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Town & Country Planning August 2017 303 The nuclear industry has left its visible and invisible footprint in landscapes of risk encountered in the 31 countries in which nuclear energy has been developed. In several countries the mark is, as yet, small, related to one or two operating nuclear reactors. At the other extreme there are those nuclear’s wastelands part 1 – landscapes of the legacy of nuclear power In the first of a series of articles on the local and social legacies of nuclear energy, Andrew Blowers looks at where and why these legacies have come to pass The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011 EJAtlas. Creative Commons ShareAlike 3.0
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Aug 31, 2018

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Page 1: nuclear’s wastelands - No2NuclearPower · wastelands part 1 – landscapes ... apogee in public approval, ... impose solutions on communities that had failed at

Town & Country Planning August 2017 303

The nuclear industry has left its visible and invisiblefootprint in landscapes of risk encountered in the 31 countries in which nuclear energy has been

developed. In several countries the mark is, as yet,small, related to one or two operating nuclearreactors. At the other extreme there are those

nuclear’swastelandspart 1 – landscapes of the legacy ofnuclear powerIn the first of a series of articles on the local and social legacies ofnuclear energy, Andrew Blowers looks at where and why theselegacies have come to pass

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011

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countries with long-established nuclear industries,some involved in both the civil and military sectors,where nuclear operations, including electricitygeneration, reprocessing and experimental processes,are intermixed with redundant facilities, nuclearwastes, and radioactive discharges onto land andinto water and emissions into the atmosphere.

These ‘landscapes of risk’ include places such asHanford, the most polluted site in the United Statesand the world’s largest clean-up project; Ozersk inRussia, with a calamitously contaminated landscape‘still beautiful to behold, now dangerous to traverse’;1and Sellafield, Western Europe’s most hazardouslocation, once described as an ‘intolerable risk’.2

Such sites were created through the routine, ifpoorly managed, operations of a complex of nuclearproduction, reprocessing and waste managementfacilities. Other expanses of nuclear contaminationhave arisen as a result of accidents occurring throughhuman error or natural disaster, the areas aroundChernobyl and Fukushima being the most notoriousexamples of evacuated and contaminated nuclearlandscapes.

The problems of dealing with such sites arecomplex, tedious and intractable. While such placespresent the most formidable challenges, everynuclear site sooner or later exposes the issue ofwhat to do with the radioactive materials andwastes that are left behind during operation andlasting long after operations have ceased.

It is the enduring legacy of radioactivity whichcannot easily be dispensed with that creates aproblem of sustainability at once both physical andsocial. It is physical in the sense that means must befound to control, remove and contain the radioactivehazard so that eventually the land, or that part of itwhich is not irremediably contaminated, may bereleased and recovered for other land uses. But

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sustainability also has a social dimension in the needto ensure the survival and sustainable developmentof the nuclear communities that have grown upnear nuclear sites. In principle, as the InternationalAtomic Energy Authority (IAEA) puts it: ‘Radioactivewaste shall be managed in such a way that will notimpose undue burdens on future generations.’3

This article is the first in a series in which I willconsider the legacy left by nuclear energy from itslocal and social perspective, both geographical andhistorical. I shall consider how nuclear communitieshave developed, why they are where they are, andwhat their future prospects are. In particular, I shalltry to identify the peculiar characteristics of thesenuclear communities and explore the shifting powerrelations between industry and community andbetween community and wider society. Theserelations are not simply matters of economics andpolitics, but raise some profoundly moral issues ofhow we should deal equitably with the socialaspects of environmental risk, for both present and future generations.

I shall explore these issues through four casestudies of nuclear landscapes and related communitiesin four countries. From these I shall draw out someconclusions, reflections and suggestions on how weshould deal with the legacy and the communitiesthat live with it. But first let us look at where andwhy the legacy has come to pass.

The growth of the legacyThe legacy of nuclear power exists in time and

space. It stretches back over time to the earliest daysof the nuclear industry. Its origins were military, inthe making of uranium and plutonium for bombs.The use of nuclear fission power, ‘the peacefulatom’, for electricity generation came later.

This early phase of the industry, lasting for aroundthree decades, was a period in which a trust intechnology and progress fostered a routine cultureof secrecy and unquestioning promotion of nucleartechnology. Little thought was paid to the legacythat was building up, much of it left in situ orcasually dumped into tanks and ponds, buried inshallow repositories or simply tipped into the ocean.Major nuclear accidents were either covered upentirely, as was the case with the huge releases ofradioactivity from the Mayak reprocessing andwaste facility at Ozersk in the Urals in 1957, or, likethe Windscale accident in the same year, their truedimensions were not revealed until many yearslater. Indeed, some incidents were quite deliberate,like the now infamous ‘Green Run’ in 1949, whenan experimental release of radioactivity from theHanford site resulted in a plume stretching far andwide across the farmlands of Washington state.

