思维方式、失序的国际规范、内在的逻辑矛盾以及缺失的道德责任导致了核威慑风险的产生与升级,而其中的道德责任是根本性的影响因子。面对日趋严峻的核安全形势,各国应该培植政治智慧与道德理性,强化共生意识和本体性安全,构建平等、正义的核安全合作机制,积极打造安全共同体,让参与者共享安全与和平。拥核国应该承担更大的道德责任,切实维护核不扩散体制,努力铲除核恐怖主义,稳步推进世界无核化进程。     

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.     

Voluntary Siting and Equity: The MRS Facility Experience in Native America

This article focuses on aspects of intragenerational and intergenerational equity in the context of a unique policy experiment: the effort of the U.S. government to site a monitored, retrievable storage (MRS) facility for high-level civilian nuclear waste. This process and its outcomes are examined from both normative and subjective perspectives. While the MRS siting process was designed to be equitable, its eventual focus on Native American communities raises profound questions about environmental justice, as well as procedural, outcome, and intergenerational equity in cross-cultural contexts. The diverse reactions among Native American tribes demonstrate that translating theoretical concepts of equity into practice is an extraordinarily complex exercise. The MRS siting process, instead of being a bold policy experiment that promoted equity, emerges substantially flawed after its implementation in the Native American context.     

Economic Impact of Accelerated Cleanup on Regions Surrounding the U.S. DOE's Major Nuclear Weapons Sites

The regional economic impacts of the U.S. Department of Energy's accelerated environmental cleanup plan are estimated for the major nuclear weapons sites in Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington. The analysis shows that the impact falls heavily on the three relatively rural regions around the Savannah River (SC), Hanford (WA), and Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (ID) sites. A less aggressive phase-down of environmental management funds and separate funds to invest in education and infrastructure in the regions helps buffer the impacts on jobs, personal income, and gross regional product. Policy options open to the federal and state and local governments are discussed.     

Assessing the Performance of a Classification‐Based Vulnerability Analysis Model

In this article, a classification model based on the majority rule sorting (MR‐Sort) method is employed to evaluate the vulnerability of safety‐critical systems with respect to malevolent intentional acts. The model is built on the basis of a (limited‐size) set of data representing (a priori known) vulnerability classification examples. The empirical construction of the classification model introduces a source of uncertainty into the vulnerability analysis process: a quantitative assessment of the performance of the classification model (in terms of accuracy and confidence in the assignments) is thus in order. Three different app oaches are here considered to this aim: (i) a model–retrieval‐based approach, (ii) the bootstrap method, and (iii) the leave‐one‐out cross‐validation technique. The analyses are presented with reference to an exemplificative case study involving the vulnerability assessment of nuclear power plants.     

论我国核电产业的自主创新战略

通过制定核电产业发展战略的关联分析模型,应用该模型对我国核电产业进行了分析。在此基础上,提出了我国核电产业“引进消化,自主创新,批量生产”的自主创新战略,并从核电站的设计、制造、建造与运营四个方面分析了我国核电产业自主创新战略的目标、核心和技术路线。认为中国核电产业自主创新战略应制定自主创新整体规化、建立健全自主创新的管理支持体系、构建核电科技自主创新平台、建立完善的市场竞争机制和法律支持体系等。