NIMBY and maybe: conflict and cooperation in the siting of low-level radioactive waste disposal facilities in the United States and Canada.

• Author: Rabe, Barry G.

Waste Disposal Capacity in the United States 73 A. Early Stages in American LLRW Management 74 B. LLRW Regulations 76 C. Siting Gridlock: Problems With The Regional

Compacts 81 1. The California Case 82 2. Background on the Ward Valley Site 83 3. Political Fallout 85 D. Where the Supreme Court Standards on LLRW Siting 88 E. Future LLRW Capacity Assurance 89 III. The Canadian Approach: Signs of Cooperation 90 A. Early Stages in Canadian LLRW Management 94 B. Port Hope and Siting Conflict 95 C. The Task Force and the Social Process 98 D. Revising the Classification System 100 E. Exploring Alternative Disposal Methods 101 F. Defining the Social Process 103 G. Implementing the Social Process 104 H. Possible Site Volunteers 109 IV. When Siting Works 112 A. Extensive Public Participation 114 B. Burden Sharing and Freedom from Exploitation 115 C. Public-Private Partnerships 116 V. Transferring the Process to the United States 118 VI. Game Theory and Facility Siting 121 I. INTRODUCTION

The domestic use of nuclear materials has traditionally been characterized as a collective good. Millions of Canadians and Americans enjoy relatively inexpensive energy from nuclear power plants. Thousands benefit from the post-world War II application of nuclear technology to medicine. From the formation of national regulatory entities in both nations through the 1970s, few people in either nation challenged the conventional wisdom that massive federal government subsidies for the development of nuclear power and medicine were anything other than a worthy endeavor which served broad, collective goals.

That consensus has unraveled in recent years, in part because of the issue of radioactive waste disposal. Episodes such as Three Mile Island drew attention to the safety of facilities generating nuclear power, but the issue of waste disposal poses a separate set of challenges for both nations. Whereas nuclear power and nuclear medicine are perceived as collective goods, Canadians and Americans recognize radioactive waste as a threat to public health, environmental protection, and the economic stability of any community which might become contaminated.

This paper examines one aspect of radioactive waste, so-called "low-level" waste, and one aspect of the waste management problem, siting facilities for waste storage and disposal. In both Canada and the United States, the evolution of nuclear technology has followed similar patterns and comparable technical and political waste disposal problems have emerged. Facility siting and management has been transformed from a fairly consensual area of environmental policy in the 1960s and 1970s to a conflict ridden area in more recent years. Time and again, when either Canadian or American communities are confronted with the possibility of "hosting" a new waste disposal or storage facility, the political reaction is immediate and intense. This reaction has blocked construction of any new facilities in either nation.

This manifestation of the Not-In-My-Back-Yard (NIMBY) syndrome resembles the pattern exhibited with other types of waste disposal facilities, such as hazardous, solid, and biomedical wastes. This phenomenon offers some significant societal benefits, such as pressuring radioactive waste generators to explore alternative waste reduction or elimination methods. It also creates a more aware and involved citizenry on both sides of the 49th parallel. In an era in which both Canadians and Americans lament declining levels of political participation and a growing alienation from the political process, this energy and interest is heartening from the standpoint of democratic theory.(1)

However, blocking the construction of new facilities does not necessarily resolve serious waste storage and disposal policy problems. Even if no additional nuclear power plants are constructed in North America, generators will continue to produce substantial quantities of low-level radioactive waste.

Moreover, badly contaminated areas warrant careful cleanups (which involve relocating wastes) and existing facilities must be decommissioned. This complex and expensive process requires removing radioactive and non-radioactive materials. Ironically, while the United States has found itself unable to open any new facilities since the early 1970s, it has, on a de facto basis, created thousands of sites for storage and disposal, including the nuclear power plants and research facilities that generate these wastes. These facilities are widely acknowledged as unsuitable for long-term storage and disposal on both technical and equitable grounds.

