Improving Public Information Regarding Radioactive Waste Shipments

In 2012, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future (BRC) recommended that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) begin “prompt efforts to prepare for the eventual largescale transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste to consolidated storage and disposal facilities when such facilities become available.”1 As DOE works to implement this recommendation, it will face many challenges – not least of which is the need to cultivate public acceptance for shipments of spent nuclear fuel (SNF). In its 1986 “Transportation Institutional Plan,” DOE’s now defunct Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) recognized that “the success of its program to develop and implement a national system for nuclear waste management and disposal…depends not only on safety, but on broad-based public understanding of and confidence in program activities and objectives.” 2 Two decades later, the National Academies’ Committee on Transportation of Radioactive Waste echoed this observation in its report Going the Distance? The Safe Transport of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in the United States: “[T]he social risks for spent fuel and highlevel waste transportation pose important challenges to the successful implementation of programs for transporting spent fuel and high-level waste in the United States.”3 This paper recommends an initial step in addressing social risks for transportation through a model public information program that will initiate and sustain public involvement as DOE develops the transportation system for moving SNF from shutdown reactors to facilities for consolidated storage. For insight, the authors look to a variety of sources, including the early strengths and the later weaknesses of OCRWM’s efforts to keep stakeholders informed during the years from 1986 through 2009 when the office was eliminated. The scope of the recommended approach encompasses a commitment to proactively being open and transparent with the public and its planning partners; a process for developing new information materials that use responsive “key messages;” frequent and varied methods of communication, including social media; and a willingness to accept and incorporate public input into program decisions. While a successful public information program cannot guarantee public acceptance of shipments, it is a necessary first step to achieving this goal.