Over the years, nuclear accidents involving loss of life or extensive property damage have beencommonplace, as Benjamin Sovacool3 records (his

‘Every nuclear site sooner orlater exposes the issue of whatto do with the radioactivematerials and wastes which areleft behind during operationand lasting long after operationshave ceased. It is the enduringlegacy of radioactivity thatcannot easily be dispensedwith that creates a problem ofsustainability at once bothphysical and social’

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own compilation totalling 99 incidents costing$20.5 billion between 1952 and 2010), and majorcatastrophes like Mayak (Russia, 1957), Chernobyl(Ukraine, 1986) and Fukushima (Japan, 2011) haveoccurred every generation, to the point where CharlesPerrow 4 has dubbed them ‘normal’ and thereforelikely to be recurrent.

By the 1970s nuclear energy had reached itsapogee in public approval, and programmes ofnuclear expansion were under way. Subsequently in many, mainly western, countries enthusiasm fornuclear energy gradually diminished as programmeswere completed and the long timescales ofconstruction and high costs placed nuclear at acompetitive disadvantage to its fossil fuel rivals, coaland oil. It was a period punctuated by traumaticaccidents, the near miss of Three Mile Island, andthe catastrophe of Chernobyl. Moreover, attentionwas increasingly turning to the technologicalproblems encountered with reprocessing and otherexperimental developments.

Above all loomed the problem of poorly managedwastes accumulating at nuclear sites. The FlowersReport had pronounced in 1976 that any solutions tothe problem would need to demonstrate ‘beyondreasonable doubt that a method exists to ensurethe safe containment of long-lived highly radioactivewaste for the indefinite future’.5 This statement hasbeen taken as axiomatic in the subsequent searchfor a deep-disposal repository site in the UK.

Efforts to find sites have been persistentlyrebuffed by determined opposition able to mobilisecoalitions to prevent their territory from providing a permanent resting place for the nation’s most

fearsome and dangerous wastes. From the Highlandsof Scotland to the lowlands of eastern Englandsuccessive attempts were rebuffed by entrenchedand trenchant opposition, organised, coherent andco-ordinated with singular purpose. The finalhubristic attempt to foist the nation’s radioactiveburden on unsuspecting communities by a tactic of‘decide-announce-defend’ met its nemesis in therejection of the proposed underground laboratory (theRock Characterisation Facility or RCF) at Sellafield in1997. By that time the legacy of nuclear power hadbecome the industry’s Achilles heel, and what to doabout it had become an almost existential issue.

Seeking solutionsBy the turn of this century, then, and especially

in the UK, the political dynamics had profoundlychanged. With the nuclear industry seemingly inretreat and its opponents proclaiming its imminentdemise, political space was opening up for mutualfocus on the problem of waste. For the industry, a solution to the problem was perceived to beessential to any revival; for the opposition, riddingthe country of its legacy would spell the end ofnuclear’s moment. For a few years an uneasy co-operation ensued between two sides, for whom,though the ends might be different, the meanswere compatible.

With political initiative, a consensual process basedon principles of openness, transparency and publicand stakeholder engagement developed through thefirst Committee on Radioactive Waste Management(CoRWM). Its key recommendation that geologicaldisposal was, within the current state of knowledge,

The ghost town of Pripyat in northern Ukraine after the Chernobyl meltdown of 1986

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the ‘best available approach’ for long-termmanagement of radioactive wastes became thetouchstone for policy development.6 But, in order tohold the consensus together the policy was qualifiedby the requirement for a programme of interimstorage as an integral part of a long-term strategy.

Above all, implementation of disposal would relyon a process of voluntarism, with local communitiesparticipating in ‘an open and equal relationshipbetween potential host communities and thoseresponsible for implementation’.6 The focus on localcommunities in decision-making for radioactivewaste was a far cry from the imperious attempts toimpose solutions on communities that had failed atthe end of the last century.

Even as CoRWM was making its pronouncementsthe power relations were shifting again. Seeminglyfrom out of nowhere nuclear energy was, in primeminister Tony Blair’s words, back with a vengeance,and a ‘nuclear renaissance’ was proclaimed. At atime of heightened concern about national securityin the wake of 9/11 and economic security followingthe financial crash of 2008, nuclear energy seemedto offer a more secure future as part of the energymix than fossil fuel or renewable energy. Itsproponents claimed that nuclear could provide base-load electricity and a secure energy supply and that,as a low-carbon form of energy, it answeredgrowing concerns about environmental security inthe face of climate change.

