4.1.2 Assessments and perceptions

The main components of public concern with regard to the deployment of the nuclear fuel cycle are commonly listed as (e. g. International Nuclear Societies Council, 1998):

• the potential for serious nuclear reactor accidents

• the day-to-day operational safety of nuclear reactors

• the risks related to the transport of radioactive materials

• the association between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and

• the question of what to do with radioactive waste.

Such lists place risk and technical safety as the main determinants of public acceptability related to nuclear developments. Whereas scientists and engineers working on the nuclear fuel cycle have developed an international consensus that these risks are controllable, this view is not necessarily shared by the general public. For example, ‘experts tend to see high-level waste management as a relatively solvable problem, while for the public it may well be seen as a relatively intractable public policy issue’ (Kasperson et al., 1980: 16). Already by the 1970s, decision and risk researchers were fascinated by such discrepancies and the specificities of nuclear technology regarding public acceptability. The social sciences highlighted the more qualitative notion of risk perception, thus vastly broadening the more classical, quantitative approaches of risk assessment that the nuclear community was used to working with (e. g. Renn, 1986, Slovic, 1987). Notably, the psychometric paradigm developed by Fischhoff, Slovic, Lichtenstein and Read (e. g. 1978), the extended psychometric model developed by Sjoberg (e. g. 2000a and 2000b) and the work on risk governance by Renn et al. (e. g. Kasperson et al., 1988, Renn, 2008), provide advanced insights into the determinants of the acceptability of nuclear technology. This research makes clear that the classical formula of ‘risk = hazard x probability’ has limited explanatory power with regard to risk perception and consequent behaviour. Through extensive sociological research, the following factors of risk perception were discovered as crucial (a non­exhaustive list by the authors, based on the sources referenced above):

• Dread — perception of the catastrophic potential of the risk, doomsday images of damage

• Controllability — whether the risk is detectable, comprehensible and perceived as manageable, both on a personal and on an institutional level

• Trust — trustworthiness and credibility of the people and institutions involved with the risk

• Familiarity — visibility, commonness and understandability of the risk

• Voluntariness — degree in which the risk is deliberately and freely accepted

• Certainty and clarity — perception of the determinateness of impacts, knowing what to do, what will happen next

• Reversibility of adverse effects — perception about whether the consequences can be undone

• Clarity of the risk-benefit relation — clearness and perceived importance of benefits, the equality of the distribution of risks and benefits

• Tampering with nature — perception about the degree to which an activity interferes with the course of nature, about the artificiality of the source of the risk.

The nuclear fuel cycle as a whole scores rather badly on all of these factors of risk perception. Focusing on radiation alone, one cannot deny that it remains something rather mysterious, both at the level of cognition and at the level of the primary senses: it is hard to understand (for everybody, as estimating the hazards of radiation is also clouded by dispute among scientists) and you cannot sense it, yet it can kill you. Moreover, one of the two factors that construct the classical multiplication formula for risk assessment, namely probability, turns out not to be a major determinant for risk perception. When evaluating this ‘objectively’ and without taking into account the other factors that apparently do play a determining role in risk perception, one can but wonder about the effect this has in reality. For instance, how can people happily drive their cars every day (relatively low risk perception, relatively high risk assessment), yet oppose nuclear energy (relatively high risk perception, relatively low risk assessment)? Both nuclear scientists and risk researchers claim their objects of research to be measureable in quantitative terms. Nevertheless, by applying criteria drawn from conventional science, it is often (implicitly) concluded that risk perceptions cannot be granted the same status as risk assessments, because they are based on intuition rather than rational argument.