Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
8/1/2014
The United Kingdom’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) released a white paper last week outlining the nation’s new approach to siting a geological disposal facility for the nation’s high-level nuclear waste. The white paper aims to rejuvenate the nation’s siting search after a planned site in West Cumbria was blocked. The new plan calls for more public volunteerism and a consent-based approach earlier in the process while also incorporating more interaction between a potential community and Radioactive Waste Management Limited (RWM), the UK’s developer of the facility. “[The] White Paper sets out our role as the developer of a geological disposal facility (GDF) and clearly positions the public at the center of any final decision-making on where it is sited,” RWM Managing Director Bruce McKirdy said in a statement. “For more than 60 years, Britain has been accumulating radioactive waste which is currently stored safely at over 30 sites around the country. For the long term, we are responsible for making this waste even safer, by removing it from the surface, away from people and the environment and securing it in a number of vaults and tunnels deep underground.”
Previously, the United Kingdom had been in talks with Copeland in West Cumbria County to host a repository, but those stalled when Cumbria County’s Council voted against hosting the facility last year due to concerns with the geology. The vote effectively vetoed the facility, sending the DECC back to the beginning in terms of siting. The DECC had previously agreed that both the county of Cumbria and the borough of Copeland, where the site would be and who voted to host the site, had to both agree to site the repository.
Consent-Based Siting Centers New Plan
In an effort to improve on the failure at West Cumbria, the white paper attempts to keep the public informed on the siting process while gauging public opinion during the process as an indicator of the community’s willingness to host the facility. “During the period before formal discussions begin, the developer will undertake activities to explain the science and engineering of geological disposal and associated issues, within the context of Government policy, to the general public,” the white paper said. “The aim of these activities will be to share information and build a greater understanding in support of future, formal discussions with communities and, in the longer term, successful implementation.”
The white paper adds, “To ensure that the process of working with communities is robust, and that community representatives are able (in the course of formal discussions) to hold the developer to account in the provision of information, the final decision to site a GDF in a community will not be taken until there has been a test of public opinion that demonstrates community support for development at a specific site.” The white paper maintained that this is a “voluntarist siting approach.”
The strategy also gives flexibility to process, offering to go at the pace the community is comfortable with. “In addition, to enhance flexibility within the siting process, community representatives will be able to participate in discussions and be given more information without needing to make formal commitments to ongoing participation,” the paper said. “UK Government intends that communities should be able to proceed in the process at the pace at which they are comfortable, and that access to information should not be limited by predetermined decision points.”
No Veto?
The plan also appears to eliminate the veto the County Council used to nix the previous attempt. The white paper acknowledges that all tiers of local government should have an equal say, something that would appear to be at odds with the veto. “UK Government recognizes that local representative bodies – including all levels of local government – will need to have a voice in this process,” the white paper said. “UK Government is currently of the view that no one tier of local government should be able to prevent the participation of other members of that community.”
This point has drawn the ire of an organization set up in Cumbria aimed at preventing the facility. “The new policy is clearly aimed at preventing such an ‘inconvenient’ democratic decision affecting the process again, yet still claims to be based on voluntarism,” said Eddie Martin, Chair of Cumbria Trust, a non-governmental organization committed to opposing a geological disposal facility in Cumbria. “The ‘incentives’ being offered are a transparent attempt to divide and conquer communities such as Cumbria. It won’t work.”
Geologic Survey First Step
The first action needed to advance the plan forward, according to the white paper, is the completion of a national geologic screening for areas that fit the safety requirements for a facility. “The UK Government has decided to ask the developer, as an initial action, to carry out a national geological screening exercise based on the requirements of the existing generic GDF safety cases,” the paper said. “This exercise will first consider openly what geological attributes should be considered in producing national, high level screening guidance, using existing geological information and based on the requirements of the generic GDF safety cases. The high level guidance will then be applied across the country, to bring together high level geological information relevant to the GDF safety cases.” The DECC expects this part of the project to be completed by 2016.
The information collected from this screening would then be the basis for the interaction between communities and the government. The developers would make the safety case based off the initial screening. This would appear to remedy the geologic problem that arose in the previous siting experience.
