Forums for Dialogue: Developing
Legitimate Authority through
Communication and Consultation
A Contract Report for Nirex
Jane Hunt and Brian Wynne
Centre for the Study of Environmental Change
Lancaster University
May 2000
Contents
Contents ................................................................................................................................................................ 2
Executive Summary and Suggestions ................................................................................................................... 4
Communication, consultation, dialogue and social intelligence ....................................................................... 5
Practical Suggestions ........................................................................................................................................ 6
Information ................................................................................................................................................... 6
Social Intelligence and Developing Capacity ............................................................................................... 7
Consultation and Stakeholder Dialogue ....................................................................................................... 8
Openness ...................................................................................................................................................... 9
Further Research ........................................................................................................................................... 9
Web-site........................................................................................................................................................ 9
Resourcing .................................................................................................................................................. 10
Context of Report ............................................................................................................................................... 11
Uncertainty, Public Mistrust, and Discretion: a long-term perspective .............................................................. 12
Implications for Nirex ........................................................................................................................................ 15
Building legitimacy ............................................................................................................................................ 16
Some key concepts ............................................................................................................................................. 18
Consultation................................................................................................................................................ 18
Dialogue/Stakeholder dialogue................................................................................................................... 18
Deliberation ................................................................................................................................................ 18
Social Intelligence ...................................................................................................................................... 19
Latent positions .......................................................................................................................................... 19
Decision-making......................................................................................................................................... 19
Participation................................................................................................................................................ 19
Framing ...................................................................................................................................................... 19
Objectives: what are the reasons for undertaking dialogue and consultation? ................................................... 20
Social intelligence or stakeholder dialogue? .................................................................................................. 21
Common good, individual interests and the ‘best solution’ ........................................................................... 22
Stakeholders and the public ............................................................................................................................ 23
Representation ................................................................................................................................................ 24
Communication and Information........................................................................................................................ 25
Openness ........................................................................................................................................................ 28
Information and Consultation ......................................................................................................................... 29
Indicative Information Needs of Consultation Processes ........................................................................... 30
Communication and Consultation .................................................................................................................. 31
Listening to the Public ........................................................................................................................................ 31
Developing a listening capacity ...................................................................................................................... 32
The listening culture ....................................................................................................................................... 33
Preventing institutional tunnel vision ................................................................................................................. 34
Institutional Identity and Consultation ........................................................................................................... 35
Aspects of Consultation ...................................................................................................................................... 35
Scale ............................................................................................................................................................... 35
Inclusion or representation?............................................................................................................................ 36
Timing ............................................................................................................................................................ 37
Geographical focus ......................................................................................................................................... 37
National ...................................................................................................................................................... 37
Site specific ................................................................................................................................................ 38
Geographically distinct communities ......................................................................................................... 39
Communities of interest ............................................................................................................................. 39
International................................................................................................................................................ 40
Agenda and framing ....................................................................................................................................... 40
Context ........................................................................................................................................................... 41
Uncertainty ..................................................................................................................................................... 42
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Outputs ........................................................................................................................................................... 43
Reach .............................................................................................................................................................. 43
Web based information and consultation ....................................................................................................... 44
Developing a Communication and Consultation Strategy .................................................................................. 44
Bringing the outside inside ............................................................................................................................. 45
Taking the inside outside ................................................................................................................................ 46
Information Levels ......................................................................................................................................... 46
Working Groups ............................................................................................................................................. 47
Making Science Accessible ........................................................................................................................ 47
Internal Communications ........................................................................................................................... 47
Technical Documentation ........................................................................................................................... 48
Peer preview and review............................................................................................................................. 48
Science Review .......................................................................................................................................... 48
Proposed Stakeholder Advisory Panel ........................................................................................................ 49
Corporate Responsibility and Strategic Communications .......................................................................... 50
Public consultation and gathering social intelligence ..................................................................................... 51
Timescale and Development Plans ..................................................................................................................... 51
Ancillary observations ........................................................................................................................................ 52
The Media....................................................................................................................................................... 52
Inter-agency collaboration .............................................................................................................................. 52
Last Word: Actions speak louder… ................................................................................................................... 53
References .......................................................................................................................................................... 55
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Executive Summary and Suggestions
This report discusses the underlying reasons for and issues related to consultation, dialogue
and deliberation as a contribution to the development of Nirex’s communication strategy.
Some detailed suggestions are made; the development of a detailed strategy may form the
second stage of this project.
Nuclear – and especially radioactive waste – decision-making has been severely troubled by
the combination of public mistrust of institutions trading on their scientific expertise, and the
uncertainty of scientific risk assessments. There has been an assumption that the admission of
uncertainty undermines the authority of decision-making. More recently, however, it has
become evident that claiming too little uncertainty causes mistrust among a public
increasingly exposed to the inherent lack of certainty of many scientific claims.
Claims of certainty often result from the institutionalised culture of scientists, who make a
variety of assumptions which become embedded – and invisible – in their everyday practice.
This results in an inadvertent public understatement of uncertainties, which then leads to
mistrust when these uncertainties are exposed. Current thinking suggests that instead of
certainty, the public are more like to see as authoritative institutions which admit uncertainty
and incorporate the inevitable existence of uncertainty into their decision-making strategies.
Recognition of uncertainty means recognising the need for discretion and negotiated
judgement in decision-making. Radioactive waste involves long-term technological
trajectories which include dimensions of complexity and lack of control as well as successive
decisions in long chains. For such issues, it is essential to be able to return to issues and
exercise adaptive discretionary judgements over the long-term. This implies, however, that
there is a need for:
1) cultivating public awareness of the uncertain and indeterminate nature of problems of this
type. This goes against the grain of most public institutions as it means admitting lack of
control.
2) openly recognising the need for successive future adaptive discretionary responses to future
contingencies that cannot be defined in the present.
3) guaranteeing public deliberative access to decision-making in the present and future, to
obviate public unwillingness to grant future discretion to mistrusted institutions.
4) developing a (inevitably provisional) map of the successive stages in decision-making and
the appropriate forms of public access and deliberation.
The argument, then, is that we need an admission of the uncertainties and indeterminacies and
the consequent lack of full control and to work through, with the public, the consequences of
this admission, which include the need for long –term discretionary decision-making. In order
for institutions to have legitimate authority, the public need assurance that they will be able to
participate in these discretionary judgements.
Public involvement means that the ways in which the issue is framed – the ways in which it is
thought about and the concerns that are considered legitimate and included – needs to reflect
public feeling. This means that the first stage of any process is to identify the public framing
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of the issue, and to incorporate this into subsequent activities. Alongside this is the need to
identify institutional assumptions – in science, and, indeed, about the nature of public
responses – and test their appropriateness against public viewpoints, as well as their
implications for building credibility and authority. This, in turn, implies the need for changing
institutional culture from one that is inward looking, secretive and defensive - characteristic of
the nuclear industry – to one which is outward looking, open, and receptive, and which can
acknowledge the limits of its control
This cultural shift will be assisted by opening up arenas for stakeholder and public dialogue,
with the associated widening of the ways in which the radioactive waste problem is thought
about. Change, too, becomes easier when an institution is not only looking inwards, with the
consequent self-reproduction of existing norms and practices, but is open to a variety of
perspectives. The ability to change is a pre-requisite of the true management of uncertainty
and indeterminacy through maintaining future flexibility and discretion in decision-making.
Opening institutional boundaries and relationships enables institutions to remain abreast of
changing societal conditions, which of themselves constitute a major area of uncertainty.
Communication, consultation, dialogue and social intelligence
In the short term, Nirex is in dire need of better insights not just into public opinions, but the
underlying reasons for, relationships and dynamics of the variety of public positions – in
short, for better social intelligence. One main aim of early stage (front end) consultation and
dialogue processes is to identify the range of public framings and concerns and define the
extra questions – social, institutional, technical, etc – which these alternative framings raise.
We then need to ask, and answer, how these concerns will be addressed (by Nirex,
government, producers et al). These heard concerns thus raise a further agenda of
responsibilities for the relevant bodies.
An important function of consultation is its contribution to challenging institutional
assumptions and to cultural change. For example, one important outcome of the consensus
conference was that altered thinking within Nirex from a focus on ‘disposal’ to a focus on
‘retrievable storage’, as well as demonstrating that the public can be trusted to come to
‘sensible’ conclusions if given the time and information to consider and deliberate. Dialogue,
as a two-way process, implies change, development and learning for both parties (rather than
the top-down or deficit model whereby one party is ‘informed’ by another and only one party
– usually the public – is expected to change its views).
The recognition of the value of deliberative processes (involving the open and informed
discussion between all parties) includes recognition of the difference between arguing for
individual interests, and deliberating towards identifying the common good. Institutional
authority is likely to hinge on being seen as acting for the public good, rather than the
industry’s best interests, under contextual conditions which are considered acceptable.
Credibility and authority also require open access to information which resists promulgating
narrow institutional viewpoints but instead demonstrates the wide ranging inclusion of
stakeholders’ views. This includes paying attention to ‘institutional body language’, that is,
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being aware that not just formal communications but the entire range of actions of an
institution are forms of communication. The imposition of a narrow institutional view can be
the most damaging piece of body language of all, as it relays the message that this institution
is not prepared to listen, but only to impose.
The openness of information, too, carries a message beyond the content of the information
itself, suggesting that the institution is not afraid to expose itself to public scrutiny and accept
and work with criticism. This, though, necessitates the ability to listen to external comments,
and to be explicit about how these are incorporated into institutional thinking. The model
subscribed to is one of two-way communication, where, through dialogue and deliberation, all
parties listen, learn, and agree the basis of the inevitably discretionary judgements which have
to be made in an ongoing process.
The development of a strategy for the exposition of this model is the next challenge for Nirex.
Through this, a credible and authoritative institution can be forged for the management of
radioactive waste.
Practical Suggestions
Starred (*) suggestions represent immediate tasks.
Information
*Suggestion: an audit of potential information requirements, the groups for which they may
be required, and the provisional contents, is conducted to inform a longer term strategy for the
provision of information (page 25).
*Suggestion: research into the information needs, forms, and sources required by the public
and special interest groups is undertaken, and utilised in respect of the audit above (page 25).
*Suggestion: an inventory of relevant information available from other organisations
(including web-sites) is prepared. This should include information on issues for which Nirex
is not responsible but are frequently asked about (e.g. renewable energy), and must include a
wide-range of organisations, such as ENGOs, to whom enquirers can be referred. Where
suitable leaflets, etc., already exist, enquiries should be made regarding Nirex’s use of these
materials (although a great deal of care must be taken in assessing ‘suitability’ and the subtextual messages carried by e.g. authorship - for example, BNFL material may be considered
unsuitable as its authorship is widely perceived as untrustworthy and/or biased) (page 25).
This collection of information resources can then also provide the basis for the specific
information needs of particular processes (page 30).
*Suggestion: Information sheets on various aspects of radioactive waste management (e.g.
the deep storage concept, the principle of intergenerational responsibility, the current
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regulatory structure) be prepared as a relatively inexpensive method of providing information
which can be updated regularly (page 25).
Suggestion: Information materials on international commitments and experiences are
prepared (page 40).
Suggestion: all general informational materials should be piloted with focus groups, and
revisions made as appropriate. Assumptions about audiences for information need to be
identified and tested (page 25) and information materials piloted with intended audiences
(page 46). Time plans will need to take account of this.
Suggestion: Although information can never be entirely neutral, it is possible to present a
more or less balanced representation of existing information. Nirex needs to develop the
capacity to present overviews of various issues, giving arguments for and against, as far as
possible without a bias towards one conclusion or another. Using peer reviewers from a range
of stakeholder groups (e.g. ENGOs, nuclear industry, academics) will contribute to presenting
the range of arguments. This will help to demonstrate the complexity of the decision-factors,
and to communicate the key point that different options and opinions may in principle be
legitimate and open to legitimate differences between different parties, depending on other
values and commitments (which should of course be explicated and deliberated upon as
openly as possible). It also emphasises the point that the ‘best solution’ is a social choice, not
a technical discovery (page 25).
Suggestion: It is important at the stage of re-framing that no apparent commitment to any one
option (or site), and to any one set of institutional structures, is visible. Thus, for example,
information on deep storage should be balanced by information on other options, perhaps with
arguments for and against being presented, but with no conclusions being drawn (as above)
(page 25).
Suggestion: Summary (and other) information should not be restricted to scientific and
technical issues (narrowly conceived) but should acknowledge social and ethical issues (page
46).
Suggestion: Uncertainties and assumptions are, wherever possible, made explicit in
information materials, as is the range of scientific and technical opinion. This requires
deliberation with people from outside the specialist sub-culture, precisely because some
uncertainties and assumptions are culturally ingrained and taken-for-granted by insiders (page
25).
Social Intelligence and Developing Capacity
*Suggestion: consideration is given to establishing a division in Nirex with the remit of
‘social affairs and consultation’ or similar (page 31). This should include a group,
predominantly of Nirex staff but including social scientific expertise, with the remit of
eliciting and maintaining an up-to-date view of public concerns and ensuring that these are fed
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into the institutional structure (page 32).
Suggestion: consideration is given to the appointment of a social scientist at Nirex (page 33).
Suggestion: Gather and utilise social intelligence with respect to eventual consultation
processes. For example, the Front of the Front End project will contribute to identifying
alternative framings, whilst the DETR consultation will (hopefully) throw some light on the
range of possible consultation processes, although this needs to be supplemented by research
with the public on the perceived legitimacy of these processes (page 35).
Suggestion: Develop capacity (through training, experience, and possibly new appointments)
in communicating and listening (page 32).
Consultation and Stakeholder Dialogue
Suggestion: Consultation process design should enable all those who wish to be included to
have a voice (page 36).
Suggestion: Stakeholder groups should not over-represent industry and regulatory realms
(page 36).
Suggestion: Any consultation or dialogue process needs to consider whether issue framing is
appropriate or needs exploration. Framing should be re-visited from time to time to test its
continued applicability (page 40).
Suggestion: the relationship with the existing context needs to be examined in designing
consultation processes, with particular attention to establishing a transparent pathway – which
will support the legitimacy of the process - for consultation outcomes to be taken on board
(page 41). The duty to respond to outcomes can be codified in the requirement to explain and
justify how these have been taken into account, or not (page 43).
Suggestion: It may be worthwhile for Nirex to convene a group of journalists and other media
representatives to explore and better understand their working practices and through this, to
work towards developing a more productive relationship (page 52).
