The establishment of the first Community Partnerships is a milestone achievement for the GDF siting process. A key challenge for 2022 is whether they will command credibility in the wider communities in which they operate. Listening to the observations, experiences and expectations of community players from areas in which there have been initial or working group discussions, provides an outline roadmap of concerns to be addressed — even if some of those concerns are misplaced or based on misconceptions. For while Community Partnerships may have been established administratively, their future membership and modus operandi have yet to be fully defined. The experience of the early and working group stages of the siting process still leaves many community players worrying about ‘justness’ and the ‘balance of power’ within this unique and untested consent-based approach to public participation and decision-making. These concerns are rooted less in ‘the science’ of geological disposal and are much more focused on ‘the rules of the game’, ie who will be on the Community Partnership and how, in practice, will it operate.
GDF Watch 16th Jan 2022 read more »
Early evidence worryingly indicates that either there has been a loss of ‘institutional memory’, or that the Working With Communities policy is being interpreted too conservatively by those who were not around at the time of the policy review debate. Either scenario presents significant risks to the potential success of the GDF siting process. The role of local authorities was one of the most keenly discussed issues during the policy review (2013-2018) that followed the last, failed siting process and which laid the foundations for the current siting policy. The final balance in the Working With Communities policy was described by one local authority leader at the time as the “perfect, have your cake and eat it” policy for local politicians: at no immediate point are they required to take decisions, and they can reserve their public position until it becomes clearer what their voters actually think. Feedback from community participants involved in the early and working group stages of the current GDF siting process focuses around two key local authority issues, which were flagged during the policy review and public consultations as situations to avoid – over-reliance on partnership with a local authority, or conversely, allowing local politicians to veto community discussion.
GDF Watch 16th Jan 2022 read more »
The Existential Nature of Nuclear Waste: In this podcast, Roy Payne explains why he started the non-profit GDFWatch, an organization whose mission is to assist the public in having informed discussions before decisions are made for nuclear waste disposal.
Deep Isolation.com 16th Jan 2022 read more »