Nuclear risks, public engagement and trust: towards an integrated analytical framework

Abstract

The threats of global warming and increasingly expensive and scarce oil supplies have prompted many nations to reconsider the development of nuclear power for energy security. However little is known about how to make effective decision-making on nuclear power. This paper proposes an integrated analytical framework for understanding, explaining and proposing policy recommendations for effective nuclear power decision-making. The key questions that our study are focusing are: 1) why and to what extent public engagement and trust are relevant for nuclear decison-making; 2) how should decisions be made regarding how to engage the public? What principles, processes, procedures and mechanisms would be favourable for effective public engagement and trust building? We integrate the key insights from key social science theories concerning governance, risks, public engagement and trust, and develop an integrated analytical framework that brings together those important concepts. We suggest that nuclear risks possess special characteristics that require special need for public engagement and trust. Pubic engagement may create facilitating conditions that include representation, collaborative framework and openness in information sharing, that can enhance trustworthiness of the governments relating to nuclear decisionmaking. Those facilitating conditions are critical because they may make good nuclear decision-making more likely (though not necessarily sufficient conditions) to occur. This paper concludes by presenting a first application of the framework to empirical cases that we draw from the UK and Hong Kong. This framework will make contribution to theoretical development of the evolving theory of governance. It will also allow us to development a set of principles (check-list) and an inventory (a tool-box) of how to enhance the capacity for making effective nuclear decision-making for policy-makers, power companies, NGOs and other stakeholders.