*Suggestion: Initiate establishing a forum for inter-agency collaboration, e.g. three monthly
meetings with staff responsible for consultation strategies in other agencies, with presentation
of each agency’s existing work and plans for future work, to identify both where existing work
exists than can be utilised and where possibilities for future collaboration exist (page 52).
*Suggestion: Plans to convene a variety of stakeholder inputs and groups/panels (on a
provisional basis), with wide ranging membership, are pursued rapidly (page 45).
*Suggestion: Nirex moves towards having a stakeholder dialogue strategy for implementation
by early 2001, whilst setting up some provisional mechanisms (page 49).
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Openness
Suggestion: Revision of confidentiality requirements for contractors as part of paying
attention to the communication inherent in institutional body language (see footnote 10) (page
25).
Suggestion: There is a requirement to justify any restriction on the availability of information,
and this should be more detailed than merely claiming ‘commercial confidentiality’ or
‘national security’. The presumption should be in favour of making information available
(page 28).
Further Research
Suggestion: Review previous siting initiatives (in the UK and abroad) to identify relevant
‘lessons’ (page 39).
Suggestion: Identify factors which are likely to impinge on local responses (page 39).
Suggestion: Identify features of the international context which affect public acceptability in
the UK (page 40).
*Suggestion: Nirex commissions a small project to identify existing communications
networks (page 45).
Suggestion: A social research programme is developed (page 50).
Web-site
Suggestions: (page 44)
 a comprehensive web-site is used by some organisations as a library for both internal and
external use, and thus can be used efficiently as a location for information
 any current web-site design should not restrict further development
 the future design of web consultation needs careful review of existing experiments in this
medium
 the design of the web-site, and what is included and excluded, will itself communicate an
identity for Nirex. Thus, openness of information content and, for example, the inclusion
of a ‘comments’ site, communicates a desire to be open and to engage with the public.
This dimension of the site design is arguably as important as the actual content.
 the web-site should contain links to the full range of organisations who also publish
relevant information or comments on the web (particularly including ENGOs)
 monitoring web usage would provide useful information on the types of information
accessed
 publication on the web of existing Nirex reports is unlikely to fulfil current requests for
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
information – and gives a distorted picture of the current development trends. It therefore
needs to be substantially supplemented by reports of current activities (possibly including
consultancy reports such as this one) and possibly divided up historically, so that reports
produced for the RCF planning application are separated from current activities (e.g.
reports could be categorised as pre- and post- 1998 or 1999) to indicate that Nirex is
developing a new trajectory, and to separate ‘new’ Nirex from its past
setting up a simple comments/questions and answers page within the web-site could
provide some useful experience in using the web as a communications/consultation
medium, as well as generating insights into public responses.
Resourcing
If communication, consultation and dialogue are taken seriously, Nirex will need to commit
resources to:
• Ongoing maintenance and updating of website
• Reviewing and updating other forms of information provision
• Developing, monitoring and updating social intelligence
• Developing, servicing and reviewing dialogue processes
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Context of Report
There is a highly apparent need for the development of stakeholder and public participation in
dialogue on radioactive waste management. Nirex, obviously, have a key role to play in such
development. As a first step, Nirex commissioned this report in March 2000 to provide an
analytical overview of the relationship between stakeholder and public participation in relation
to legitimate authority in the development of radwaste policy and management, and to make
practical suggestions towards developing a more participatory strategy.
Issues identified for consideration included:
- objectives (what are the reasons for undertaking dialogue? What can be achieved?)
scale (how many processes, how many participants, how often),
- timing (what is the relationship of the strategy with other developments in radioactive waste
management, including other consultation initiatives? Which different forms of consultation,
and around which issues, are required at different stages in the implementation of potential
radioactive waste management strategies?),
- geographical focus (local, regional, national, international),
inclusion (which stakeholders? Which publics? What needs to be represented and why, and
how/can it be included?),
- agenda (which issues? To what extent should the framing of the issue be established/open to
negotiation? Which are specific questions which require participatory consultation, and where
is scrutiny of process more appropriate? Who should decide on framing? How can framing be
made a more open and responsive practice?),
- context (what are the implications of policy and regulatory development on the forms of
dialogue that are appropriate? What are the implications of different structural conditions and
commitments, e.g. continuation of production of waste, different sources of waste)
- uncertainty (how should scientific uncertainty be dealt with? How can uncertainties be made
more transparent, and what are the implications for ongoing participatory dialogue?)
- information requirements (what information, in what form, and from which sources, is
required for different forms of dialogue; what is the relationship of this with wider information
requirements, especially for enabling wider public debate?),
- outputs (what sort of outputs are required, in what forms, for which audiences),
- reach (are outcomes advisory? Who is required to take account of them? What is the
relationship with decision-making?),
- digestibility (what institutional re-organisation may be required to enable outcomes to be
taken into full account? How might relevant institutions learn to 'listen'? What sorts of outputs
are likely to be more institutionally digestible?)
Other questions concern the less tangible outcomes that are required, which are to do with
building relationships, networks, knowledge bases, trust, legitimacy, authority, and
accountability, and the identification of changes in practices and the development of new
practices which will assist in reaching these outcomes, including that of changing institutional
culture. In sum, the key question is to do with how to develop wider social ownership of the
problem of radioactive waste management, with the associated questions of how to develop
trust, authority, and legitimacy, through widening participation.
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Uncertainty, Public Mistrust, and Discretion: a long-term perspective
Two of the most difficult and troubling properties of decision-making about nuclear issues,
especially over radioactive wastes, have been the combination of mounting public mistrust of
institutions trading mainly on their claim to scientific expertise, and mounting uncertainty
pervading scientific risk assessments which were supposed to command enough authority to
carry policy commitments. These two slippery dimensions have combined to paralyse the
huge amount of scientific and political effort to find a sound long-term solution to deal with
existing inventories of radioactive wastes from UK civil and military nuclear programmes.
Conventionally it has been assumed, not only in the nuclear field but quite generally, that the
more uncertainty is admitted, the less authority any risk assessment would have with the
public. But more recently this equation has almost been reversed, by the increasingly evident
logic that eventual public revelation of more uncertainty than had been admitted by the authors
of earlier risk assessments has been a potent multiplier of just the lack of authority which was
assumed to arise from admitting ‘too much’ uncertainty. Claiming too little uncertainty has
seemed latterly to be much the more significant problem, and this has been backed up by
research on public understanding of and responses to science, where suspicion tends to be
provoked by expert knowledge which pretends to more certainty than it can justifiably claim
for itself. The advent of the precautionary principle has been one attempt to make
uncertainties more explicit, yet has had little impact on the public representation of scientific
certainties and uncertainties.
Sometimes the understatement of uncertainty has involved a deliberate concealment of known
uncertainties. However it is arguable that just as frequently this misrepresentation has been
inadvertent. We have argued elsewhere that in risk assessment the scientific risk analyst has
to make assumptions which may not even be recognised for what they are, namely
uncertainties. For example empirical behavioural data on pressure vessel failure rates may be
taken from past experience to make scientific assessments of future risks from like systems.
But the question of whether these data can be seamlessly extrapolated to represent the future
behaviour of similar but never identical systems is not adequately addressed. The assumption
that past pressure-vessel performance will be at least reproduced, if not improved-upon, by
future pressure vessels in the system of interest, involves a variety of such assumptions, such
as that production, maintenance and operating conditions will always be within a certain
range; otherwise the empirical data-set does not represent the system(s) of interest. The
assumption that it does is not only incorrect but a potentially dangerous delusion.
This kind of assumption is ubiquitous in science, and more so in risk assessment, where actual
risk processes are typically represented by single models, but may vary over time and space
and specific instances far more than a standardised single model can convey. Many such
assumptions are built unquestioned into the routine normative disciplinary subcultures of
scientific activities; even though some are explicitly questioned, not all of them can be. There
is less closure than is typically imagined by practitioners of the discipline. Thus we would
suggest, uncertainty is usually inadvertently understated in public, thanks to this necessary and
pervasive intellectual syndrome. A common result is that when scientists honestly claim to be
‘dealing explicitly with the uncertainties’ as if this means they are dealing with all the
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uncertainties, they are setting themselves up for eventual deep-rooted public mistrust.
The predominant idea that science deals regularly, explicitly and comprehensively with
uncertainty, as part of science’s constitutional make-up, and that the public in contrast is
congenitally afraid of and wholly unable to deal with uncertainty, is in some respects the very
opposite of the truth. The functional assumption by science that it will overcome lack of
intellectual control by further research, measurement, calculation etc., is translated into the
virtual belief that it has overcome it, except for the ‘residual imprecisions’ still awaiting that
forthcoming resolution. Meanwhile the public is regularly reminded by their real-world
experience that intellectual (as well as practical) control is very limited, and that unanticipated
effects occur to almost every commitment large and small. They do not want the unrealistic
end they are often claimed to seek, namely to see these uncertainties eradicated - they just
want them to be acknowledged.
Public lack of trust in expert institutions, and the lack of authority which goes with this,
logically leads to a limitation of discretion1 on the part of those institutions. Under such
circumstances they cannot openly admit that much of their decision-making is based on their
own judgements whose precise logic cannot be clearly defined and reproducibly enacted. As
Porter notes from similar historical episodes, mistrust breeds lack of discretion for the
mistrusted and the demand for certainty from them, in the sense of a demand for transparent
and deterministic rule-following behaviour. The oft-lamented ‘public demand for certainty’ is
of this kind, even though it is usually misread as naïve public expectation of full intellectual
certainty about risky possibilities. As Wynne (1992) has noted, the so-called public ‘demand
for certainty’ can be read as an expression of the mistrust in institutions which is now widely
recognised as a fundamental problem in producing legitimate policy proposals.
But just like the intellectual certainty which lay publics are aware to be illusory (and they are
often on the receiving end of such expert illusions), the kind of certainty I identify here cannot
be realistically delivered either. Jasanoff has described how US expert regulatory
bodies have maintained and projected a discourse of their decisions as being fully objective
and deterministic when they are riddled with behind-the-scenes judgement, uncertainty and
(what is better called) indeterminacy. In other words they are pervaded by unstated
discretionary judgements and responses to unanticipated, and endemically-uncontrolled,
variation and change of conditions.
As Jasanoff recognises, this kind of indeterminacy, which is what gives rise to the need for
such discretion and negotiated judgement, is ubiquitous and inescapable. Radioactive waste
disposal may be the prime exemplar of a system which is involved in long-term technological
trajectories which involve both (a) dimensions of complexity and lack of control; and (b)
successive decisions in long chains, not once-and-for-all definitive decisions. For such
systems in particular, it will be essential to create the room to return to issues, and to exercise
adaptive discretionary judgements which cannot be reduced to the deterministic rule-bound
identity of the formal (mistrusted) model.
We use the term ‘discretion’ here not with any implication of a lack of openness, but as meaning the
maintenance of prudence and the liberty to use judgement.
1
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This means:
(1) cultivating public awareness of the indeterminate nature of these kinds of problem and of
the knowledge which is supposed to encompass and define them. This challenge should
not be underestimated since it goes against the grain of the whole culture of expert
decision-making. It is usually avoided like the plague as it means admitting lack of
control;
(2) openly recognising the need for successive future adaptive discretionary responses to
future contingencies that cannot be defined and resolved in the present - part of the
admission of lack of control and of no full predictive capacity;
(3) responding to the inevitable public unwillingness to accept granting this amount of future
discretion to a mistrusted institution, by committing to guaranteeing substantial long-term
future public deliberative access to the expert decisions as well as whatever is being
fussed over and promised for the present; and this must be given for the explicit reasons
above, to do with lack of intellectual and practical control
(4) maybe trying to give this more recognisable form for radioactive waste by mapping the
sort of likely successive stages and time-scales of a long-term programme which would
end up with a ‘final’ resolution, and identifying the points where the kind of
indeterminacies, and adaptive responses that I am referring to here might occur, so that an
outline and provisional map might be offered of when and what rough forms of public
deliberations might be engaged in.
It seems that this kind of long-term integration would have the potential to lance one of the
nastiest and most paralysing boils of the hydra-headed radioactive waste problematique2. But
to do this it would also need to take the risk - hitherto a wholly unprecedented step across all
risk policy – of opening up public discourse to grown-up admission and discussion not just of
uncertainty but of indeterminacy, which is manifested as lack of full control, intellectual and
practical, and explicitly working through, with the public, the consequences of this
recognition. These include the need for future discretionary space, and thus the need for
public trust purposes, of further deliberative processes and public rights over information, etc i.e. long term access to, influence on and participation in that discretionary space. That is, in
order to trust the authorities, the public need to be assured that they will be able to participate
in those discretionary judgements.
If the public are to be involved in the ongoing dicretionary judgements that need to be made,
then the framing of the issue - the ways in which it is thought about, the issues and concerns
that are considered to be a legitimate part of deliberations etc - needs to reflect public feeling.
Experience has shown that incorporating the public into the ‘front end’ of policy development
and decisions leads to more publicly acceptable policy (e.g. WIPP process). Very little
thought is needed to see that this is axiomatic - if public views are taken into account, then the
resultant policy should be publicly acceptable (unless others factors intervene)3. This model
2
This, of course, is not the only problem, e.g. it does not address the issue of cutting further nuclear power
commitment off from dealing with existing waste inventories only, an issue which most probably needs the
radioactive waste management structure to be independent of the nuclear industry’s agents like BNFL, British
Energy etc.)
