Final disposal of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) from nuclear power plants (NPPs) is an ethical issue with implications within and across generations. We address this issue from the perspective of nuclear ...communities that host nuclear waste disposal sites. These are primarily the communities that face injustice due to the potential radiological risks. A resident survey (n = 454) was conducted in two Finnish nuclear communities, i.e. Eurajoki and Pyhäjoki, that are being considered as alternative sites for a second repository for SNF. The nuclear waste management (NWM) company Posiva is already building a repository in Eurajoki, the first in Finland. These communities are in different stages of their lifecycles as nuclear communities. We investigated the residents' conceptions of justice and trust regarding the repository SNF management and its main actors, and how these conceptions related to acceptance of the repository. The main findings show that residents of both communities perceived intragenerational and intergenerational injustices to be important in the procedures and the distribution of risks and benefits of the proposed repository. Claims regarding justice and trust were related to the acceptance of the repository. The community with the longer history with NWM expressed greater mistrust and perceived greater procedural injustice than the community with less earlier experience, which - in turn - expressed more concern over intragenerational distributive justice than the former community. Moreover, having longer history with NWM did not lead to a different understanding regarding responsibility toward future generations as resident's in both communities expressed similar concern over intergenerational justice. Moreover, having more experience of NWM did not enhance local acceptance. We emphasize that these results should be understood in the light of the prevailing situation in Finland, where the planning of the second repository is at a very early stage.
This paper develops a perspective of open dialogue culture to view policy processes encompassing the micro-, meso- and macro-levels. Based on the Open Dialogue approach in mental health care ...developed in Finland and globally extended, the authors identify the core principles of open dialogue that could facilitate an inclusive, reflective transformation to sustainable development. Key principles include dialogism, and tolerance of uncertainty. In the study, the authors analyse the open dialogue culture in four policy sectors and cross-sectoral initiatives at the local and national levels in Finland since 1980s. The four sectors are mental health care, maternity and childcare, basic education, and spent nuclear fuel disposal. Based on the findings of the retrospective study, this research suggests that an open dialogue culture can be cultivated effectively through systematic training of experts and leaders, and as the Open Dialogue approach suggests, by creating spaces for non-hierarchic dialogues between experts and citizens. Deeply rooted power asymmetries appear among the primary hindering factors. More research on the applicability of the principles of Open Dialogue is needed to study their relevance in the context of sustainability policy.
After decades of preparation, the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel has reached the construction stage in Finland, and the neighboring Sweden is likely to soon follow in the footsteps. These ...Nordic countries rely on a similar technical concept based on passive safety, advocated as a means of minimizing the burden to future generations. The scholarly literature on the ethics of nuclear waste management has thus far paid little attention to the views of the broader publics on the associated ethical challenges. This article helps to fill the gap through a longitudinal and comparative analysis of ethical discussion of the final disposal of SNF in news articles and letters to the editor in four leading Finnish and Swedish daily newspapers in 2008–2015. The study period included major milestones in the licensing processes of the respective two repository projects. The article examines the attention paid to intra- and intergenerational distributive and procedural justice, the changes in the ethical agenda over time, and the societal actor groups that receive attention in the media. The analysis reveals two distinct ethical media agendas: (1) the news article agenda that is dominated by framings of the main players (industry, politicians, authorities, and experts) and largely excludes future generations from the scope of justice, and (2) the agenda represented by the letters to the editor, which focuses on intergenerational justice concerns. Particularly, in the Finnish letters to the editor the value of the lives of distant future generations was discounted implicitly.
While the construction of collective promises is vital to the success of any techno-scientific innovation, it also entails the risk of overpromising and cycles of hype and disappointment. This ...article explores the discursive construction of the nuclear sector’s latest promise concerning small modular reactors (SMRs), using Finland as an example. It provides a brief overview of the Finnish context of SMR development and analyzes it's coverage in the leading Finnish daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat 2000–2022. Efforts at promise construction have so far been aimed at building legitimacy for SMRs, while strengthening credibility – another key element of successful promise construction – has only just begun. The increasing number of SMR-related articles indicates a growing hype, but the absence of a corresponding ‘hype language’ suggests that the considerable media attention does not automatically translate into emphatic media coverage and discursive hyping.
