The Melancholic Lock: High-Level Radioactive Waste Governance in Spain

Abstract

AbstractThe attempts to find a consistent solution for high-level radioactive waste in Spain illustrates the challenges entailed by inclusive nuclear waste governance in a country with a multi-level governance system, characterised by a complex and intertwined political decision-making process, where the nuclear issue is used instrumentally by political parties, in a social context with highly sceptical public opinion towards nuclear energy. Nuclear waste management in Spain has been influenced by environmental legislation that increasingly requires public transparency and openness to citizen participation, mainly due to the internalisation of European Directives. This has been reflected in the approach to managing the location of the repository for high-level nuclear waste, so far without success due to the structure of the nuclear conflict in Spain, which relegates the role of science and technology to marginal positions in the debate. Instead of a “politicization of nuclear issues”, in Spain, opening the nuclear issue from the closed circles of experts and their organisations to a broad public debate has created a “nuclearization of politics”, leaving limited room for counter-expertise, as nuclear-related arguments are employed opportunistically to serve broader political aims. Since the actors respond to a logic based on the mobilisation of emotions and feelings of grievance in the public sphere, generating trust between actors becomes quite difficult.