"A Consensus on Waste or a Waste of Consensus?"
Andy Boddington, Evaluation Associates Ltd. May 1999.

The current controversy about GM foods provides stark evidence of the 
public's aversion to some scientific and industrial advances. Food with GM 
ingredients is being pulled from supermarket shelves because the public 
*thinks* that GM food has hidden dangers. Suggest dumping radioactive waste 
in someone's backyard and you will get even shorter shrift. The public 
*knows* the waste is dangerous.

By AD 2010, the UK will have 2,200,000 cubic metres of nuclear waste in 
store. But what can we do with this potentially dangerous material? Until 
March 1997, the government and the nuclear industry wanted to bury it in a 
deep mine near the Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbria. But NIREX, the 
government owned company charged with disposing of the waste, failed to get 
permission to even experiment with this idea. The waste mountain continues 
to grow and there is no agreement on how to dispose of it.

If scientists, government and industry cannot see the way forward, who else 
is there to ask? The answer is the public. Enter the Citizens' Panel.

The recipe for a Citizen's Panel is simple. Find 15 ordinary people with no 
vested interest in the subject and preferably no technical knowledge of it. 
All they need is a commitment to citizenship and participating in 
democracy. Brief panel members carefully and neutrally, and then call all 
interested parties together for a four day "Consensus Conference." Write a 
report and invite ministers and interested parties to comment on it.

On Friday, 21 May 1999, 15 citizens filed out of a side room into the 
austere cloisters of the Methodist Central Hall opposite the Houses of 
Parliament. They were ordinary people, plumbers, housewives and the 
unemployed. Unsurprisingly, they looked nervous as they faced an assembled 
audience of 200 professionals from government, industry and the 
environmental lobby. On the fourth day, when the panel presented its 
conclusions, it was the professionals that were nervous.

During the first two days, the panel had called 27 expert witnesses from 
the UK, United States and Sweden.

Young, passionate evangelists represented the environmental lobby including 
Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace. Their carefully researched lucid 
arguments were sometimes spoiled by their determination to win every point 
of debate. Most persuasive of all was an independent researcher, Dr 
Kathleen Sullivan. She was called four times and spoke from the heart and 
much careful research. Her message was that nuclear waste could not just be 
dumped, sealed and forgotten. It must be carefully monitored for thousands 
of generations, and if necessary retrieved and placed in new storage.

The nuclear industry fielded men in grey suits from British Energy, which 
generates the spent fuel, British Nuclear Fuels, which reprocesses it, and 
NIREX which is charged with getting rid of the left over waste. Their 
representatives were confident and composed. Unfortunately, they 
occasionally talked down to the panel.

In between the environmentalists and the industrialists, were witnesses 
from government agencies and scientific bodies. Dr Steve Brown from the 
Department of Environment, Transport and Regions was bluntly honest when 
asked why his department did not do more to educate the public about 
radioactivity: "Why would the public believe us?" Sir Frances Graham-Smith 
batted for the Royal Society. To him, the subject was too technical for the 
public, which should rely on independent bodies like the Royal to guide 
them.

On day three, observers and witnesses took a rest. There was no rest for 
the Panel. At 8.00am, they began to prepare their report. After 15 hours of 
intense discussion agreement and disagreement, they typed the last words. 
At 11.15pm, the report went to press.

The next morning, industrialists and campaigners huddled in groups, combing 
the report, looking for errors and points to challenge. But the report was 
not the horror many had feared. The citizens had produced a balanced, 
achievable set of conclusions.

Radioactive waste must be stored underground; how deep was a matter for 
scientists. It should be stored, not dumped, and must always be monitored 
and retrievable. Selection of storage sites should be by an independent 
panel. Industry and government must be more open; there are signs that this 
is happening. A new comprehensive and understandable classification system 
for waste was needed. Nuclear power should not be expanded until the waste 
problem is solved and no new international reprocessing contracts should be 
sought by BNFL.