In the event, new nuclear in the UK has stuttered,with plans and proposals for reactors at six of theeight coastal locations nominated for new nuclearpower stations, but none, with the possibleexception of the beleaguered Hinkley Point, likely to materialise before 2030.

Meanwhile, the waste issue remains unresolved,although, in its effort to justify new nuclear stations,

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the government has claimed that policy meets theFlowers criterion on nuclear waste. In a neat pieceof sophistry it pronounces itself satisfied ‘thateffective arrangements will exist to manage anddispose of the waste that will be produced fromnew nuclear power stations’.7 But the first attemptto use the voluntary process to find a suitable sitehas faltered, with the failure to get agreement toproceed with a siting process in West Cumbria.Even in nuclear’s heartland, it has so far provedimpossible to impose a site from above (the RCF in1997) or to entice the local community to volunteerone (the Geological Disposal Facility, GDF, in 2013).

The geography of the nuclear legacy, in the UKand in most western countries, is established andunlikely to change very much in the foreseeablefuture. New nuclear power stations, if they ever cometo pass, will be built at existing nuclear locations,adding eventually to the accumulated legacy ofwastes. It is conceivable that, in propitious geologicaland political circumstances, deep repositories willbe able to meet the essential scientific and socialconditions in greenfield locations. Bure, in France,may be a case in point. But on the whole theevidence points the other way.

In Finland and Sweden deep geological repositoriesto take spent fuel and highly active wastes are beingdeveloped in nuclear communities where wastesare already accumulating. Elsewhere progresstowards finding sites, whether at existing nuclear or greenfield locations, has been halting and slow.In the UK, efforts to build a repository near Sellafieldin the very place where already two-thirds of thecountry’s wastes are stored have been resisted. In Germany, at Gorleben, and in the USA, at YuccaMountain, federal government support for repositoriesin greenfield locations has been mired in politicalimpasse for more than a generation. In most of the

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other nuclear countries, disposal is the goal of policybut proposals are at a formative stage.

Periphery and ‘peripheralisation’The nuclear legacy, then, is likely to remain where

it is for now and for generations to come, in whatmay be called ‘peripheral communities’.7 They areplaces that can be defined in terms of their distinctivephysical and social relations to nuclear activities. Thephysical relations are spatial and environmental.They are, in a spatial sense, remote, whether interms of distance or inaccessibility from other areas.Environmentally these are places where hazardousactivities have visibly contaminated and degradedthe landscape or where there are the invisible risksfrom routine operations and the low-probability/high-consequence risk of a major incident or accidentwith potentially catastrophic consequences.

The social conditions of peripherality may becharacterised as economic, political and cultural.Economically they tend to be monocultural, relianton a dominant (in this case nuclear) activity, orunderdeveloped places experiencing decline ordeprivation. Politically they tend to be relativelypowerless, with strategic decisions affecting thecommunity taken elsewhere by governmental andcorporate institutions. Socially, they manifest whatmight be termed a ‘nuclear culture’, a conceptdifficult to encapsulate very precisely but revealed in an ambiguous relationship between industry andcommunity, in competing but not necessarilycontradictory postures, both defensive and aggressive,resigned and resilient, reactive and proactive.

Peripherality is not simply a set of static descriptivephenomena; it is a set of dynamic processes. Thegeography and endurance of nuclear’s legacy is theproduct of ‘peripheralisation’, a rather unlovely wordto describe a process of political engagement. Bythis, peripheral communities are created andsustained through a process of push and pull,attraction and repulsion. Peripheral characteristics

are the raison d’être of these communities,persistently attractive to nuclear activities andultimately committed to managing the legacy.Elsewhere, communities able to mobilise the powerto resist will be able to prevent the intrusion ofnuclear activities. This explains the tendency fornuclear activities to gravitate to existing nuclearsites and why it proves difficult to establish a newnuclear presence in greenfield locations. Resistancewill be strongest against proposals for sites for thepermanent management of the nuclear legacy,especially from areas with little or no experience ofthe nuclear industry.

The peripheral characteristics of nuclearcommunities, taken together, seem to portrayplaces that are vulnerable, victims of processes withinevitable consequences of powerlessness, insecurityand inequality. While this is broadly the case, theplaces managing the nuclear legacy are neitherentirely marginal nor powerless; they exercise someeconomic and political leverage. Economically, theyare relatively secure for, once production ceases,there remains decades of clean-up activity, oftensustaining a large workforce. Unlike many industrialactivities like mining or iron and steel production,the nuclear industry cannot be swept away onceproduction ceases. The legacy remains and must bemanaged, probably in situ, for generations to come.