3
This does not mean that public preferences should be simply reflected in policy – preferences and views vary,
and may well be contradictory. It does mean, though, that the public have to be included in deliberation, and,
crucially, in framing the issues, and that their (our) concerns have to be addressed by responsible institutions, not
14
of the front end aims, through extensive public consultation throughout the process of policy
development, to fully identify and address public questions and concerns via ongoing
deliberation. Crucially, though, this model requires that the public are consulted in the earliest
possible stages and their views contribute to the way in which the whole policy is framed and
includes concerns which might otherwise be overlooked. For example, the UK government
has consistently addressed the GM crops issue as if it one solely to do with risks to the
environment and public health, to be resolved through scientific experimentation and a clearer
scientific picture. However, research at CSEC has demonstrated that public concerns, whilst
including environmental and health risks, also encompass social risks, in this case that of the
dominance of global agriculture by a few multi-national companies. Further, the inherent
indeterminacy of the possible consequences of genetic modification is recognised by the
public, and assurances of certainty - such as that supposed to derive from further scientific
research - only serve to exacerbate mistrust in the responsible institutions. So, by framing GM
crops as a scientific issue and failing to recognise other dimensions which are important to
their electorate, the government generates a disjunction between state and public which
actually makes matters worse. The failure to develop a publicly acceptable management
strategy for radioactive waste can, through this lens, be seen as a failure on the part of Nirex
(and others) to understand the public framing of the issue which included their concern that
long term management is inevitably fraught with uncertainties of all kinds, whilst Nirex et al
were promoting a vision of long term controllability. The fundamental division between the
assumption of long term controllability and the perceived requirement to represent certainty,
and the public’s common-sensical view that control over the required timescales was not
something that could be fully planned for now, needs to be addressed through the
acknowledgement of indeterminacy and uncertainty, and the inclusion of the public (and other
stakeholders) in developing strategies which include this acknowledgement4, as well as other
dimensions of framing which may have traditionally been overlooked or excluded. Framing
may well, for example, include the issue of whether radioactive waste management is dealing
with the existing radioactive waste, or whether it releases further nuclear power development
from the ‘Flowers shackle’ of having to demonstrate a viable waste management strategy prior
to further development. The public preference for retrievability rather than disposal reflects
the acknowledgement of the impossibility of achieving full control (as well as the limits of
prediction).
Implications for Nirex
For Nirex to have legitimate authority, it needs to address this key issue by taking the more
mature approach of being open about the extent to which control over long term radioactive
waste management can be achieved and the constraints on such control in relation to the
assumptions on which any strategy is premised.
Acknowledging the limits of control goes hand in hand with being open about current
‘perplexity’. Nagel suggests that ‘our perplexity embodies more insight than could any
supposed resolution of it.’ Thus, exploring our perplexity – and, after all, radioactive waste
deleted as being irrelevant, emotional, etc.
4
This is not to suggest that the public have no confidence in science, but that they recognise the conditions under
which is operates.
15
management is intensely problematic, both technically and socially – openly, and identifying
not only those areas where we think we have answers, and those areas where answers are still
to be found, but also acknowledging the inevitable provisionality of any claims, represents a
step forward.
The consequent need for future discretion has implications for the present in terms of
maintaining flexibility over future options. For example, in the technical arena, current waste
packaging requirements need to take account of not only the options for future management
which are currently perceived as potentially viable, but the possibility that new, as yet
unforeseen, possibilities may arise. This is of course difficult, not least because current
decision and management practices involve working within defined scenarios. In the social
arena, recognition of indeterminacy and the need for future discretion requires the
development of a decision making system which has not just review built into it, but fora in
which the whole issue of radioactive management can be revisited and potentially re-framed in
the light of the then current context, for example in asking whether previous assumptions are
still the most appropriate. This will involve ongoing expert and public participation.
Building legitimacy
Other questions concern the outcomes that are required, which are to do with building
relationships, networks, knowledge bases, trust, legitimacy, authority, and accountability, and
the identification of changes in practices and the development of new practices which will
assist in reaching these outcomes. In sum, the key question is to do with how to develop
wider social ownership of the problem of radioactive waste management, with the associated
questions of how to develop trust, authority, and legitimacy, through widening participation.
The inclusion of a wide range of stakeholders (including the public) in discussion and
decision-making forums adds credibility and, if done properly, legitimacy to the management
structure. Inclusion also provides a wider knowledge base, and, if undertaken with a genuine
desire to listen and respond to criticism and differences in the meanings and framings of the
radioactive waste problematique, a more robust scientific, technical, and social base for
developing management options. Such inclusion then provides the basis for a credible
institution, which can demonstrate its accountability not only by reference to adherence to
appropriate rules and processes (including those for stakeholder participation), but also
through the development of relationships with stakeholders to whom the institution is directly,
if informally, accountable.
In the present, we argue, the need is for the building of an institution which has genuine
authority and for this to exist, open acknowledgement of the indeterminacies associated with
radioactive waste management is a necessity. There are a number of immediate areas which
need ‘opening up’:
 Science Review: the extent to which existing scientific knowledge is an adequate basis for
developing options is a matter of judgement rather than somehow being a given standard.
Moreover, the assumptions embedded in the science are themselves judgements and
choices and inherently reproduce particular paradigms. The science needs to be judged by
peers, but utilising an extended peer community. The process of review is something in
16
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which the public have to have confidence; there is therefore a need to engender public
deliberation and gain social intelligence on what processes are trusted.
Peer preview and review: again, an extended peer community and trusted processes are
needed.
Communications strategy and information provision: these should reflect uncertainties and
indeterminacies, invite critique and challenge, and build in review processes directed
towards recognising and adapting to change.
Consultation processes: it is important to recognise that ‘public opinion’, or even individual
standpoints, are not fixed and immutable, but change in relation to a number of factors
including developments in the field, shifts in relationships, and wider cultural changes in
dominant values etc. Robust policy in the long-term needs to take account of the changing
societal context and to include processes by which public concerns can be accessed, and
taken into account in ongoing review of management plans. Further, there are likely to be
further developments in consultation processes themselves, and any strategic plan needs to
incorporate the ability to respond to these changes, requiring an ongoing review of
consultation processes themselves and a willingness to adapt strategies as new processes
are developed. In addition, social scientific methods are as subject to indeterminacies and
assumptions as natural scientific processes, and whilst these are inescapable, they do need
to be congruent with wider societal norms, again suggesting the need for an iterative
process with review stages built in.
The hymn sheet: there are tensions, which should not be ignored, in a requirement that all
Nirex personnel should be ‘singing the same tune’. Although this is supposedly a primary
requirement of forging a strong institutional identity, it is unrealistic to assume that there
are not differences of opinion within any organisation. Further, if an institutional position
is applied in a top-down fashion, rather than produced bottom-up within the organisation, it
is even more unlikely to carry the support of all personnel. In addition, an overly strong
requirement to mute dissenting voices within an organisation carries real dangers, for
example of external criticism (such as that heard with respect to New Labour), of an
inability to be sufficiently open to critique and change, and of becoming embedded in a
problematic trajectory which later entails internal critique and the associated internal
divisions and insecurities which this produces (such as has been the case with the
accusations of Nirex in the wake of the RCF refusal). However, there is also a strong need
for changes in internal culture within Nirex, some of which are becoming established,
which may be in tension with maintaining a plurality of voices – some voices are now
completely out of step with the cultural changes underway and need revision. One key
consideration here is that new external relationships require – and enable - revised internal
cultures, and that, given that the vision of a single set of voices all in agreement is a
chimera, being explicit about differences becomes a necessity.
The need for future discretion is argued here to require that Nirex - and other institutions
involved in radioactive waste management5 - to remain open to change, both scientific and
technical, and social, and, importantly, in the interaction between these. Future changes in
societal values, for example, and in the social acceptability of scientific assumptions, are
distinct possibilities. In order to be open to change, Nirex needs to resist ‘institutional tunnel
5
This argument does not apply just to radioactive waste management, but to any development which entails long
term commitments.
17
vision’. In turn, this requires an opening up of institutional boundaries and relationships to
enable Nirex to remain abreast of changing societal conditions.
Some key concepts
There are a number of terms in current usage which have different, if connected, meanings and
implications, but which are often conflated.
Consultation
This term is usually used in relation to processes where a group of stakeholders and/or the
public in general are invited to comment on a pre-set problem framing and ancillary questions.
Consultation can be considerably less didactic, enabling consultees to questions the premises
and assumptions of the problem framing, and extending as far as consultees determining the
processes through which they should be consulted. However, consultation usually maintains
an ‘us and them’ distinction, whereby ‘we’ are consulting ‘them’ – and it is up to us what we
do with the results of such consultation, to manage and control the process and use of the
outcomes, and to retain a boundary between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. In addition, consultation
(as distinct from gathering social intelligence) raises expectations through the inherent
implication that responses will be taken into account.
Dialogue/Stakeholder dialogue
This term is usually used to describe processes where stakeholders are brought together to
discuss a particular issue. Although much lip service is paid to including the public as
stakeholders, stakeholder dialogue processes most commonly include only those stakeholders
who have a specific interest – and normally knowledge – in the issue. The distinctive feature
of talking in terms of dialogue (rather than consultation, opinion gathering etc) is that it
involves all parties participating both in talking and in listening, rather than one party talking
and (very often) the other ignoring what is said. This implies that all parties are open to
developing and even changing their positions. It is neither top-down nor bottom up, but starts
from the premise that all stakeholders have an equal right to a voice, and that each voice has a
right to be heard. Dialogue processes can thus be deliberative.
Deliberation
The concept of deliberation has an extensive theoretical background, but is less well
understood in practice. Deliberation entails the reasoned discussion of the issue, and generally
involves the parameters of the discussion, and the validation of claims, as being themselves
open to consideration. The principles of deliberation include equal access to the right to speak
and be heard, equal availability of information to all parties, and the conduct of reasoned
debate which includes a willingness to justify claims. In contrast to opinion gathering,
deliberative processes do not assume that people have (innate) opinions which can be accessed
through methods such as polling, but that opinions/positions/views are things which are
argued towards, through discussion, and produced in relation to the social and cultural context.
Latent concerns can emerge in deliberative processes. In this model, interests do not
determine outcomes, but can themselves be redefined in the process of deliberation. Different
interest positions learn to recognise the positions of others, and to consider their validity. As
such, deliberation offers the potential to reach reasoned conclusions which reflect a broader
18
idea of the social good than that derived from debate between competing interests.
Social Intelligence
The idea of social intelligence is analagous to military intelligence, in the sense that it implies
gathering of information about the workings of the social domain. More specifically, it is
generally applied to information gathering about public attitudes, views, values, aspirations
and concerns, including those which may be latent. A variety of methods are available, many
commonly used in marketing and in social science. The quality of the intelligence gathered is
obviously dependent on the validity and appropriateness of the method used and of the
interpretive processes involved as key dimensions of analysis.
Latent positions
Research – and experience - has demonstrated that people often have concerns and aspirations
which remain latent until a suitable opportunity arises for them to be articulated or pursued. A
prime example of such latent concern is the GM foods issue, where an apparently sudden
upsurge of public feeling can be traced to roots in widespread concerns with the quality of
food and health, mistrust of technological and scientific claims making, and concerns with the
global economic control of food production. People often find it difficult – and have few fora
– to articulate complex concerns, and additionally construct concerns through interaction with
others. The concept of latency thus includes not only existing but invisible positions, but
positions which are not-yet-in-being (and potentially never-in-being) but which may be
produced from the context of interaction (for example, a host of concerns and positions will
come into being when a disposal site is identified, and their precise formulation will depend on
a number of contextual factors including the authority of the institution responsible and the
opportunities and conduct of relationships with that institution). Latent positions can be
identified through qualitative research methods; as above, they are intrinsically dependent on
the method and interpretation used. Identifying latent positions can contribute to the ability to
predict future controversy or acceptablity.
Decision-making
The loci of decision making are generally determined legally, although the contributions and
influences on decisions extend far beyond a legal framework. Decision making is centrally
concerned with the location of power. Some processes are designed to generate decisions
(although this is often softened to recommendations), such as consensus conferences and
citizens’ juries. If influence on decision making is an integral part of a process, then this must
be respected in order for the authority of the decision to be legitimate and acceptable.
Participation
The participatory rhetoric is a powerful one, but is often ill-defined. Participation can range
from taking part in discussions or research, through to having a right to participate in eventual
decision-making. In another dimension, more commonly associated with community
development, participation often means taking part in practical activities.
Framing
The way in which a problem is framed or a risk defined has been recognised as central to the
acceptability of its management in different communities:
19
‘Problem formulation can be contentious because the way a risk problem is framed partially
determines the way risks are analyzed and understood, thus affecting decisions. For example,
a problem having to do with waste disposal might be framed as one of too much waste, too
little recycling, or too little disposal capacity. Such problem framings may be linked to
interest positions….Both analysis and deliberation can aid in problem
formulation…Deliberation that includes interested and affected parties sometimes elicits ways
in which the problem could be redefined, as well as insights about which problem definitions
are likely to be widely accepted’. (Stern & Fineberg, 1996:120)
The recent HL Select Committee on Science and Technology report on Science and Society
emphasis this, pointing out that the framing of issues as scientific – to the exclusion of moral,
political and emotional dimensions – can be the reason for public resistance.
The implication of recognising the importance of framing, and the ways in which it
reproduces assumptions which may themselves be contentious, is that framing must be
explicitly addressed with every issue. The first questions in any project or development needs
to be ‘what are our assumptions about this? What are we assuming about the public?’. If we
do not have evidence that our framing resonates with the wider public, we need to investigate
the ways in which the public and other stakeholders frame the issue, and decide whether we
need to adapt our framing in the light of this. The recognition of the need to test the
appropriateness of problem framing is the justification for exploring the ‘front of the front
end’ in any decision process, and if successful, should lead to more widespread acceptability
of the eventual policy decisions.
The kinds of embedded assumption that we identify as problematic here are just those
assumptions and commitments which become established as routine cultural habits in
scientific groups. Thus, a major and often under-recognised rationale for public deliberations
in relation to expert knowledge about risk-related issues is to induce the kind of reflexive selfawareness (of assumptions, framings etc) – or ‘institutional reflexivity’ - which is typically not
seen in expert knowledge and policy cultures. This lack of institutional reflexivity is to blame
for much of the public’s alienation from public policy.
Objectives: what are the reasons for undertaking dialogue and
consultation?
Dialogue and consultation with stakeholders and the public can contribute in a number of
ways:
1. gaining social (and other) intelligence
2. accessing lay and/or local knowledge
3. generating relationships and building trust
4. generating citizenship and responsibility
5. encouraging public debate
6. contributing to personal growth (participants and staff)
7. developing institutional capacity
8. developing internal cultural change as a necessary corollary of new external relations
9. developing institutional reflexivity
10. developing institutional insights into the positions and views of other stakeholders
11. producing more widely acceptable management strategies through identifying and
20
reflecting stakeholder opinion
12. demonstrating institutional responsiveness and thus aiding legitimacy
13. building institutional credibility and authority
14. preventing misconceptions of stakeholder positions becoming embedded
15. generating wider review and avoiding institutional tunnel vision developing.
16. producing consensus and avoiding controversy
17. making better decisions
Nirex needs to consider what it wants from dialogue processes, and the relative weight of the
potential objectives. Obviously, many of the objectives overlap in any particular process, but
a process designed to elicit social intelligence is very different to one that take as a primary
aim that of generating relationships, although this objective may also be met to a lessor extent.