We examine the realization of the umbrella promise to assume national responsibility for the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel. Three case studies are used to illustrate how Finland delivers on ...the promise to take care of its own nuclear waste – a promise that has greatly contributed to the legitimacy of nuclear power in Finland. The article shows how this promise is being challenged by new competitors, business visionaries, and the public. The case studies illustrate the tensions between those who made the promise and the actors who interpret and mobilize the promise for varying purposes and under changing circumstances. We investigate techno-scientific promises by looking at debates about (1) the idea of a national solution, (2) the limitations that the promise of a national solution places on international business opportunities in the waste sector, and (3) the challenges related to credibility and spatial requirements in managing waste from small modular reactors.
This paper contributes to the discussion surrounding the use of community benefits (also known as added value) in radioactive waste facility siting programmes. These are becoming more widely used ...following a series of programme failures around the world, due in the main to a lack of local involvement. The stakeholder groups in three countries, i.e. the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia, were invited to respond to a series of questions designed to explore their attitudes and thoughts about the different community benefit approaches and related issues. Results suggest that legal controls offer a framework in which to operate, but within it negotiation seems to be a preferred method, with local conditions providing an additional perspective.
•Different incentive approaches of community benefits in siting are discussed.•These countries utilise a ‘legally-mandated’ approach not one ‘locally-negotiated’.•Stakeholders indicate a desire for the involvement of local actors in the process.•Legally-mandated approaches require softening by local negotiations.•The challenge is to develop an approach that provides flexibility and guarantees.
To reach the 2030 decarbonization targets, EU Member States develop national strategies. We examine the views of key stakeholders in Finland to outline how those responsible for developing, steering ...and implementing the energy system assess the various solutions. The Finnish choices are of interest owing to the mixture of assets, constraints and path-dependencies shaping them. Our Q methodological analysis uncovers three main views: international competition and smart solutions; active consumers; national competitiveness and local solutions alongside a consensus upon which the implementation of Finland's own 2030 strategy can be built. The key stakeholders in Finland are ready for solutions comprehensively shaping the energy system, which can also influence several vested interests, existing business models and eventually break existing path-dependencies.
•We study the views of key stakeholders of the 2030 energy system in Finland.•View I stresses international competition and smart solutions.•View II focuses on active consumers.•View III combines national competitiveness and local solutions.•The stakeholders also have a common ground on which to build a 2030 strategy.
Finland and Sweden are the countries with the most advanced plans for final disposal of spent nuclear fuel (SNF). Both countries have also been evoked as good examples in the use of a 'partnering' ...approach, designed to achieve both a licensable site supported by the community and a balance between fair representation and competent participation. While both are consensus-driven high-trust societies, with similar technological concept for SNF disposal, and whose licensing processes have advanced at a fairly similar pace, their nuclear waste policies also differ from each other in certain key aspects. One difference concerns the role of the communities in siting and licensing of the repositories. The paper examines 1) the background for this differentiation, 2) how local final disposal organizations in the host communities, Eurajoki and Östhammar, took shape and evolved, and 3) how differences between the organizations illustrate the divergence between the Finnish and Swedish approaches to stakeholder engagement. While the Swedish approach can be characterized as 'involved partnership' – which shapes the operating environment for the implementer and authorities by challenging and even modifying policies and actions – the Finnish case could be described as a 'bystander partnership' characterized by trust in safety authorities, with community economics as the primary concern.
•Technocratic management evolved towards communicative and participative governance.•Local partnering has been applied differently in Finland and Sweden.•Differences result partly from the siting strategies and institutional arrangements.•“Involved partnership” in Östhammar, “bystander partnership” in Eurajoki.
The concept of social licence to operate (SLO) is an increasingly popular tool for companies to manage their relations with the local communities. SLO is very seldom used in the nuclear sector, which ...has nevertheless applied similar approaches, under notions such as partnership and participatory governance. This article explores the specific challenges that the application of SLO faces in the nuclear waste management (NWM) sector, by applying an often-used SLO framework of Boutilier and Thomson to illustrative case studies concerning nuclear waste repository projects in Finland, France and Sweden. Among the specificities of this sector, the article focuses on the central roles of the state in the governance of a project designed as a local solution to a national, even a global problem, entailing extremely long-term challenges, in a context when the state has a vested interest in the project obtaining an SLO. The article suggests that state-related elements be added to the four key criteria of the Boutilier and Thomson framework, which consists of economic and socio-political legitimacy, and interactional and institutionalised trust. To account for the diversity of settings, such as the ‘high-trust’ contexts of Finland and Sweden and the French ‘society of mistrust’, further analysis and conceptual refinement are needed, especially concerning the multiple dimensions of trust and mistrust, the relationships between legal, political, and social licences, and the specific challenges of intergenerational justice in SLO work.
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