Conditional Progress: Technical Rationality and Wicked Problems in Nuclear Waste Management
Abstract
While various states and enterprises have produced nuclear power for decades, that is,
demonstrated the functionality of the nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining to power
production, the waste that is simultaneously produced has been provisionally stored awaiting a
safe solution. Still, no country has implemented such a solution.
Nuclear waste is both dangerous and notoriously controversial, implying a range of social
and technical problems. However, according to prevailing assertions in nuclear waste
management (NWM), lingering concerns have now been addressed and definitive solutions are
ready to be implemented.
In this thesis, I problematize these claims. By asserting that NWM constitutes a ‘wicked
problem’ – that is, a problem to which there is no ‘silver bullet’ solution, only a set of suboptimal
options to choose from – my ambition is to produce knowledge of that which has remained
unsolved, de-emphasized, sacrificed, or even suppressed as NWM has progressed. Rather than
understanding NWM as progressing because it has solved remaining problems, I ask how
progression is possible in spite of the insolubility of these problems.
Points of departure like my own are marginal in previous research. Albeit sometimes critical,
research has far from exhausted critical perspectives readily available for social scientists. I argue
that such concepts are a viable future research route. To contribute to formulating a more critical
research path, I turn to science and technology studies (STS) because this field contemplates a
broader range of sociotechnical issues than does most NWM research. However, STS has
increasingly come to elaborate theoretically on instances in which sociotechnical configurations
are made unstable, change occurs, and actors challenge taken-for-granted scientific facts and
technologies. My core observation is that such a focus downplays the significance of stability and
inertia, which I hold to be far more prevalent phenomena in NWM.
With a few caveats, I propose that these aspects of NWM can be understood using ‘critical
constructivism’, that is, an alloy of the Frankfurt School’s critical procedure and STS. By
emphasizing the critical legacy of critical constructivism – primarily by borrowing the concept of
‘technical rationality’ – I argue that NWM’s progress can be understood in new ways.
Empirically – by means of participant observation and textual analysis – I engage with four
NWM sites, both locally and internationally. In Study I, we study how contradictory social
interests in NWM were concealed by means of technical consensus and the production of technicaliv
standards at the European policy level. In Study II, I seek to understand why a scientific
controversy over copper corrosion remained the main issue in a Swedish court of law for
technical and nontechnical actors alike, and why the broader implications of nuclear power and
NWM were not made explicit. In Study III, I analyse the Swedish nuclear industry’s tactics to
secure consent in order to prevent opposition in a local community where a final repository for
spent nuclear fuel will be built. In Study IV, we analyse how internationally influential
implementers conceive of public emotions, and how implementers foresee the transformation of
public emotions to facilitate the implementation of repositories.
On an aggregate level, the individual studies together show the ways in which NWM – in
order to implement geological disposal – depresses and excludes reasonable objections that
could challenge NWM’s biases or expose its historical contingencies and preconditions. In the
prevailing culture of NWM and its technical rationality, one of the few areas in which critique is
still seen as legitimate is in strictly technical domains. The scrutiny of scientific and technical detail
is recognized as viable because of its association with technical rationality, taking precedence
over other forms of critical procedures based on, for example, the lived experience of technology
and/or ethical concerns. A core conclusion that I draw, and that is enabled through the
deployment of critical constructivism – is that the material nature of nuclear waste has rendered
irreversible damage to the prospects of achieving change in the field.
Parts of work
Lagerlöf, H. (2023) Swedish nuclear waste management as an inert controversy: Using critical
constructivism to understand cold technological conflict. Accepted in Science as Culture. Lagerlöf, H. & Pettersson, J. (2022) Aligning Subjective and Objective ‘Truth’ in Nuclear Waste
Management: On the New Role of Emotions in Contemporary Repository Siting Policy.
Unpublished manuscript. To be resubmitted to Emotions and Society. Lagerlöf, H., Sundqvist, G., & Bergmans, A. (2022) Striving for technical consensus by agreeing to disagree: The case of monitoring underground nuclear waste disposal facilities. Journal of Risk Research, 25(5), 666–679. URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13669877.2022.2049620 Lagerlöf, H. (2023) Consenting publics: Fair nuclear waste repository siting? Published online ahead of print in Environmental Politics, DOI:10.1080/09644016.2023.2172867 URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09644016.2023.2172867
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
University
Göteborgs universitet. Samhällsvetenskapliga fakulteten
University of Gothenburg. Faculty of Social Sciences
Institution
Department of Sociology and Work Science ; Institutionen för sociologi och arbetsvetenskap
Disputation
Fredagen den 2 juni, kl 13:15, Hörsal Sappören, Sprängkullsgatan 25.
Date of defence
2023-06-02
hannes_lagerlof@hotmail.com
Date
2023-05-09Author
Lagerlöf, Hannes
Keywords
nuclear waste management
science and technology studies
critical constructivism
sociology
technical rationality
reification
Publication type
Doctoral thesis
ISBN
978-91-87876-56-1 (PDF)
978-91-87876-55-4 (PRINT)
Series/Report no.
DOKTORSAVHANDLINGAR VID INSTITUTIONEN FÖR SOCIOLOGI OCH ARBETSVETENSKAP FR O M 1995, NR 178
GÖTEBORG STUDIES IN SOCIOLOGY NR. 75
Language
eng