The American and Canadian experiences are ripe for a comparative analysis of effectiveness. These nations nurtured their nuclear industries in similar ways and devised relatively similar regulatory structures during the early decades of development. They also encountered many similar siting problems in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Nonetheless, the two neighboring nations took fundamentally distinct approaches to siting over the past several years and have experienced different outcomes. On the American side, a "topdown" method of site selection, whereby government or corporate officials use technical criteria to select a preferred site and disposal technology, consistently encountered tremendous political opposition. A variety of state governments, working independently or in "compact" clusters, have failed in facilitating serious public deliberation over siting options, much less in achieving any siting accords.(2)

On the Canadian side, abandoning a top-down strategy in favor of a voluntary approach has stimulated extensive public discussion of siting options in multiple communities in Ontario, where the vast majority of Canada's low-level radioactive waste is generated. This "bottom-up" approach has left the selection of sites and alternative storage and disposal technologies to participating Ontario communities. At present, five such communities remain active participants in these deliberations, and one or more of them may assume responsibility for "hosting" facilities in the years ahead.(3)

This comparative analysis of low-level radioactive waste facility siting is particularly intriguing given its direct linkage to the processes for siting hazardous waste disposal facilities. In both the United States and Canada, particularly in the provinces of British Columbia and Ontario, facility siting has proven contentious for both hazardous waste and low-level radioactive waste. Variation of the top-down approach, whether guided by government officials or for-profit waste disposal concerns, consistently meets strong public opposition.(4) Two visible exceptions to this pattern of opposition, Alberta in 1984 and Manitoba in 1992, employed a voluntary siting strategy to facilitate broad public deliberation and ultimately reached a widely supported siting accord.(5) Greensboro, North Carolina successfully used a similar approach in the mid-1980s, suggesting some transferability potential.(6) This general approach is extremely similar to the one currently being implemented for low-level radioactive waste in Ontario.

These exceptional cases of cooperation indicate that siting conflict is not inevitable. In both Alberta and Manitoba, as well as the early stages of the Ontario plan, the players set certain ground rules. Siting authorities saw their role as providing information and seeking volunteer communities, rather than imposing definitive siting decisions. Possible host communities were given every opportunity to raise questions, negotiate economic and regulatory compensation packages, and express their preferences for the type of storage or disposal technology to be used. They were also free to withdraw from further participation in the process at any time. Furthermore, the process allowed formal exploration of "burden sharing" among multiple communities, rather than assuming that a single site would accept all disposal or storage responsibility for an entire state, province or region.(7)

The ultimate viability and adaptability of this approach rests on the final outcome of the Ontario experiment. The American political system may indeed be impervious to such voluntary strategies, given its political culture and adversarial environmental policy traditions.(8) Nonetheless, the near total gridlock in low-level radioactive waste facility siting the United States indicates the desirability of looking abroad to consider other approaches. Given the hazardous waste facility siting accords in Alberta and Manitoba, Canada is an obvious first case for comparative analysis. Moreover, the strong similarities between American and Canadian environmental policy and the tradition of borrowing regulatory ideas suggests some possibility for diffusion across national borders. Indeed, a central premise of this article is that the main impediment to American adoption of the more voluntary, participative Canadian style approach is political rather than legal. Some states have, in fact, begun to experiment with this approach already, for both low-level radioactive and hazardous wastes, facing no serious legal obstacles because relevant legislation delegates most siting decisions to the individual states.(9)

This comparative case analysis draws heavily on interviews with approximately fifty key informants and a review of relevant government documents. Some direct attributions to interviewees are made, although other references are made in more general ways when guarantees of anonymity were provided. hi contrast, review of relevant academic literature proved far less useful. Relatively little has been published, in either Canada or the United States, on the Canadian low-level radioactive waste siting case. Much of the existing literature on the American experience examines the structure of the interstate compact process rather than probe the conflictive processes of implementation.(10) The lone...