Therefore, politically, these communities are ableto claim a continuing and open-ended commitmentto clean-up from the state, in recognition of therisks they bear on behalf of society as a whole. Insome cases there will be support for investmentinto regeneration and diversification.

Periphery and inequalityThe nuclear legacy is unevenly distributed over

space and time, and this raises ethical issues offairness. There is the issue of fairness betweenplaces, which arises where responsibility formanaging the legacy is devolved on specific places.

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Demonstrations against nuclear facilities in Germany (left) and France (right)

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And there is also fairness between generationsarising from the indeterminate timescales overwhich the legacy must be managed. So peripheralnuclear communities will experience intragenerationalinequality through the concentration of the legacy inspace and intergenerational inequality resulting fromthe continuing responsibility extending indefinitelythrough time.

It is those places where the bulk of the nuclearlegacy is managed that are the subject of this series of articles. They are landscapes of risk thatmanifest all the conditions of peripherality –geographical, economic, political, and social. Theyfulfil a fundamental social role in that they take on(or more usually have to accept) the radioactivelegacy of nuclear power. They bear the burden of thecost, risk and effort necessary to manage the legacyon behalf of the wider society, a responsibilityextending into the far future. At the same timesociety has a reciprocal responsibility.

This series of articles will look at some of theseperipheral places, to try to understand therelationship between the nuclear industry and thecommunity. It will look at how they have developedand the power relations that have moulded andsustained their continuing role. In the next articlethe focus will be on Hanford, the massive nuclearcomplex in the north west of the United States,where during the Second World War the plutoniumfor the bomb that shattered Nagasaki was made.Then I shall look at Sellafield, the heart of the UK’snuclear industry and the focus of conflicts andcontroversy.

The following article on France will considerradioactive waste management linking thereprocessing plant at La Hague in Normandy, wherespent fuel is managed, with the emerging site atBure in eastern France, where an undergroundlaboratory to receive radioactive wastes is underconstruction. The fourth place covered will beGorleben in Germany, a place identified as theresting place for the country’s highly active wastesbut where indomitable resistance has provided bothsymbol and success for the anti-nuclear movement.

In the final article I shall try to draw out some ofthe issues around what can and should be doneabout the future management of the nuclear legacy,and what this means for the future, not only of

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these peripheral communities but for the future ofthe nuclear industry itself. For the problem of thenuclear legacy is ongoing and forces us to confrontmoral issues about the legacy which we bequeathto future generations.

● Andrew Blowers OBE is Emeritus Professor of SocialSciences at The Open University and is presently Co-Chair ofthe Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy/NGO Nuclear Forum. This series of articles draws on his newbook, The Legacy of Nuclear Power (Earthscan fromRoutledge, 2017). The views expressed are personal.

Notes1 K Brown: Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and

the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters.Oxford University Press, 2013. This is an evocativecomparative social historical study of two communities,Hanford in the north west of the USA and Ozersk in thesouthern Urals in the Soviet Union, which developedsimultaneously in the production of plutonium during theCold War. Both areas became notorious for the extensivecontamination and degradation of the landscape

2 Margaret Hodge, Chair of the Committee of PublicAccounts, commenting on the BBC, on 7 Nov. 2012. The National Audit Office also produced a highly criticalreport on risk management at Sellafield, Managing RiskReduction at Sellafield, 2012. www.nao.org.uk/report/managing-risk-reduction-at-sellafield/

3 See B Sovacool: Contesting the Future of NuclearPower. World Scientific, 2011. These accidents are quiteaside from the accidents and near-misses involvingnuclear weapons which are chillingly recorded in E Schlosser: Command and Control. Allen Lane, 2013

4 C Perrow: Normal Accidents: Living with High RiskTechnologies. Princeton University Press, 1999

5 Nuclear Power and the Environment. Cm 6618. SixthReport. Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution.HMSO, 1976

6 Managing our Radioactive Waste Safely. Committee onRadioactive Waste Management, Nov. 2006

7 The term ‘peripheral communities’ and the process of‘peripheralisation’ were first introduced in a paper Iwrote with Pieter Leroy – A Blowers and P Leroy:‘Power, politics and environmental inequality: atheoretical and empirical analysis of the process of‘peripheralisation’’. Environmental Politics, 1994, Vol. 3 (2), Summer, 197-228

‘The problem of the nuclearlegacy is ongoing and forces usto confront moral issues aboutthe legacy which we bequeathto future generations’