Re-Licensing of Nuclear Facilities in Canada

Abstract

Relatively few social scientists have studied citizen protest groups concerned with civilian nuclear power, and the relationship between political conflict over risk and regulation of the nuclear industry. Drawing from social movement research, the paper argues that anti-nuclear protests can be viewed as collective risk movements which reject conventional forms of political decision-making in favour of more proactive forms that expand civil rights and the resources of the public. Examples from the Canadian anti-nuclear context are explored.

Introduction

For years the advantages of living in industrial society appeared to eclipse the dangers created by unsafe industrial practices. This attitude steadily changed since the early 1970s with environmentalism. For example, nuclear energy has become both a symbol of industrial progress and energy self-sufficiency, and perceived as a threat to human health and the ecosystem. The risks associated with nuclear energy have galvanized individuals into two distinct camps: those who support it and those who oppose this energy source and prefer what has been called "sustainable" or "appropriate" technology (Mehta, 1995a). In seeking to overcome pervasive risks to human health and environment, democratic societies typically provide citizens the right to comprehend or review and take part in governmental decision-making. However, creating participatory mechanisms for the public to assess and debate nuclear energy policy or a nuclear plant license is difficult when decision-making is dominated by technical expertise (Jasanoff, 1986). Even the language of political debate about nuclear power is highly technical and requires, many argue, specialized knowledge in the assessment and management of technologically-generated risks. Such specialization raises concern that public decision-making will shift from politically responsible authorities to those who best understand the technical issues of a particular hazard (Brickman, Jasanoff and Ilgen, 1985). This concern is heightened by our society's tendency to bestow status and legitimacy on those participants in a socio-technological conflict who have scientific credentials (Sclove, 1978). Plough and Krimsky warn (1987: 4) "That those who control the discourse on risk, will most likely control the political battles as well."

Such observations suggest that debates about risk are not, in essence, scientific disputes; rather, arenas of social and political conflict, albeit arenas in which the public is kept at arms length. In Canada, most nuclear power plant development and considerable public debate about their risks, has occurred in the Province of Ontario. The public policy questions raised by the nuclear energy debate in Ontario are clear: What is the suitable balance between the influence of technical expertise and the influence of citizens in assessing and managing environmental risks? How much weight should public perceptions of risks have in regulating hazardous technologies like nuclear power?

Risk Assessment and Public Participation: A Theoretical Puzzle

Although Krimsky and Plough (1988) point out that risk analysis can be traced back to the Babylonians of 3200 B.C.E., the formal regulation of technological innovations began with the Industrial Revolution. What follows is a skeletal view of how regulation shifted from crude standard setting to dealing with risk. This portrayal is prefaced by my contention that danger exists independently of human activity and innovation, but risk is a social construct designed to help us manage danger.

In the beginning of the industrialized era, satisfactory public protection was assumed to be ensured by the enlightened self-interest of industry (Otway and Ravetz, 1984). Regulation emerged due to outrage at the insufferable working conditions and loss of life associated with unsafe industrial practices. Standards, the most familiar regulatory tool, were the outcome of a consensus between governments and industry experts. As risks from industrialization became better understood and more dispersed the movement toward protecting the health and safety of workers in industry shifted to protection of the general population. In both planning and policy, this broader appreciation of risk coincided with scientific research which allowed for the quantification and comparison of specific health and environmental hazards.

One consequence of using science in politics (Douglas, 1992) is that complex issues become entangled in a web of epistemological vortices which spin scientific uncertainty into a shimmering chimera of political alignments (Nelkin, 1984) and incestuous institutional interactions. Politics requires from science its authority--its certainty (Douglas, 1992). Thus, under the veil of modern science, the state acquires legitimacy.

Often debates about risk frame issues to exclude public opposition to hazardous technology, invalidating risk perception of the public, and expunging the values and visions that influence the experts and scientists who determine levels of acceptable risk, and legitimize scientific modes of inquiry. Since modern science generates knowledge which is technically exploitable, the nature of real power relations, which cannot be revealed by science, remains immune not only to scientific probing, but also hidden from public awareness. Jurgen Habermas explains that decision-making becomes narrowed when technical issues are excluded from the public domain. Science and no longer religion becomes an "opiate of the masses", absolving the "public" from the responsibility of making a choice about technologies which in fact are always hazardous and possess uncertain outcomes. Science and morality become indissoluble, wedded in a political arena where cost-benefit calculations and "value-for-life" assessments become the most expedient way to examine both technical and non-technical issues (Mehta, 1995b). Presumably, the "free market" and representative government will weed out those technologies and industrial practices which prove unprofitable or unpopular. In fact, profitable--or heavily subsidized--industries which generate risk become exempt from the normal democratic decision-making process and pressures of the free market, precisely because of the alienation science engenders in the uninitiated. The use of science in assessing and managing environmental risks has replaced the "will of the people" with the will of industrial elites, who exclude and repress the rights of the individual for the sake of the individual.

German sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1980: 91) describes the trust that modern societies put in science:

Due to