Short abstract:

This presentation addresses the need to consider local contexts in the long-term governance of nuclear waste for long-term safety. It focusses in particular on the role of place attachment.

Long abstract:

A major challenge in building and securing a repository for high-level waste is the long-time spans needed for site selection, construction, storage, and closure. Depending on the type of site selection procedure and the chosen repository concept, this can take decades or even more than a century. This applies to all countries that have or are operating nuclear power plants. During the operation phase this includes facilities for interim or final storage or reprocessing at different places. Over time, other places will also be affected during the site selection procedure and afterwards during construction and disposal. The processes will cause landscape transformations to a greater or lesser extent, to allow for activities including transportation and excavation. While nuclear waste governance is an extremely challenging and contested issue in some countries, in others it seems rather straightforward. In this paper we will argue that seemingly straightforward processes might stand for depoliticized approaches that view stewardship as managerial task and that this could hamper long-term safety. We argue that it needs a long-term governance to suitably address changes in technologies and societies in the long-term, which embraces political debate and conflicts. To achieve this, from our point of view, local context factors need to be integrated into such governance approaches as relationships between residents and the place they live in affect long-term governance. Based on empirical research on the meaning of place and transformations caused by infrastructure projects, we discuss the relevance of those findings for a place-sensitive long-term governance framework.