We suggest that the primary aims for Nirex in the long-term are those of building institutional
credibility and authority, and making better decisions. To these ends, gaining social
intelligence, developing institutional insights into the positions and views of other
stakeholders, and generating relationships and building trust, are major contributors. To these
ends, inducing cultural change within (and without) Nirex is essential, and none of the aims
listed above can be ignored. Stakeholder and public consultation and dialogue processes
should be designed to fulfil these aims.
In the short term, Nirex is in need of social intelligence on the general nature of current
concerns and aspirations (e.g. in relation to what organisational form would be credible and
authoritative), and more particularly on public perceptions and responses to the forms and
contents of information materials. Some of this intelligence can be gathered through literature
review, whilst other parts will require primary research (such as that being undertaken by the
Future Foundation and Leeds University). Following the argument of the necessity to get the
‘front end’ right, it is important to be aware of assumptions underlying perceptions of the
public and to test these empirically if necessary.
Social intelligence or stakeholder dialogue?
One key distinction that can be drawn is between gathering social intelligence (finding out
what people think, and utilising this knowledge in planning and decision making, with the
understanding that decisions, if they reflect the views identified through obtaining social
intelligence, will then be more acceptable) and participatory dialogue (inviting stakeholders to
deliberate on issues, with the potential for reaching consensual positions with the presumption
that these will be reflected in decisions).
Obviously there is some overlap between these two – participatory dialogue can produce
social intelligence, and gathering social intelligence can produce deliberation – but one key
area of difference is in the way the outcomes are interpreted and utilised. It is possible to
gather social intelligence to use for strategic purposes which may not be in the interests of the
public (e.g. predicting that an issue will be problematic, and deliberately keeping it from the
public eye), or to ignore it altogether, or to interpret it as meaning that the public are
21
misinformed and require re-education. Participatory dialogue, however, presumes that
outcomes are valid and have to be taken into account.
Through the process of participatory dialogue, all sides may well develop new framing of the
what the issue is thought to mean. Recognition of new meanings and framings is often a
messy and ill-defined, partly implicit, process, so that it may take some time for them to
emerge and be explicitly defined. Thus, it may not always be appropriate to make a rigid
commitment – however democratic on the face of it – to respecting outcomes if these are
understood (mistakenly) within a rationalistic notion of objective framing and meaning, with
the expectation of clear and explicit outcomes. Rather, the ‘soft’ outcomes – e.g. cultural
shifts and changes in meanings – need to be acknowledged, and sometimes designed in as
aims of a process, as well as the ‘hard’ outcomes of decisions, recommendations etc, whilst
recognised that these soft outcomes may be measurable or identifiable through formal
evaluation of the process.
Whilst it might be considered that attempting to manipulate social intelligence for the
purposes of particular interests is foolish, as well as unethical, this possibility is limited in
participatory dialogue which requires a commitment to take account of outcomes. If outcomes
are ignored, there is the potential for the de-legitimisation of the commissioning institution.
Research suggests there where participants’ expectations have been raised through
participation in dialogue, if those expectations are not then fulfilled, participants become
alienated and sometimes unwilling to participate further.
A second distinction is in the methods and scope of the processes used. Some processes (such
as focus groups) are suitable for gathering social intelligence, but do not lead to
recommendations or decisions. A Citizens’ Jury, by contrast, can provide social intelligence
but its primary purpose is to produce informed and reasoned recommendations.
It is important to distinguish between the aim of gathering social intelligence and that of
conducting a participatory dialogue, with all their associated implications, and to use the
appropriate methods.
Common good, individual interests and the ‘best solution’
An important dimension of many of the new consultative processes, especially those which are
deliberative, is that participants can reach a position of acknowledging and seeking the wider
social good, rather than seeking solutions that enhance individual interests. In part, this results
from the interaction between participants where each learns of the positions, interests, and
abilities/constraints of others, which allows these to be incorporated into a wider view. In any
potential site selection process, for example, it is therefore important to consider the widest
possible range of factors which might need to be taken into account in selecting the best site
for society as a whole. Research suggests that this is possible in the abstract (i.e. when no
particular site is under consideration), but becomes compromised when specific sites are being
considered, at which point participants may revert to a promotion of their individual interests.
This suggests that in considering waste management options, it is important to establish a
process for site selection which carries widespread public support. This can be thought of as
22
another aspect to the ‘front end’ in developing management plans.
The aim of reaching decisions which are in the common good also suggests that the use of
deliberative processes which include all relevant parties is a prerequisite to finding the ‘best
solutions’. Public views are likely to hinge on being able to identify an institution which is
seen as acting in the common good rather than as furthering industrial interests.
What is acceptable as the ‘best solution’, however, is dependent on various conditions. That
is, one option may be acceptable under certain conditions, but not under others. Public
perceptions research can give practical clues here: for example, if people express a concern
that so-called ‘independent’ government regulatory expertise is actually captured by a special
interest group, then this can be addressed through revising institutional conditions6. We
therefore need to identify the conditions under which people would regard potential solutions
as real solutions (i.e. if this or that condition was met) or as unacceptable (i.e. where the option
us the same but key conditions are not met).
Stakeholders and the public
The terms ‘stakeholders’ and ‘public’ are used in a variety of ways. Stakeholders can mean
those institutions, bodies, groups or individuals who have a generally professional interest in
the issue. In its widest application, stakeholders can mean all those who can be considered to
have a stake in the issue, including the public at large. However, there are problems in
including ‘the public’ – which members, how representative etc? Sometimes, groups taken to
represent the public, such as the Consumers’ Council, are used as surrogates for the public.
There are also problems in including ‘ordinary’ members of the public in the same groups as
professional stakeholders, as levels of expertise, information, and skills, differ, and very
different framings may exist, yet the members of the public may well defer to the ‘experts’
rather than expressing an alternative view – or that alternative view may be expressed in a way
which does not articulate with the dominant discourse and language7. Nirex is fortunate in
having ‘professional public’ members available in the form of the consensus conference panel,
yet these member of the public have been inculcated by their experiences on the consensus
conference panel, and it is arguable whether they can be considered to be representative.
The public, too, is a problematic term. The public are variously conceptualised – as
consumers, as citizens, as service users. It seems clear in the case of radioactive waste
6
This might be done by investing in scientific bodies which keep up with world developments in relevant
research, which have an explicit brief of addressing questions raised by ordinary people, and which are
answerable to, say, local authorities or some other political representative body than the fiction of parliamentary
accountability. It will always be difficult to define exactly what counts as ‘independent and accountable’, but
relative to where we have been, it is relatively easy to define what would be better, and what would be more
likely to enjoy public confidence.
7
It was interesting to note at the April 2000 BNES conference that when a member of the consensus conference
panel asked the question ‘why should I trust you’, the panel had no way of responding; the question was outside
the dominant discourse and whilst the panel acknowleded the validity and the value of the question, they could
not answer it. This can be embarrassing for all participants, and embarrassment does not lead to full and open
dialogue.
23
management that it their role as citizens which is important. What then becomes problematic
is how the public might legitimately be consulted and represented (in the political sense – see
below), and this is not a problem which is solvable in its entirety by Nirex. On one hand, the
UK has a political system which supposedly represents the public through representative
democracy – and with which alternative attempts at representation may find themselves in
conflict. On the other, the scale of a process which attempts to represent some 60 million
people is beyond the resources of Nirex. However, this does not mean that the issue should be
overlooked.
Drawing on social scientific research we argue that there are general positions held by the
public which can be identified. Rather than approaching the task of identifying these positions
through large scale polls, or other methods involving large numbers in an attempt at
representation, these can be identifying through more detailed processes with smaller
numbers. From extensive experience with focused group discussions and similar processes, it
has become apparent that generally held views can be identified with these methods. It is
usual to find towards the end of any research that no new positions are being identified, and
therefore reasonable to assume that (if the research design is sufficiently inclusive) the ground
has been covered thoroughly. Thus, whilst not adhering strictly to the requirements of
statistical representativeness, commonalities can be identified. Further, more detailed
understanding of not only overt but latent concerns can be discovered with these methods.
Representation
A great deal of concern has been expressed as to whether new consultative and participatory
methods are representative of the public at large. The Consensus Conference, for example,
has been criticised for being a very expensive way of finding out the views of 16 members of
the public. This, however, is to miss the point. Firstly, processes such as a consensus
conference are not designed to be representative, but deliberative, demonstrating that given the
time, space, and information, ordinary members of the public can reach reasoned conclusions,
which are (arguably) just as valid as those of ‘experts’ and which are more likely to reflect
wider societal preferences. Secondly, other forms of so called representation are highly
limited. Representative democracy relies on a mandate provided through the electoral process,
rather than being a direct reflection of public views, especially on issues which do not appear
on party manifestos. Large scale polls use a statistical notion of representativeness, but when
questionnaire responses are limited to perhaps 15-20%8 of those whose views are requested,
and respondents are themselves self-selected9, the representativeness of the sample is open to
serious questioning. Where surveys use a form of sampling, representativeness is still
comprised by the definition of selection criteria. Thus, the ideal of representativeness is not
fully achievable by any method.
Nonetheless, it is important to avoid obvious bias, and, where appropriate, to test results from
small group methods against a wider population. In some cases this can be usefully be done
8
Response rates as low as 1% are not uncommon in self-completed questionnaire surveys.
Those who refuse to complete a questionnaire or participate in a poll obviously do not have their responses
included, which represents a bias in the results - particularly where non-participants may represent a particular
group, such as those who are illiterate, do not have a telephone, or are otherwise invisible.
9
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by basing larger scale quantitative methods on findings from qualititative methods. Some
questions, however, cannot be meaningfully addressed through polls or questionnaires, and it
needs to be borne in mind that different methods sometimes give different results, raising the
problem of what to do with conflicting results. One useful answer to this problem is to
identify the causes of difference, and whether these are the results of different methods, of
different respondents, or are actually, when analysed, the same or similar results articulated
differently.
Questions of representation can perhaps more usefully be reframed as questions of inclusion
and exclusion. Here, the issue is whether all relevant groups have been consulted and whether
the mode of consultation systematically excludes any group, and if so, what measures can be
taken to include them.
Communication and Information
The starting point for the provision of information has to be finding out what information
people want. Different groups will require different information; professionals will require
detailed technical literature whilst the general public may well require only introductory
summaries. Educational materials are an obvious special case for which Nirex has a
responsibility to prepare.
For many members of the public, too, the important fact is that the information is available
(and seen to be available, i.e. the institution is seen to be open and transparent), and that this is
what gives an institution credibility and authority, rather than actually wishing to access
information themselves.
Perhaps the most difficult shift for Nirex is the cultural one. Historically, Nirex has been a
relatively inward looking institution, which assumes its expertise and attempts to ‘tell’ the
public and others ‘how it is’. This is the classic position of top-down expertise, where ‘we
have the facts’ and these are presented as indisputable. It is essential that Nirex now moves to
an open acknowledgement of the essential indeterminacy of all knowledge claims, and opens
up to criticism and debate on the ‘facts’ themselves, as well as what are more broadly
acknowledged as ‘opinions’.
Scientific and technical information also needs to be recognised as only part of the problem.
Research in technology assessment in related fields demonstrates clearly that
 the public routinely assume that information provided by any institution is framed to that
institution’s advantage, and assess the information in relation to their experience of that
industry’s past performance and by triangulating information from one source with that
from other sources.
 Scientific and technical information is recognised as being constructed and produced
within social contexts, and are therefore seen not as ‘neutral facts’ but as a particular
perspective.
 Issues arising from technological choices are more extensive than those assumed by
business, economic or regulatory analysis, but extend, for example, into issues of social
relationships, of a personal sense of security and agency, of moral judgements and so
25
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forth. These wide ranging issues cannot be reduced to scientific and technical questions.
Calls for more information can be interpreted as ‘surrogates for the striking lack of trust in
the present regulatory frameworks….The ‘information’ being called for might best be
described as a call for “experience that convinces me genuinely that I can trust the
judgement and vision of the people and procedures governing decisions taken on my
behalf” rather than as a call for more technical data about the technology itself’ (REF).
Thus, it is the building of trust in institutions (in part through the provision of information,
but also through their other public acts and the ways in which institutions interact which
the public) that is the heart of the problem. The building of trust thus requires an
examination of the conditions – such as honest and open relationships – in which trust
between different parties can develop. Inclusiveness and the provision of spaces for
dialogue, if handled appropriately and with genuine good intent, are a starting point for
developing the conditions in which trust can grow.
To develop authority it is necessary to encompass a much wider view of the nature of the
problem and the potential ways forward, to accept and engage with the legitimacy of critical
viewpoints, and to attempt to reach resolution with other parties. This wider engagement will
then be represented in a broadening of the content of informational materials.
Related to this is the issue of uncertainty and indeterminacy, including the implicit
assumptions underlying any knowledge claim and, as argued earlier, the need to retain future
discretion in decision making. The argument here is that the public, and other stakeholders,
are often well aware of uncertainties (especially over the timescales being considered) and to
deny them - or even to fail to acknowledge them explicitly - can give rise to a perception of
arrogance and misplaced presumptions of controllability, which in turn, reduce the authority of
the institution. Thus, uncertainties and assumptions should be made as explicit as possible.
Included in this are issues where there are a range of scientific or technical opinions, and these
should be communicated comprehensively.
The essential point here is that the deficit model, whereby socio-technical issues are reduced
to problems of information provision, is overturned, and the wide ranging nature of the issue is
recognised. This is not to say that information provision is not important, but that it is only
one part of a much larger picture.
A further key point is the need to emphasise that communication happen even when the agent
concerned does not think that they are communicating, or is not involved in ‘communication’
activities10. That is, an institution communicates through its ‘institutional body-language’ –
what it does in practice, e.g. whether or not it listens – as much as through formal
communications. Typically, institutional body language is neglected, yet it shapes responses
to formal communication initiatives. The conventional risk communication model is a good
example of this self-defeating model in that it presumes – and imposes – a prevailing framing
10
The Terms and Conditions and Schedule of General Requirements issued as part of contracts with Nirex
exemplify this: the confidentiality, publication and publicity requirements suggest a closed organisation
committed to secrecy and wishing to protect itself from outside commentary and to keep its operations private.
This communication is at odds with that overtly expressed by Nirex personnel; we assume they will be revised.
If they are revised, it would also be useful to remove the gendered language (not all contractors are male!) as this
too communicates an identity which is inappropriate.
26
of what the issue is which is not open for negotiation. Communication and public trust is thus
already compromised by imposing the dominant framing on all the subsequent analysis and
communications phases, which fail to see that this unstated, presumptive imposition is the
most potent – and alienating – bit of communication of all.
