An analysis of public-interest group positions on radiation protection

The history of radiation risk management is replete with contentious public debate between public interest groups and the technical community of radiation protection professionals. To promote a deeper understanding of this phenomenon, this paper describes the rationales and values underlying public-interest group positions in one radiation risk domain (low-level waste) and contrasts them with those of the technical community. Public interest group objections to recycling of radioactivity-contaminated materials and to discarding of other low-level wastes are made on fairness, risk assessment, and energy-policy grounds. Concerns about procedural fairness stem from the continuing use of top-down expert-driven, rather than deliberative, systems for low-level waste policy-making. Concerns about distributional fairness arise because the benefits and risks of alterative low-level waste policies accrue to different stakeholders. Risk assessment is faulted for failure to acknowledge hidden subjective assumptions (e.g., on screening vigilance in materials recycling, on integrity of disposal facilities in the far future). Skepticism of technological risk management arises from a history peppered with unexpected untoward events that lay outside the design bases of protection systems. Finally, public interest groups view low-level waste issues as part of a larger debate on wise and legitimate energy policy, and are reluctant to support measures that provide relief to a nuclear industry that, in their view, established itself outside the democratic process.