Michael Meacher, Minster for the Environment was the first to respond. He 
set the pattern for those that followed. Fulsome praise for the panel's 
work while being lukewarm about or dismissive of their proposals A neutral 
body to oversee waste management was out; "this is not just a technical 
issue, it is acutely political." The present waste classification system is 
good enough. Where he did agree with the panel was on the need to ensure 
stored waste could be monitored and retrieved, and, while merely noting the 
panel's views on limiting reprocessing, he agreed "we must find an answer 
to the waste problem before we increase it." Lord Flowers, who recently 
chaired a House of Lords committee on waste, and Charles Secrett, Director 
of Friends of the Earth were equally cautious in their support for the 
panel's conclusions.

The strongest support came from industry. NIREX, humbled by the rejection 
of its plans for deep storage, and BNFL, still lambasted for past secrecy 
and misdemeanours, seemed the most prepared to listen. David Bosner, 
responsible for waste management at BNFL, praised the exercise. "It gives 
the lie to the view that [nuclear waste] issues are too complex to be dealt 
with by the public. It is time we looked for areas of agreement, we owe it  
 to future generations, Environmental groups represent societies' 
concerns, industry must deliver solutions ... We owe it to our children and 
their children to give up the rough and tumble ... [and] develop respect 
for each other's views."

This was not the first consensus conference. One held in 1994 debated GM 
foods and made several recommendations that if implemented, may have eased 
some of the current controversy. But, as Professor Sir John Krebs, head of 
the Natural Environment Research Council ruefully told the meeting, "the 
impact of [that] conference appears to have been zero." This point was not 
lost on the panel, they intend to go on meeting and monitor the impact of 
their work.

Taking part in the exercise certainly had an impact on the panellists. 
Panel member Ben Humphries from Buckingham summed it up: "It's been an 
amazingly eye-opening experience. [Before] I was really quite ignorant of 
what waste was and what we should do with it." Speaking of the camaraderie 
that had developed between panel members, Jake Rolfe from Wiltshire said, 
"I am really quite amazed that a group of people who have never met before 
can sit down together and gel. I am proud to be part of it." Pam Phillipou 
from Wales wanted the public to know more. "There is so little the public 
know about waste. I know that for the rest of my life this has changed my 
opinions. I feel I would like to argue [about waste] with people in the pub 
and on the street."

But will the report be listened to? David Denham-Smith from Norfolk summed 
up the panels' concerns that the "report [should not be] another in a line 
gathering somewhere. The panel would like to invite the government and 
industry to consult with this panel in the future. This will add 
credibility to the openness and transparency that now dominates the 
language of government and industry. If the first consensus conference on 
GM foods had been listened to, we would not be in the position we are in 
today."

The panel's report may or may not have an influence on policy and opinions 
of government, industrialists and environmental groups. But what the 
consensus conference has certainly achieved is a significant improvement in 
the quality of debate. Consensus may not yet have been reached but 
adversarial positions have been abandoned for a few days at least.

We have adversarial law courts and an adversarial Parliament. The question 
is whether we have to live with adversarial science or whether we can build 
consensus. The consensus conference model certainly holds out promise of 
achieving this.

NOTES

1) The conference was organised by UK CEED, an independent, charitable 
foundation working in sustainable development research, policy development 
and implementation. Their report on the consensus conference is at:

http://www.ukceed.org/conference/consensus_index.htm

2) FOE have issued a press release on the conference
"PUBLIC REJECTS NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL & REPROCESSING. FOE Welcomes Damning 
Report on Nuclear Industry."
This illustrates one of the key difficulties in this area and elsewhere; 
interested parties will cherry-pick conclusions that suit their views 
rather than adopt the consensus. The release is at:

http://www.foe.co.uk/pubsinfo/infoteam/pressrel/1999/19990524123115.html

3) Andy Boddington is a Director of:

Ea (Evaluation Associates Ltd.), 13 Castle Street, Buckingham, England, 
MK18 1BP
Tel: +44 (0) 1280 821751
Fax: +44 (0) 1280 821752
Email: [log in to unmask]
WWW: http://www.evaluation.co.uk/




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