Suggestion: an audit of potential information requirements, the groups for which they may be
required, and the provisional contents, is conducted to inform a longer term strategy for the
provision of information.
Suggestion: research into the information needs, forms, and sources required by the public
and special interest groups is undertaken, and utilised in respect of the audit above.
Suggestion: an inventory of relevant information available from other organisations
(including web-sites) is prepared. This should include information on issues for which Nirex
is not responsible but are frequently asked about (e.g. renewable energy), and must include a
wide-range of organisations, such as ENGOs. Where suitable leaflets, etc., already exist,
enquiries should be made regarding Nirex’s use of these materials (although a great deal of
care must be taken in assessing ‘suitability’ and the sub-textual messages carried by e.g.
authorship - for example, BNFL material may be considered unsuitable as its authorship is
widely perceived as untrustworthy and/or biased.)
Suggestion: Information sheets on various aspects of radioactive waste management (e.g. the
deep storage concept, the principle of intergenerational responsibility, the current regulatory
structure) be prepared as a relatively inexpensive method of providing information which can
be updated regulary.
Suggestion: all informational materials should be piloted with focus groups, and revisions
made as appropriate. Time plans will need to take account of this. Assumptions about
audiences for information need to be identified and tested.
Suggestion: Revision of confidentiality requirements for contractors as part of paying
attention the communication inherent in institutional body language (see footnote 10).
Suggestion: Although information can never be entirely neutral, it is possible to present a
more or less balanced representation of existing information. Nirex needs to develop the
capacity to present overviews of various issues, giving arguments for and against, as far as
possible without a bias towards one conclusion or another. Using peer reviewers from a range
of stakeholder groups (e.g. ENGOs, nuclear industry, academics) should help in presenting the
range of arguments. This helps to demonstrate the complexity of the decision-factors, and to
communicate the key point that different options and opinions may in principle be legitimate
and open to legitimate differences between different parties, depending on other values and
commitments (which should of course be explicated and deliberated upon as openly as
possible). It also emphasises the point that the ‘best solution’ is a social choice, not a
technical discovery.
Suggestion: It is important at this stage of re-framing that no apparent commitment to any one
27
option (or site), and to any one set of institutional structures, is visible. Thus, for example,
information on deep storage should be balanced by information on other options, perhaps with
arguments for and against being presented, but no conclusions being drawn.
Suggestion: Uncertainties and assumptions are, wherever possible, made explicit in
information materials, as is the range of scientific and technical opinion. This requires
deliberation with people from outside the specialist sub-culture, precisely because some
uncertainties and assumptions are culturally ingrained and taken-for-granted by insiders.
Openness
The argument for openness of information is that it is a necessary precondition for building
trust and authority. One dimension of this is the point that the availability of information
(whether or not it is used) communicates and is perceived as an indicator of the integrity of an
institution. A second dimension is that openness allows critique to take place, with the
ultimate aim of improving the information base through inclusion and consideration of
critique.
Total openness is, however, inhibited by a number of factors:
 Legal restrictions.
 Commercial confidentiality: This is often seen as an excuse not to provide information,
and is often used as such. Nonetheless, there are real situations in which commercial
confidentiality exercises constraints on the provision of information. BNFL reports are a
case in point. One suggestion here is to include information on the existence of such
reports, and refer people to BNFL for the reports themselves, hence ‘passing the buck’.
However, the widespread perception that the nuclear industry operates as a whole, and
hence the lack of separation in the public eye between Nirex and BNFL (a perception that
is supported by the ownership of Nirex) means that this strategy could well be interpreted
as further excuses and secrecy. In the longer term, any institution responsible for
radioactive waste management (‘son of Nirex’) will need to re-negotiate its relationship
with BNFL to enable the publication of material which is utilised in developing strategies
and options: the ideal here is that any materials which form part of a strategy must be
available for public assessment. As argued above, an effect of such openness should
mean that the information base actually improves, and is more widely accepted.
 National security: whilst there does appear to be an acceptance of the requirement for
military secrecy (at least by some people) it is important that this too is not seen as an
excuse for not providing information, and its use is as limited as possible.
 Total openness – including, for example, publication of minutes of meetings, open access
to the material held by Nirex in PCDOCS, and even the possibility of public scrutiny of
email and other exchanges – whilst arguably ideal, raises a number of concerns. This
degree of openness is likely to inhibit discussion, making people unwilling to express more
tentative or radical ideas that could then be misinterpreted. Existing institutional and
personal cultures make this degree of openness unlikely at present11. Policy development
11
My own experience of working with Nirex illustrates the cultural differences of institutions: coming from the
academic realm, where there is a culture (along with a variety of incentives, such as recognition through
publication, the requirement to disseminate findings associated with many sources of funding, and the Research
28
is often seen as sensitive, with associated constraints on information, yet this is an area
where, if authority is to be gained, transparency of process is a pre-requisite, and
transparency of content (e.g. of the options under discussion) may well be necessary.
Nonetheless, at an institutional level it is important that there should be no possibility of an
accusation of decision making behind closed doors, whilst at the same time individuals
may need to retain a degree of privacy. The suggestions for opening up the boundaries of
Nirex to facilitate more open exchanges with ‘outsiders’ will contribute to changing the
culture of secrecy, and may well obviate the need for ‘total’ openness with its associated
problems.
Suggestion: there is a requirement to justify any restriction on the availability of information,
and this should be more detailed than merely claiming ‘commercial confidentiality’ or
‘national security’. The presumption should be in favour of making information available.
Information and Consultation
Consultation and dialogue processes have their own particular information needs. There is
always an irresolvable tension between providing information and allowing participants to
frame issues in their own way – the content and form of information itself constitutes a
particular representation or framing of the issues: no information is ever neutral. For example,
presenting the technical justification of the safety case presumes that the issue is technical.
Further, not all information can be meaningfully summarised or simplified. However, there
are ways of dealing with these tensions.
Firstly, participants can be provided with a variety of information contents and forms, in an
attempt at comprehensive coverage of the variety of perspectives. Whilst this does not
overcome the problem of providing a ‘neutral’ framing, it at least provides participants with a
choice of framings and a more comprehensive view of the range of issues. In addition, being
responsive means that information is seen as a two-way process and that institutions respond
to the ways in which various publics frame the issues, and information can pay attention to
and include these alternative framings.
With respect to simplification and summaries, it is perhaps more important to indicate the
overall shape of the range of perspectives than to provide an over-simplified summary which
ignores uncertainties and dissent: discourse analytic techniques could be useful here to identity
the main discursive forms representing different positions, as could multi-criteria mapping.
Discourse analysis also provides a method for identifying the ways in which the choice of
language - of the words themselves, and their relationship to each other - carries covert
messages. Relatively neutral summaries of the ‘pros and cons’ could be a useful outcome of
Assessment Exercise) of open discussion of ideas and widespread dissemination of findings, I have found it
slightly odd to be working within an institution where the contractual and administrative presumption is still
biased towards keeping ideas and information within the organisation, and sometimes within particular sections
of the organisation. Additionally, I have been shown documents from other organisations with a strict
confidentiality constraint, when the contents of the documents concern issues which are openly discussed in the
academic realm and there seems no prima facie reason for confidentiality, and distinct benefits to be gained from
open discussion. If a shift to an open culture is pursued strongly, there may be much to learn from comparison
with academic institutions.
29
this approach.
Deliberative consultation processes generally require a summary of available information,
often in combination with the opportunity to question ‘witnesses’. The precise information
requirements will depend on the processes selected, but the collation of information in
different formulations (as suggested for providing responses to requests for information) will
provide the basic resource from which more particular materials may be developed if
necessary.
Non-deliberative consultation processes generally have less immediate or specific information
requirements, but may generate the need for more general information, which would be
covered by the provision of such information (information sheets, web-site) for the public
generally.
Indicative Information Needs of Consultation Processes
Citizens Jury/Consensus Conference
Written briefings + opportunity to question
‘witnesses’ selected by the panel. May be a
requirement for specific information at short
notice.
No immediate information requirement
Specifically designed materials may be
required (normally produced by agency
commissioned to run groups)
Requires general and specifically produced
information (e.g. posters)
+ possible access to web-site
+ opportunity to ask questions
General information availability (+ access to
web-site)
requires linking to comprehensive web-based
information from a number of sources,
including critics. Also requires information at
a number of levels from the introductory
overview to the detailed technical reports.
stakeholders provide their own information
inputs; may be a requirement for information
on specific issues at short notice
Information needs are dependent on use; may
be requirement for particular information
Opinion polls
Focus Groups
Discussion Groups
Road shows
Public meetings
Web-consultation
Stakeholder dialogue
Stakeholder panels
Suggestion: a comprehensive collection of information resources (including resources
available from other agencies and groups) is established to provide the basis for the specific
information needs of particular processes.
30
Communication and Consultation
It is important to recognise that communication does not, of itself, comprise any form of
consultation, but that communication is part of consultation. As such, communication needs
to be handled sensitively, with due respect to the sub-textual messages. Most importantly,
communication must be seen as a two-way process, involving listening (see x-ref) to
respondents’ views.
There is a danger of framing radioactive waste consultation as a risk communication problem,
and the large body of work (and numbers of consultants) operating in the risk communication
field reinforces this pressure. The problem here is that much risk communication practice
operates on the deficit model, whereby the public are seen as misinformed and requiring to be
provided with the ‘correct’ information so that they can reach ‘rational’ decisions (i.e.
decisions that concur with those of the information provider). This top-down model
reinforces perceptions of arrogance and a failure to communicate. It is to be avoided at all
costs.
The problem of radioactive waste management must not be seen narrowly as one of a failure
of communication, but as a much wider issue encompassing, for example, concerns about the
sort of society people want to live in and the sorts of institutional, regulatory and decisionmaking bodies in which people wish to place authority. Effective communication is necessary
but not sufficient for achieving resolution. Differences in values, for example, cannot always
be resolved through communicative processes (although well-managed deliberation can
contribute to finding common ground). The point here is that communication must not be
thought of narrowly, or as a one-way process, and that there is a danger that in subsuming
consultative, social and philosophical issues under the organisational heading of
‘Communications’ that these other, potentially more important, issues become sidelined in the
prioritisation of producing information materials.
Suggestion: consideration is given to establishing a division in Nirex with the remit of ‘social
affairs and consultation’ or similar.
Listening to the Public
The first principle of effective communication is that it is two-way – that is, it requires the
ability to listen and respond to other parties in dialogue, rather than one party assuming a
privileged position and ‘telling’ the others how it sees things12 (the ‘decide, announce, defend’
12
This relates to the conceptual leap made in studies of the Public Understanding of Science (PUS), particularly
in relation to risk perceptions, e.g. Royal Society Report. The initial premise of PUS was that the public
misunderstood risks, i.e. that the public did not understand risks in the same way as scientific experts, and thus
that the public needed to know more science to bring their perspectives in line with those of science. This model
is sometimes characterised as seeing the public as an ‘empty vessel’, which requires filling with scientific
information. The empty vessel, or deficit, model is still identifiable as an underlying assumption in many
communication strategies.
31
model). Two-way communication means that the public need to be heard, and be seen to be
heard: there is substantial evidence that expectations can be raised during participative
consultation, and if those expectations are not then fulfilled – that is, if subsequent decisions
do not clearly reflect and address public concerns – then public antagonism is fuelled. One
strategy to overcome this is that of establishing a requirement that decisions are justified in
relation to public comments – that is, decision justifications need to make clear how they have
taken comments into account, why, if relevant, some comments have been rejected, and what
other considerations have been included which may give a different result from what people
may have preferred13.
Additionally, ‘being talked at’ enhances the sense that the institution is arrogant and not
concerned about public responses. On the positive side, two-way communication provides
useful social intelligence.
If this principle is to be taken seriously, however (and the term ‘dialogue’ does imply two-way
communication), it means that Nirex needs to learn how to listen to the public, and how to
incorporate their (our) voices into its planning and decision making. The Riscom projects use
the concept of ‘stretching’ for this development of an institutional capacity to respond to the
public.
Such a capacity needs to go beyond responses associated with the provision of information, to
include all dialogue and consultation processes. This capacity can be seen as enabling social
intelligence to not only be gathered, but usefully utilised with Nirex.
Listening implies a responsibility and duty to respond to what is said, and to institute the
necessary practices to enable this.
Developing a listening capacity
The ability to listen needs to be seen as synergetically related to the development of processes
through which to enable dialogue with stakeholders and the public. Specifically, outputs from
such processes form the bridge between different parties (although the potential for
relationship building of face to face interaction should not be overlooked, it is likely that most
dialogue processes will need to be translated into a written form). It is therefore important that
such outputs both accurately and comprehensively reflect the content of dialogue, and are in a
form which is suitable for institutional digestibility.
Some new institutional organisation will be required to ensure that such outputs then feed into
As studies of the ways in which people actually understood risks, and why they are concerned or not about
particular aspects of risk, accumulated, this approach shifted to one which acknowledged the legitimacy and
rationality of lay perspectives. Rather than the public knowing more about science, the emphasis has shifted to
one of the scientific community – and associated decision makers – knowing more about the public. In this
model communication needs to be two-way, between decision-makers and the public.
13
It is likely that people will not have preferences for specific technical options (or not unless they have
participated in a thorough-going deliberative process such as a citizens’ jury) but that they will have principles
(such as flexibility in the face of ignorance, or independence of decision makers from industrial interests) which
can be translated into a technical or organisational option.
32
strategy development and decision making. With respect to information particularly, each
request for information – and any further response and comment – can be seen as an item of
data, which needs to be collated and analysed. A small group of effective and relevant people
should be established, meeting regularly and frequently to maintain an up-to-date view14 of
public concerns, to consider these findings and ensure that they are fed into the appropriate
fora for strategy and decision making. Such a group would ensure that findings are discussed
and that any new or emerging issues are integrated into relevant developments. This group
would also provide Nirex with a defence against the charge that public comments are being
ignored. The minutes and reports of such a group should be publicly available for comment
(which should also be listened to); ideally reports should be peer reviewed by external peers.
Given the limited social scientific expertise within Nirex, it would also be valuable to include
at least one (external) social scientist on the group. However, such a group should not be
confused with a stakeholder panel, the majority of members being Nirex employees to enable
public views to be integrated into the daily work of Nirex. The role of the stakeholder or
advisory panel suggested in the corporate responsibility group’s terms of reference would be
to review the work of the group. This group could be extended to cover the results of all
dialogue and consultation processes, but the valuable data that can be gleaned from
information provision should not be overlooked. In its extended form, the group would be
responsible for monitoring public views as they emerge, and ensuring that these views were
taken into account.
