Risk, Uncertainty and Policy

Patrick Brown, Anna Olofsson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138934566
• eBook ISBN: 9781317389514
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Sociología

Policy-making has always involved uncertainty; however the presence of unknowns has become far more conspicuous and problematic in recent times. One important way in which policy-makers have increasingly sought to deal with such uncertainty is through approaches rooted in understandings of risk. This book comprises a rather diverse collection of six chapters, alongside one more explicitly theoretical introduction, each taking up a distinct perspective in scrutinising the relationship between policy, risk and uncertainty.

Important concerns addressed within these different studies include: how risk-governance policies are shaped by risk awareness (or a lack thereof) and the mediating role of trust; the framing of policy through an emphasis on particular risks and the corresponding impact on societal beliefs, discourses and institutional power; the organisational processes which lead to some risks being tackled while others are neglected; and processes of (de-) politicising uncertainty at the interface between scientists and policy-makers. Contributors explore trans-national institutions, national bodies, and local government – within diverse geographical contexts including China, Brazil, the Baltic Sea, Australia, the UK, and Europe. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Risk Research.

Nuclear power in China after Fukushima: understanding public knowledge, attitudes, and trust

Guizhen He^a, Arthur P.J. Mol^b,c, Lei Zhang^b,c and Yonglong Lu^a

^aState Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Centre for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; ^bEnvironmental Policy Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands; ^cSchool of Environment and Natural Resources, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

To meet the increasing demand for energy, the past decade has seen the revitalization of nuclear power technologies and many countries adopting nuclear power as a priority strategy in their energy policy. However, Japan’s Fukushima nuclear crisis, following the tsunami on 11 March 2011, challenged perceptions of much of the world’s nuclear power industry – but not in China. To explain how the future of nuclear power is decided in China, this study aims to understand the role of the public in the decision-making through exploring the current public knowledge of and trust in nuclear power, about which there is limited research compared to other environmental issues. Based on a questionnaire survey in Shandong province, this study concluded that, compared to many other countries with nuclear power, China had a different landscape of nuclear power information, knowledge, and trust. This paper helps to explain why the Chinese government is able to continue the development of nuclear power, without much public debate and participation.

Introduction

Since the first nuclear power plant was built in 1954, the development of nuclear power has included phases of rapid expansion in the 1970s and then stagnation, after the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986. Although Bryant (2011) reports that Chernobyl’s legacy remains deeply felt across Europe, the increasing demand for energy and climate change mitigation targets has accelerated a revitalization of nuclear power technologies over the last 10 years with many countries further including nuclear power in their energy strategies (Clery 2005). The latest statistics show that 433 nuclear power reactors are in operation around the world, with other 65 nuclear power reactors under construction (International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] 2011).

However, Japan’s Fukushima nuclear crisis following the tsunami on 11 March 2011 became a significant issue for much of the world’s nuclear power industry (Baruah 2011). The Fukushima crisis has prompted many developed countries to undertake a ‘comprehensive review’ (World Nuclear Association 2011), to shut down aging nuclear plants, or even to entirely abandon nuclear energy (Guardian 2011). Compared with these national reactions to Fukushima, China seems to continue steadily with expanding its nuclear industry (Bradsher 2011). With 15 nuclear power reactors in operation, 26 under construction and many more being planned, China is just at the start of a nuclear energy era. Rapid economic development, population growth, energy security and air pollution concerns, and lobby of interest groups are behind this nuclear expansion. Public attitudes and trust have seemingly not been very influential in these developments. However, given the growing protests and media attention to all kinds of (food, chemical industry, transport, etc.) risks in China (Mol 2009; He, Zhang, et al. 2011; He, Lu, et al. 2012; He, Mol, et al. 2012), this might change in the near future. While little is known about public knowledge, attitudes, and trust regarding nuclear power and its risks in China, we cannot automatically expect these phenomena to be similar in China as in OECD countries, with the latter countries’ longer history in experiences with nuclear industries and (longer) tradition in media attention, protests, and (some) transparency on nuclear power and its risks. This study aims to understand the public knowledge, attitudes, and trust towards nuclear power in China following the Fukushima crisis, through a survey of residents in Shandong province around a nuclear power plant under construction. It also aims to compare these findings with OECD countries with a nuclear power tradition.

The article starts with an international review on public attitudes and trust in nuclear power, as a benchmark against which the specificities of China can be understood. Subsequently, nuclear power developments in China and the reporting of Fukushima in the Chinese media are introduced. The fourth section reports on our methodology, followed by two sections on the public attitudes towards Chinese nuclear power and on trust in information on nuclear power in Shandong province.

Public risk perceptions and trust in nuclear power

In many OECD countries, nuclear technology has been associated for a long time with technological failures and accidents (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl), environmental risks associated with radioactive waste disposal, over-optimistic claims on costs, military use and secrecy, and distrust in regulators, governments, and the industry to provide truthful information and manage risks responsibly (Eiser et al. 1990; Flynn 1992; Flynn et al. 1992; Pidgeon, Kasperson, and Slovic 2003; Farquharson and Critchley, 2004). In the 1970s and 1980s nuclear power was widely studied by social scientists, who found a steady decline of support for nuclear industry among the public (Rosa and Freudenburg 1993), although there were differences among countries (Slovic, Flynn, and Layman 1991; Rosa, Matsuda, and Kleinhesselink 2000; Slovic et al. 2000) and within them. The construction of new facilities is often heavily opposed by the communities where these are planned (Rosa 2005; Ansolabehere and Konisky 2009), but communities that have already had nuclear facilities seem to perceive these more favorably due to specific benefits obtained, a process of distancing from local risks and hazard, and processes of familiarization and normalization of nuclear risks (Eiser, van der Pligt, and Spears 1995). Other studies have also indicated the role of socioeconomic variables and education in attitudes towards nuclear power (Hüppe and Weber 1999; Hunt, Frewer, and Shepherd 1999; Sjoberg 2000; Li, Hou, and Wang 2008; Venables et al. 2009; Whitfield et al. 2009; Corner et al. 2011). Hence, there is no such thing as a single public when it comes to place-based attitudes towards nuclear risks (Viklund 2003; Pidgeon, Lorenzoni, and Poortinga 2008).

More recently, polls show that opp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction – Risk, uncertainty and policy: towards a social-dialectical understanding
• 1. Nuclear power in China after Fukushima: understanding public knowledge, attitudes, and trust
• 2. The ‘new social contract’ and the individualisation of risk in policy
• 3. Towards a global governance of risks: international health organisations and the surveillance of emerging infectious diseases
• 4. Risks and political responses to climate change in Brazilian coastal cities
• 5. Unravelling science-policy interactions in environmental risk governance of the Baltic Sea: comparing fisheries and eutrophication
• 6. Risk policies and risk perceptions: a comparative study of environmental health risk policy and perception in six European countries
• Index