Suggestion: Nirex establishes a group, predominantly of Nirex staff but including social
scientific expertise, with the remit of eliciting and maintaining an up-to-date view of public
concerns and ensuring that these are fed into the institutional structure.
As well as organisational structures are the more ‘human’ aspects of listening. Staff training
in interpersonal skills is valuable, although it is important that training should enable staff to
listen, not to appear to listen. Such training could be integrating with that suggested for
improving internal communications.
Suggestion: Develop capacity (through training, experience, and possibly new appointments)
in communicating and listening.
The listening culture
The development of listening and its embedding in institutional structure is part of the wider
cultural change which is required for Nirex (and others) to produce effective and acceptable
radioactive waste management strategies. Quite simply, it is axiomatic that if public concerns
are identified and taken into account in the development of strategies, then those strategies
will reflect public concerns and thus be more acceptable. A listening culture is essential to
the eventual production of publicly acceptable radioactive waste management.
14
Research undertaken at CSEC (Grove-White et al, 1997) identified a latent concern with genetically modified
foods which was invisible using conventional polling techniques, but which illustrates the need to maintain
contact with the public in a context where issues can arise, in that case dramatically and suddenly, in an
apparently passive arena.
33
More generally, Nirex needs to develop capacity in the social realms. If Nirex is serious about
developing a positive relationship with the public, then it needs to develop social expertise to
compliment its mainly scientific and technical perspectives. The appointment of at least one
social scientist to a relatively senior position, with associated support, appears to be a prerequisite for developing such capacity, and demonstrating that it is serious about listening to
public and developing publicly acceptable waste management strategies. Such an appointment
would be in line with recent developments in, for example, the Environment Agency and the
Forestry Commission.
Suggestion: consideration is given to the appointment of a social scientist at Nirex.
Preventing institutional tunnel vision
Organisational research and experience shows that changing an institution’s external relations
involves changing institutional culture. Historically, the nuclear industry, and to an extent its
regulatory counterparts, have been viewed with public mistrust, based on experience of
secrecy and dishonesty, and an apparent unwillingness to respond to criticism and concerns (or
a misreading of the nature of these concerns and inappropriate responses) on the part of the
industry - an institutional body-language which has generated a failure of legitimacy in at least
some parts of the nuclear complex. Retrieving this requires the building of trust between the
various actors, which in turn requires changes in the nuclear institutional cultures. Routes to
instituting such changes can be established through widening relationships and participation,
embedding alternative practices, and developing different norms. However, experience
shows that for a cohesive relationship between the social and policy worlds to develop, and
legitimate policies to be developed, it is crucial that any such fora do not produce 'empty
words' 15.
One major problem in the past has been institutional ‘tunnel vision’, whereby Nirex, given a
brief to develop a deep disposal repository, pursued this objective without regard to
alternatives. In turn, in a context of antagonism and opposition where scientists often lined up
for or against the deep repository concept, Nirex’s scientific base was, perhaps, too inward
looking and insufficiently open to wide ranging peer review and challenges to the buried
assumptions and premises on which the science was founded. This produced a form of tunnel
vision, with Nirex defending its proposals rather than being fully open to criticisms of the
science and using these productively to further the scientific basis of its proposals. Whilst
entirely understandable at that time, it is now essential for Nirex to move forward to embrace
criticism and opposition, in the attempt to develop proposals which command widespread
support. This entails a scientific basis which acknowledges its assumptions and uncertainties
(which are not an admission of ‘unsound science’ – quite the opposite; and which are an
integral and unavoidable component of scientific knowledge claims) and is open to societal
judgement on whether these are appropriate and, of themselves, acceptable. As noted above,
one ‘soft’ outcome of the consensus conference was a widening and shift in the way Nirex
thought about retrievability and disposal. Openness, and beyond this, inclusion of criticism,
debate and deliberation, are thus pre-requisites of the development of successful radioactive
waste management strategies.
‘power is actualised only where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and
deeds not brutal’ Hannah Arendt
15
34
Institutional Identity and Consultation
The institutional organisation and identity of Nirex and its possible successor is part and parcel
of consultation and dialogue. An important dimension of public and stakeholder contributions
to dialogue is that these will be constructed in relation to the institution to whom they are
responding. Two-way communication is made up of the identities of both (or all) participants.
Thus, the eventual form of Nirex, and any associated stakeholder panels and decision-making
groups, is highly relevant to the design of consultation and dialogue processes, and needs to be
taken into account.
Aspects of Consultation
Scale
Who should be involved in which processes and when is a question which cannot be answered
in detail until objectives have been established. There are nonetheless a number of practical
considerations:
1. competing demands on the time of participants
2. the importance of the process to the participants
3. the relationship of the processes with other developments and requirements
4. the limitations of adequate discussion among larger groups
5. who should be represented and why: stakeholders, industry representatives, members of
the public, representatives of the public, critics, academics, NGOs, trade unions
6. how will this mix of people work? What sort of process is needed to assist in moving
beyond arguing over interests and for the broader public good?
7. are there pre-existing inequalities (e.g. in power, in information) which may subvert the
interaction between participants?
8. who is not being included? Is the reason justifiable?
9. is the selection process for participation transparent and justifiable?
10. how should membership be reviewed? Does the purpose of the group imply a constant
membership or a cycle of membership?
11. what proportion of its resources do Nirex/others want to commit?
A major consideration is the distinction between stakeholders (as industry and interest group
representatives) and the public at large. The Riscom project will experiment with different
formulations of groups, some of which are likely to bring together stakeholders and the public
on equal footing, but existing work suggests that this can be problematic for reasons including
the existing relationship between parties and the deference with which members of the public
may treat expert pronouncements in a collaborative forum.
Suggestion: Gather and utilise social intelligence with respect to eventual consultation
processes. For example, the Front of the Front End project will contribute to identifying
alternative framings, whilst the DETR consultation will (hopefully) throw some light on the
range of possible consultation processes, although this needs to be supplemented by research
35
with the public on the perceived legitimacy of these processes.
Inclusion or representation?
There is a tradeoff in any process between inclusiveness and depth (unless very extensive
resources are to be committed). Inclusiveness generally requires high numbers of participants,
which then limits the amount of time that institutions can commit to each participant.
Inclusiveness should not be confused with representativeness, although the same problem
tends to apply. There is, as discussed above, a widespread assumption that to be valid, public
‘consultation’ requires large numbers of participants, with a consequent reliance on methods
which enable large numbers to be included, but are still exclusionary. An alternative approach
is to identify social groups who should be included (the obvious example here is local
communities around any proposed site), and ensure that more deliberative consultation
processes include those groups. Another alternative is to identify (through social intelligence
gathering) those issues which require deeper public deliberation (for example, the institutional
arrangements for radioactive waste management) and establish the appropriate process for this
to take place (such as a Citizens’ Jury). Perhaps the most important ‘bottom line’ is to ensure
that consultative processes enable all those who wish to have a voice to be able to comment.
Lack of participation also needs to be taken into account in process design. Although often
considered to be apathy, there is a strong argument that apparent apathy actually reflects the
lack of a sense of agency (i.e. the ability to affect events); members of the general public do
not participate as they do not believe that their participation will influence outcomes. This is
particularly acute at the national level. Thus, although the public may express the view that
they believe the public views, aspirations and concerns should be taken into account in
decision making, they may well not participate in general consultation processes. However,
when invited to participate in a specific process, many people welcome the opportunity to
discuss the issue, as was the case with the June 99 consensus conference. Nonetheless, some
people do not wish to participate in consultation, for whatever reasons, and there is a choice to
be made between trying to motivate these people to participate, or allowing them to exclude
themselves. What is certainly important is that the design of processes does not of itself
exclude particular groups who might wish to be including. This implies the necessity of a
suite of consultation processes.
In general, there seems to be no strong argument why any sector of the population should have
a stronger voice. There has been some suggestion that young people should be particularly
represented as it is they who will inherit the problem/solution, but whilst inclusion of an often
overlooked or discredited group is laudable, the argument for privileging young people is
otherwise weak.
In terms of stakeholders, rather than the general public, the same considerations apply. Nirex
has prepared a comprehensive list of stakeholders, both nationally and internationally, which
forms the basis of an ‘invitation list’. Care needs to taken, though, that stakeholder groups do
not over-represent industry and regulatory realms, but include social and ethical domains.
Suggestion: Consultation process design should enable all those who wish to be included to
36
have a voice.
Suggestion: Stakeholder groups do not over-represent industry and regulatory realms.
Timing
In the short term, any initiative from Nirex needs to be integrated with government policy
development planning. The immediate forthcoming activity is the DETR Consultation (due
out in June, with expected responses in the autumn) for which Nirex needs to prepare its
responses (as well as feeding into the content of the consultation). The ‘Front of the Front
End’ project will provide input into this response.
In the longer term it is possible to sketch a sequential series of consultation and social
intelligence gathering processes in relation to the development of policy and Nirex’s ‘road
map’, but it would be presumptive to do this prior to the results of other work, especially the
Front of the Front End project and the DETR consultation on consultation .
Important general points here are:
 many aspects may require their own ‘front end’ consultation (for example establishing site
selection criteria)
 sufficient time must be allowed for consultation and analysis of the results of consultation and for further rounds of deliberation and consultation on issues that may arise in earlier
rounds, meaning that the timescale has to be open-ended
 management practice recommends allowing an additional 30% on estimated timings when
undertaking new activities
 time needs to be allowed for analysis and evaluation of consultation processes and their
outcomes, especially as these are to some extent experimental in this context and as much
as possible needs to be learnt from them (particularly as the eventual consultation trajectory
may provide a model for other cases)
Overall, the key point is that sufficient time needs to be taken for consultation processes; this
component of developing policy must be adequate to enable public acceptability and will take
as long as it takes. This may delay the timescale on other components, but is essential.
Geographical focus
The obvious spatial levels for consideration of radioactive waste policy are:
• National
• Site specific
However, other communities also need to be considered, as below.
National
Overall policy requires national level, general consideration. At this level, the Consensus
Conference model is the primary example of an existing process. However, there are a
number of problems with this process, highlighted by the June 1999 Consensus Conference.
37
1) the overall purpose of the consensus conference in the UK context is unclear
2) the relationship of the outcome of the consensus conference with policy development: there
is no transparent mechanism whereby the outcomes are taken into account
3) representation: are the findings of the consensus conference panel being seen as
representative of the views of the wider public?
4) relationship with other consultation mechanisms
5) a confusion between ideas of opinion gathering and deliberation
Alternatives for national level consultation include traditional consultation processes, e.g. the
production of a consultation paper directed towards specific questions which may or may not
encompass the issues of concern to stakeholders; road shows etc.
Web based consultation is in its infancy, but may be viable if recent findings are taken into
account, including the need for wide publicity in other media, providing facilities for those
without internet access and/or competence, the avoidance of pre-framing the issue, and the
inclusion of deliberative mechanisms.
It is possible to convene discussion groups (or ‘deliberative focus groups’) at a number of
locations, and this provides a useful method for exploring public concerns in depth, as well as
avoiding the problem of pre-framing the issue.
The idea of generating ‘public debate’ on a wide scale has some currency, although it is not
clear how this should be done or how such debate can be assessed and incorporated into policy
development. Undertaking a range of consultation processes, and seeking widespread media
coverage of these, is one route to encouraging such debate, but care should be taken that
 a wide range of voices are heard - not just those who shout loudest/gain media coverage
 that media coverage is NOT read as representing public views (as is often the case)
 issues arising in debate are given due attention
 ideas arising in debate are captured and utilised
Overall, there is no existing process which includes large numbers of people and the capacity
for deliberation. Such a process could be designed but would inevitably be expensive.
At the national level, and in relation to eliciting general public views, using a range of
methods is probably the best option. However, care needs to be taken that this does not result
in a confusing mass of outcomes, taking account of the point that different methods may give
different results. As above, when setting up consultation processes, attention needs to be paid
to how the results of consultation will be utilised and incorporated.
Site specific
At the local level, there are a set of consultation issues that will arise once possible sites have
been identified. These will require their own ‘front end’ to enable local concerns to be
articulated and heard. It is important, too, to learn from the experiences of other countries,
whilst remaining aware of the different political and social contexts and what may or may not
be transferable to the British context. At this stage, rather than attempting to define the shape
of such consultation, it is more relevant to identify the necessary preconditions for authentic
38
local consultation to take place. These include:
 the existence of a responsible agency which carries at least some degree of public trust and
authority
 having developed a responsive listening capacity
 having established a comprehensive and inclusive scientific base
 openness of information
 having established a clear and publicly supported site selection process
 openness regarding the disbenefits and risks, as well as any potential gains, from hosting a
repository16
 having avoided ‘them and us’ identities becoming established
The form of site specific consultation, and discussion of the validity of possible decision
making frameworks (for example, the inclusion of a local community right of veto), are issues
that need to be explored in the Front End and Consultation on Consultation.
Geographically distinct communities
It is likely that different geographically located communities will have different responses to
consultation, particularly in relation to their previous experiences with the nuclear industry17
(the Front of the Front End project will explore this to a limited extent). The obvious cases
here are locations which have previously been identified as sites for potential repositories,
where as much as possible needs to be learnt by institutions regarding the failures (and
successes) of public inclusion.
Suggestion: Review previous siting initiatives (in the UK and abroad) to identify relevant
‘lessons’.
There are also a range of factors, such as the local employment situation, dependency on
tourism, and local populations’ ‘sense of place’, which are likely to impinge on responses.
The design of consultation processes will needed to have identified what these factors are
likely to be (through a combination of review and empirical research if necessary) and ensure
the inclusion of relevant groups.
Suggestion: Identify factors which are likely to impinge on local responses.
Communities of interest
As well as spatially defined communities, there are what are called ‘communities of interest’,
where people come together around shared interests or concerns, etc (for example, anti-nuclear
groups). If these are organised groups, they are relatively easy to access as stakeholders (e.g.
as invited respondents to consultation). If they are not in the form of organised groups, then
16
The issue of compensating affecting communities is a separate one which is not explored here.
Research (Irwin et al, 1999) has shown that ‘local history’ CHECK is a major determinant of the relationship
between hazardous installations and local publics. Wynne et al (1993) provides examples of the influence of a
sense of stigma on potential local acceptability of a further radioactive waste facility. This manifested itself in
explicit concerns about government investment in communications and tertiary education so as to make the
community feel less cut-off, marginalised, down-trodden and neglected. If addressed, this would have made the
siting of a radioactive waste facility at Sellafield much more likely to enjoy public support, and vice versa.
17
39
they will need to be identified and their input sought in relation to site selection, although in
the earlier stages, they can probably be subsumed in general consultation processes.
International
Obviously, any waste management policy will need to concur with international commitments.
These commitments form part of the information base for deliberation, as do the experiences
of other countries. A further aspect of the international arena which is relevant to
communication and consultation is that being able to demonstrate a national commitment to
consultation and public acceptability is likely, at least in the current political context, to gain
the approval of other states, with possible implications for international agreements.
The context of deliberation includes the international arena. Public concerns about the UK
becoming a ‘dumping ground’ for radioactive waste, in relation to Sellafield’s reprocessing
contracts, are an important feature of that context, as is the related concern that the
international nuclear industry is desperate to find a solution for radioactive waste disposal.
Suggestion: Information materials on international commitments and experiences are
prepared.
Suggestion: Features of the international context which affect public acceptability in the UK
are identified.
Agenda and framing
A key theme of this report has been the importance of how the issue of radioactive waste is
framed, or problem definition, and the by now widely accepted argument that ‘technical’
issues include social and ethical implications and concerns. However, it is not practicable to
continuously re-frame the issue, although it is important to remain sensitive to shifts in public
and other opinion through re-visiting the framing at appropriate stages, and being open to new
framings arising in on-going work.
In the early stages of consultation it is imperative to be open to alternative framings, and to
incorporate these in the development of strategy. Thus it is entirely appropriate that the DETR
consultation should include consideration of consultation methods, and, beyond this, the
question of what the purpose of consultation is. Similarly, at this stage, Nirex needs to be
gathering social intelligence on the variety of perspectives and issues that are important to
various stakeholders, including the public.
This implies that early stage consultation processes should be open to re-framing the issues,
and should not constrain responses to specific issues. Many processes are capable of this if
they are conducted appropriately – for example, a consensus conference or citizens’ jury can
circumscribe the panel’s remit, or leave it open to definition by the panel themselves.
The framework for moving forward then needs to encompass and reflect the framing(s)
identified in this first stage, in order for that framework to have widespread acceptability.
40
At later stages in developing policy, it is more appropriate to address specific questions within
an established framework, whilst remaining open to the possibility of changing views. It may
therefore be worthwhile to conduct discussion groups at regular intervals to test that the
framework is still appropriate and acceptable.
Even at these later stages, though, there are sub-sets of issues – such as siting – which require
attention to their framing. Here, it is necessary to consult on the framing on the sub-issue; for
siting this might require attention to the appropriateness of the criteria for site selection, and
the decision making process itself.
There are some aspects which are unsuitable for detailed and widespread consultation on their
content, whilst the process is of general concern. Scientific and technical issues fall into this
category. Public consultation on the detailed technical knowledge utilised is probably not
necessary, but the processes of peer review, and the responses to uncertainties, are issues for
which public consultation is necessary to achieve authority and trust in the scientific and
technical baseline.
There may well be disjunctions in what different groups consider to be the important aspects
of the issue, and the priorities that are given to these. For example, some may consider that
there is an ethical imperative to solve the problem within the lifetime of the current generation,
whilst others may be more concerned with the uncertainties of long term management and the
importance of keeping options open. Whenever possible, such disjunctions should be
synthesised, but where they are in opposition, their resolution is appropriate for deliberative
consultation processes. It is important, too, to identify who is arguing for which positions –
one thing that does seem clear is that the public expect private companies to be promoting
their own interests, rather than the common good, and this leads to a lack of public confidence
in the arguments of private interests. Thus, in a situation of conflict, it is not stakeholders
representing private interests but relatively neutral individuals pursuing the common good
who should participate in deliberation to resolve the conflict.
Suggestion: any consultation or dialogue process needs to consider whether issue framing is
appropriate or needs exploration. Framing should be re-visited from time to time to test its
continued applicability.
Context
The legal, policy, reglatory and institutional context produces a set of structural constraints on
the forms of dialogue and consultation which are appropriate. A major problem with the
consensus conference model is that it has no clear role in subsequent policy development. As
argued above, to be legitimate and generate authority, consultation needs to be linked to policy
and decision making along a traceable pathway. We have argued here that Nirex needs to
develop a responsive listening capacity; the same could be said for the relevant government
bodies. Whilst examining the potential institutional and legal changes that would enable a
more genuine dialogue between players is beyond the remit of this paper, the point must not
be overlooked that consultation and dialogue processes do need to fit existing contexts (or
these contexts must be changed) in order to be meaningful.
41
The situation is of course more complex than this, in that it may the results of dialogue and
consultation that themselves raise problems with the policy context and potentially lead to
change. This remains dependent, though, on the responsiveness of the context.
Another aspect of the context is that of existing commitments, most notably in relation to the
continued production of radioactive waste. Commitments can be challenged, but represent an
a priori set of conditions. Whether public acceptability of radioactive waste management
strategy is possible whilst maintaining current commitments is an empirical question which
will be explored in the Front of the Front End project. The key point here is to recognise that
whilst existing commitments may be substantial, they can be challenged, and, like
epistemological assumptions, need to be open to challenge in order to establish the conditions
in which radioactive waste policy can be publicly acceptable.
Suggestion: the relationship with the existing context needs to be examined in designing
consultation processes, with particular attention to establishing a transparent pathway for
consultation outcomes to be taken on board.
Uncertainty
The first part of this paper presented an argument for making uncertainties explicit, for
enabling wider social judgement on the implications of uncertainty, and maintaining future
discretion in decision making. In relation to the conduct of consultation and dialogue, this
means that ‘facts’ and knowledge claims need to acknowledge their inherent indeterminacies
and assumptions and be open to challenge on these. Thus, when presenting information on,
for example, geological stability over long time scales, the basis of the conclusions and the
assumptions that have been made need to be made clear. Scientific and technical deliberation,
as outlined elsewhere in this paper, will, if sufficiently inclusive, inevitably raise discussion of
these assumptions and test their validity in the current state of knowledge.
There now seems to be substantial evidence that the public accept uncertainty, and that claims
of certainty can be misplaced and counter-productive (e.g. BSE, GMOs). This suggests that
uncertainties should be public and that this will lead to an increase in public confidence. The
simple example of the timescales over which long term management needs to take place
means that many factors are, quite common-sensically, uncertain: the suggestion is that
management strategies need to acknowledge this uncertainty, rather than claim an excessive
degree of control over unknown futures. Thus, for example, the story-line that options are the
best guess at the moment, rather than resolving all future uncertainties, is more likely to be
acceptable18.
18
An example of such claims can be found in the materials Nirex presented to the Consensus Conference, where
it is claimed that the rock formulations selected for a deep repository do not contain valuable resources and
therefore are unlikely to be mined or disturbed by future generations. This claim of course overlooks the point
that we have no way of knowing what resources might be valued by future generations and what they might
choose to dig up, and would be a stronger claim if it were more substantially qualified.
42
Outputs
The outputs from different processes vary. One important distinction is between
 social intelligence gathering (where the concrete output is likely to be a tranche of data and
an analytical report) when there is no ‘contract’ or expectation on the part of participants
that their views will impact directly on decision-making, and
 formal consultation, where there is an implicit expectation that outcomes will be taken into
account and, as argued above, there needs to be traceable path from consultation to
decision. This is particularly acute where a process produces specific recommendations.
A further consideration is the problem of information overload. The suggestion here is that
Nirex devotes resources to gathering social intelligence and developing consultation and
dialogue, and that the information produced is considered against the resources devoted to its
use.
Contradictory results present another problem. It is almost axiomatic that different processes
are likely to produce different results. However, in some circumstances careful examination
of the process and the result can explain these differences and sometimes resolve them,
looking beneath the obvious to underlying factors which may be common. Where there are
genuine contradictions, these should be addressed through deliberation, and the question of
who should make decisions in such circumstances is itself one that should be addressed
through consultation on the institutional arrangements that are authoritative.
As a general rule, the outcomes of consultation should themselves be made public, so that the
ways in which outcomes are taken into account in decision making are themselves transparent.
Reach
The outcomes of stakeholder and public panels can only be advisory in the current institutional
set-up. To give stakeholder groups decision-making powers is a relatively radical step,
although if a group equivalent to a ‘Board’ were established, who took decisions, and were
accountable for those decisions, this might prove acceptable. There are, however, arguments
for and against such a board – and for and against giving the public a more powerful role in
decision making.
There is the question of what the purpose of giving a board decision making authority might
be. Answers include their ability to make ‘better’ decisions, shifting responsibility away from
Nirex and thus protecting other personnel, and gaining credibility with the public (although
perhaps not with all other stakeholders). Gaining public credibility and trust would in this
case be dependent on the personal image of the board members; and this, of itself, seems to be
a dishonest strategy, using marketing techniques rather than attempting to find a sounder basis
for claims of trustworthiness (such as integrity, responsibility, accountability) that could
collapse if board members became publicly untrustworthy.
This is not to say, however, that there might not be particular cases where public decision
making is more appropriate – any eventual siting decision, for example, could arguably
require a local decision of acceptance of a repository (and will be problematic if such is not
43
forthcoming).
Neither is it to say that the public, and other stakeholders, have no role to play. Outcomes
must be taken into account by the relevant groups within Nirex, and the principles of this are
laid out under ‘Listening’.
Suggestion: transparent pathways for incorporating outcomes of consultation processes are
established to support legitimacy. The duty to respond to outcomes is codified in the
requirement to explain and justify how these have been taken into account, or not.
Web based information and consultation
The web represents the primary medium for the location and access of information. Its use as
a consultation mechanism is also likely to be substantial, given its potentially widespread
accessiblity. As use of the web is the subject of other research being conducted for Nirex, we
will limit comments here to a minimum.
Suggestions:
 a comprehensive web-site is used by some organisations as a library for both internal and
external use, and is thus an efficient location for information
 any current web-site design should not restrict further development
 the future design of web consultation needs careful review of existing experiments in this
medium
 the design of the web-site, and what is included and excluded, will itself communicate an
identity for Nirex. Thus, openness of information content and, for example, the inclusion
of a ‘comments’ site, communicates a desire to be open and to engage with the public.
This dimension of the site design is arguably as important as the actual content.
 the web-site should contain links to the full range of organisations who also publish
relevant information or comments on the web (particularly including ENGOs)
 monitoring web usage would provide useful information on the types of information
accessed
 publication on the web of existing Nirex reports is unlikely to fulfil current requests for
information – and gives a distorted picture of the current development trends. It therefore
needs to be substantially supplemented by reports of current activities (possibly including
consultancy reports such as this one) and possibly divided up historically, so that reports
produced for the RCF planning application are separated from current activities (e.g.
reports could be categorised as pre- and post- 1998 or 1999) to indicate that Nirex is
developing a new trajectory, and to separate ‘new’ Nirex from its past
 setting up a simple comments/questions and answers page within the web-site could
provide some useful experience in using the web as a communications/consultation
medium, as well as generating insights into public responses.
Developing a Communication and Consultation Strategy
Any widespread consultation may or may not be conducted by Nirex, but will have to
44
compliment DETR activity. Partly for this reason, but also reflecting the ‘front end’ argument
and the current expected time horizons, we recommend here that Nirex does not embark on
consultation per se, but focuses on gathering social intelligence to inform the design of later
consultation processes, alongside putting into place a number of stakeholder groups designed
primarily to open up the institutional boundaries, as well as to (hopefully) make Nirex more
credible, forge relationships, and information and insights into public and stakeholder
positions, and induce a cultural shift within Nirex towards taking account of and responding to
the further agenda of questions and responsibilities which listening to external agents
necessitates.
Bringing the outside inside
Nirex needs to access both external expertise (to prevent institutional ‘tunnel vision’) and
public views. This implies that Nirex needs to turn its attention outwards, and to begin to
establish and routinely undertake dialogue with external bodies and individuals. Of itself, this
will generate cultural change within Nirex, although this requires that dialogue should not be
defensive but open to differences of opinion and a more mature engagement with the diversity
of positions, including being able to question long held assumptions and commitments.
Current plans to develop peer preview and extended peer review processes, and the potential
to convene ‘stakeholder’ groups and public panels, exemplify the methods through which
Nirex can extend its boundaries, as do gathering social intelligence and the general process of
eliciting widespread comment and discussion on Nirex’s activities and development plans.
These activities should be pursued with vigour.
There is much to be said for actual face to face interaction in the development of new
relationships and a widening of Nirex’s perceptions, particularly in undertaking this in a nonconfrontational and agreeable manner. Although face to face meetings are expensive and
laborious, they have more to offer than paper exchanges, and sufficient resources need to be
allocated to such meetings.
One potential resource for Nirex utilise is the perceptions and responses of external agents
with whom they have been working. Finding out what these people think of Nirex (which
would obviously have to be handled extremely sensitively and with a high degree of
confidentiality so that budding relationships were not compromised) would provide some
valuable indications of what works and what doesn’t. For example, one person mentioned a
number of arguments that they found particularly convincing. The caveat here is that people
who work with Nirex, especially over long periods, are likely to adopt the culture and norms
of Nirex, which limits the usefulness of their responses. Nonetheless, these people are an
accessible group and reviewing their responses could be done rapidly.
To facilitate review, comment and dialogue, it would be useful for Nirex to construct a
database of communications networks of scientific and technical expertise (including social
scientists) to use in publicising Nirex’s invitations for comment. Such networks include, for
example, other organisations’ newsletters and email lists. The construction of such a database
would necessitate a small project identifying existing communications networks.
45
Suggestion: plans to convene a variety of stakeholder inputs and groups/panels, with wide
ranging membership are pursued rapidly.
Suggestion: Nirex commissions a small project to identify existing communications networks.
Taking the inside outside
Part of Nirex’s work is to communicate about its activities to external audiences and potential
participants. Comments on information provision are covered above; the principles here are
firstly to find out the sorts of questions and framings external agents have, and they to respond
with openness and completeness. There must be a shift from the presumption that Nirex (et
al) have the (correct) framing and associated information to two-way communication
involving a dialogue where external positions are incorporated.
This means, for example, that when presenting Nirex’s work to external audiences, the style
should be one of being open to comments and criticism, and, rather than defending Nirex’s
position, a dissociation from a strong commitment to one way of thinking but rather a
willingness to take on board alternative ways of thinking and open discussion of their merits.
Information Levels
The current plan is for Nirex to produce three ‘levels’ of information:
1. general, widely accessible, simple summaries
2. summaries for an audience with some scientific/technical education (e.g. to A level or
graduate standard)
3. detailed technical documents.
In many ways, it is the first of these which is most difficult to produce. The difficulties are
related to the problem of what to include and what to leave out and the inevitability of
reproducing assumptions in any general statement which cannot go into all the methodological
and technical complexities and uncertainties. What is probably most important at present is
not to restrict these summaries to technical issues, but to include the social and ethical issues
and choices. For example, a short summary of the current regulatory and decision making
structures with an acknowledgement that these are problematic – i.e. that there are questions of
trust and authority which need to be addressed – might be usefully included.
However, care needs to be taken regarding assumptions about the audiences for these
information materials, and assumptions should be identified and empirically tested.
Suggestion: Summary (and other) information should not be restricted to scientific and
technical issues (narrowly conceived) but should acknowledge social and ethical issues.
Suggestion: Assumptions about audiences need to be tested, and information materials piloted
with intended audiences.
46
Working Groups
The current set of working groups within Nirex will contribute to the development of an
overall communications and consultation strategy. The involvement of a range of staff, drawn
from different departments within Nirex, is laudable. A number of problems, however, have
been noted:
 The process for selection of the membership of the working groups is not transparent, and
in some cases is exacerbating existing divisions and insecurities within Nirex. Internal
transparency of process is a necessary precursor to developing the commitment to external
transparency, and contributes to the culture shift.
 There is some indication that some of the working groups are suffering from ‘working
group syndrome’ whereby the agenda, purpose, and relationship with other work is unclear
to at least some participants. We suggest that, having gone through their initial stages, a
clearer agenda of work/tasks, with appropriate milestones and concrete deliverables, is
developed for each group. These will need to be integrated within an overall strategy.
This should help maintain motivation and a better sense of the purpose of the groups.
 Again in relation to motivation and purpose, working groups may need to have budgets to
carry out tasks and perhaps commission work, and certainly need to have the same status
within Nirex as other work.
 There is a fair amount of wheel reinvention going on, where existing knowledge (external
to Nirex) is not being drawn upon. To some extent, too, institutional memory is being lost
as internal knowledge is not drawn upon.
 It may well be sensible for at least some groups to draw upon external expertise; this has
the double benefit of providing knowledge and experience, and of ‘bringing the outside
inside’.
 The shift to exposing uncertainty and assumptions is a necessary change which all groups
need to take on board.
In relation to the specific working and associated groups:
Making Science Accessible
Useful inputs could be gained from the public understanding of science, risk perception and
risk communication literatures. There is a need for analysis of information requests, but
before this, a questioning of what information the pubic actually wants; some insights on the
appropriate framing will be derived from the Future Foundation and CSEC work with focus
groups. The ‘front end’ is crucial to this group.
Internal Communications
The development of presentations for internal trial and external use is valuable, although it
must be borne in mind that the value of internal trial is mainly in terms of developing internal
communications, as external audiences may respond very differently. Over emphasising
internal responses could reinforce an inward looking culture.
The development of the website, as suggested above, provides a potentially valuable resource
for internal communications as well as communicating to external audiences.
47
Technical Documentation
It seems important that past information is made available on the web as rapidly as possible,
leaving room for communications activities to move forward.
One specific issue is the publication of consultants’ reports on the web in relation to inviting
comments (through the web-site) on these reports. Two scenarios are of concern – that of a
high response rate which overwhelms the capacity for Nirex and/or relevant consultancies to
engage with responses, and a low response rate which could be interpreted as making
publication unnecessary. A high response rate is unlikely at present, but could well be the
case later in the decision process. Sufficient resources will have to be devoted to engaging
with these responses, but these can be balanced against the low resource intensity of eliciting
comments. A low response rate could potentially be countermanded by publicising the
availability of reports and the invitation to comment in other media (e.g. using the
communications networks identified in the project suggested above).
Peer preview and review
Possible mechanisms for developing peer preview and review appear reasonable. The quest
for ‘independent’ reviewers, though, may be a chimera, just as truly representative samples of
the public are unachievable. Instead, two aims may be appropriate – to gain widespread
review, and to attempt to gain comprehensive review. The first of these is achievable through
widespread publication of the invitation to comment, whilst the second involves the attempt to
identify the range of responses (perhaps through the first mechanism) and include
representatives of different perspectives as reviewers.
It is worth also remembering that the peer community can itself be too close to sufficiently test
the assumptions and everyday practices embodied in research. This is particularly the case
with nuclear research, as most practitioners are in some connected to the nuclear industry.
Reviewers who are at some distance from the industry are especially valuable.
The scientific agenda and strategy is of itself a crucial reflection of the questions which have
been assumed to be appropriate. The scientific agenda, therefore, needs to be responsive to
the issues raised in the front end exploration of public and stakeholder framing. Whether
public input into preview and review is itself appropriate and necessary is a moot point. A
range of possibilities, from inviting comment via the web to open meetings to establishing a
public panel, are available. It might well be that if, as suggested below, Nirex moves towards
setting up a ‘People’s Panel’ then using scientifically literate members of this panel is a viable
method of gaining public input into preview and review.
One further point is the potential value of inviting known critics to preview and review
research. This would be expose and test at least some of underlying assumptions, and enable
more robust proposals and research to be developed, through testing them against strong
criticism. Naïve critics, too, have something to contribute, in that they are not inculcated with
the cultural norms and practices of the nuclear industry and can often raise fresh questions
from an outside perspective; members of the public may be valuable to fulfil this role.
Science Review
Many of the comments relating to peer preview and review are relevant to scientific review
48
generally. Especially important in this respect is to the need to avoid following the existing
trajectory of thought in relation to deep disposal and the related scientific and technical
knowledge. Instead, those responsible for reviewing and developing scientific strategy need to
be able to hear and respond to the questions and issues that arise in relation to exploring
alternative framings of the problem of radioactive waste management.
Additionally, the existing approach to the review of science largely omits social, political and
management science, all of which are highly relevant to constructing a publicly acceptable
waste management strategy.
Proposed Stakeholder Advisory Panel
There is a proposal to establish a stakeholder advisory panel of ‘great and the good’ with a
brief to provide advice, comment and fresh thinking on stakeholder dialogue processes, and to
publish an annual independent review of engagement with stakeholders. Such a panel could
provide not only new thinking, but a profile and credibility for Nirex, so long as it has
demonstrable influence. Potential members could include a scientist, NGO and Local
Authority representatives, a politician, and potentially a social scientist and ethical expert. All
are anticipated to have high profiles, lending their personal credibility to Nirex.
Whilst in outline this seems reasonable, there are three areas of concern. Firstly, the route by
which such a panel would influence Nirex’s thinking is unclear, yet without this influence, the
panel is spurious. Secondly, the membership of such a panel is crucial, but the justification for
selecting representatives of particular social groups is not apparent, and the selection process
not identified. Again, the selection process needs to be transparent in order to make the panel
legitimate. Additionally, the ‘usual’ process of selecting people who are in some way known
and considered suitable is liable to reproduce rather than challenge existing thinking. Thirdly,
the notion that personal credibility can be transferred to Nirex, although plausible, can also be
read for what it is, that is, an attempt by Nirex to justify itself and make itself trusted through
leaning on the reputation of others. This reading undermines that attempt, potentially giving
rise to the interpretation that Nirex is cynically attempting to manipulate public and
stakeholder views of its authority. It smells like PR rather an attempt to genuinely open up
Nirex to a wider range of views and concerns.
Instead, we suggest that the purpose of such a panel is clearly identified, and the aim of
borrowing credibility abandoned. Instead, the focus should be on introducing influential
thinking and practical expertise to Nirex to contribute to its development of stakeholder
involvement. This implies that it is the knowledge, abilities, and ideological commitments of
the members that is of primary importance. Such people are likely to have personal
reputations, but this is secondary. With this change of emphasis, it is still likely that the
groups identified above could still be represented, as it is likely that appropriate people can be
found in each domain, with the exception of natural science and possibily ENGOs.
This panel overlaps with that suggested in relation to institutional listening , which could
provide the conduit for thinking to be internalised.
It seems premature to establish such a panel without having developed an overall strategy for
49
stakeholder involvement, at least in outline. On the other hand, the panel could provide
invaluable assistance in developing that strategy, although Nirex might well be effectively
handing over control and responsibility which could well work against internalising the norms
and practices of dialogue. On balance it seems more reasonable at present to review the
various suggestions for establishing interactions with stakeholders, move towards having a
strategy developed for implementation early 2001 (when the responses to the DETR
consultation will be available, as will outcomes of various projects commissioned by Nirex,
both of which will contribute to a strategy), whilst setting up mechanisms from those
components which seem relatively clear cut or necessary, such as peer preview and review and
the basic information materials.
Any set of stakeholder dialogue processes need to be reviewed regularly, and the process of
review would allow revisions to be made to any ‘one-off’ mechanisms in line with the overall
strategy.
Suggestion: Nirex moves towards having an implementable stakeholder dialogue strategy by
early 2001, whilst setting up some provisional mechanisms.
Corporate Responsibility and Strategic Communications
As suggested above, a strategy for the interlocking areas of corporate responsibility,
stakeholder interaction, communications and information, and public consultation, is required.
There are a number of current initiatives underway which need to be integrated with such a
strategy. These include:
• scientific review
• peer preview and review
• development of information materials
• development of the web-site
• development of communications strategy
• development of corporate responsibility
• four year plan/road map and critical path analysis
• stakeholder advisory group
• working groups
All of these require social intelligence and ways of interacting with stakeholders and public.
The road map, for example, must have public review built into it, as well as needing to
respond to issues and concerns raised in initial consultation (presumably that undertaken by
the DETR).
An initial flurry of ideas has been generated at Nirex; it seems that the time is ripe for starting
to integrate these into an overall strategy for this area, which should include a programme of
social research.
Suggestion: a social research programme is developed.
50
Public consultation and gathering social intelligence
None of the current initiatives do more than begin to consider ways of bringing the public
‘inside’ Nirex. The first, essential step is to address the framing of the radioactive waste issue
and this is being addressed in part through the Front of the Front End project19.
We have suggested that Nirex’s current need is for social intelligence rather than formal
consultation, and made a number of suggestions as to how this can be done (see Executive
Summary).
Other possibilities include:
• a citizens’ panel of say 500 people, replacing one quarter each year with one quarter
remaining constant as far as is possible (so they build up history, knowledge etc). Use this
panel for focussed consultation (e.g. deliberative groups, testing information etc). Use to
test out proposals as they emerge. This essentially comprises a database of people willing
to participate in a variety of exercises, but its success is dependent on the methods used.
• A deliberative standing panel (with a rotating membership of say twelve members of the
public) who can receive representations, request information, review developments and
make recommendations on policy development, research agenda, and on the processes and
strategy for widening participation, possibly meeting say twice a year to go through a
process similar to that of a citizens jury.
• Commissioning further projects on particular areas as identified in a research programme.
Timescale and Development Plans
There are, as yet, very few if any, hard milestones around which developments need to be
structured. DETR’s suggested timetable (May 00) is as follows; there is the additional
consideration that the curent Secretary of State is keen to move forward.
(?)
(?)
(??)
(??)
June 2000
January 2001
2001
2002
DETR launch consultation on consultation
DETR responses to consultation
Consultation on options
White Paper
The implications of this timescale are there are few immediate decisions and outcomes which
Nirex need to provide, and that there is a degree of breathing space for consideration of
options. Further, there are decisions which Nirex cannot take until DETR actions are
completed, although there are inputs that can be made into DETR thinking.
The complexity of establishing a time-plan is due to the inter-relatedness of various
19
It is likely that this project will raise issues that require further exploration, rather than producing the final word
in the ‘publics’ framings’.
51
components and the point that some outcomes are unpredictable whilst others are (or should
be), by their nature, changing and developing.
It is clear that the first stage is re-visiting and exploring the framing of the issue, through both
research and deliberative dialogue processes, which not only lays the groundwork for
attempting to solve the ‘right problem’, but also continues the process of opening up the
boundaries of Nirex and instituting cultural change.
It is possible to identify some key stages of an overall plan, and put approximate times to
these. There is, however, a danger in constructing future plans too tightly in that they then
limit the potential to respond to emergent issues. This development of a timeplan should be
undertaken as part of the overall strategy development.
Ancillary observations
The Media
The media, in all its forms, is a mediator of information, and obviously influences opinion
(although it is interesting in this respect to note that, whilst the extent to which the public are
influenced by the media is arguable, decision-makers often interpret what appears in the media
as representing public opinion). Certainly, the media has contributed to the immaturity of
much debate. Whilst it is outside the focus of this report, consideration of its relationship with
the media and of its role in future communication and consultation developments is obviously
highly necessary for Nirex20.
Suggestion: it may be worthwhile for Nirex to convene a group of journalists and other media
representatives to explore and better understand their working practices and through this, to
work towards developing a more productive relationship.
Inter-agency collaboration
There is substantial potential for colloboration with other agencies in conducting a variety of
forms of public consultation. A model for structured and ongoing collaboration between a
variety of agencies at a district level has been produced by IHR, Lancaster University. Oneoff collaborations are also possible. Potential collaborators include:
MAFFf/Food Standards Agency/DoH Generic risk perception and risk communication
issues, responses to radioactivity, responses to institutional forms and what carries trust
and authority
RAWMAC Consultation processes
NII
public responses to regulatory issues, public perceptions of radioactivity
DETR public responses to radioactive waste management policy generally
DfE education
20
CSEC is currently shortlisted in a major funding bid (in association with Glasgow University) exploring the
relationships between media, risk and public communciation.
52
Suggestion: initiate establishing a forum for inter-agency collaboration, e.g. three monthly
meetings with staff responsible for consultation strategies in other agencies, with presentation
of each agency’s existing work and plans for future work, to identify both where existing work
exists than can be utilised and where possibilities for future collaboration exist.
Last Word: Actions speak louder…
Consultation, communication and information provision are all necessary elements of
developing acceptable radioactive waste management strategies. In the final analysis, though,
the trustworthiness and legitimacy of any institution will be judged on the actions that it takes
(including the openness its information policy and its ability to listen and respond to public
concerns, as well as its management activities), rather than on what it says. Actions
themselves are the most powerful component of communication, and speak many times louder
than words.
53
54
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