Science & Technology CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Professor Tom Horlick-Jones (Risk 08)
1. Preamble
1.1 This note responds to the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee’s announcement on 9 November 2011 of an inquiry into risk perception and energy infrastructure.
1.2 It first provides a very brief commentary on the six questions set out in the inquiry announcement, which seeks to highlight what is known, and not known, about these topics, and to begin to relate these questions to matters of practical policy.
1.3 It then sets out more detailed observations relating to recent empirical evidence on the underlying character of lay worries about nuclear energy technologies.
2. Comments on the Questions Posed by the Committee
2.1 These questions cover a vast area of inquiry, which has been addressed by an enormous literature, drawing on ideas from sociology, psychology, economics, anthropology and other disciplines. I wonder if it would be wise for the Committee to focus on a small number of key themes, and to investigate these in more detail?
2.2 It is notable that the set of questions articulates certain themes in a slightly old-fashioned way. For example, there is a sense of “deficit thinking” running though the questions, namely the idea that lay people would “behave sensibly if only they knew the facts”, a notion despatched rather effectively by the House of Lords Science & Technology Committee report on Science and Society (2000) a decade ago.
2.3 The Committee would appear to have considerable ground to cover if it really wishes to get to grips with attempts to reconcile lay sensibilities and the “tolerability of risk”, a notion first introduced by the Health & Safety Executive in connection with nuclear power stations back in 1988. This line of thinking, which seeks to ascertain appropriate levels of investment to establish given levels of risk has in recent years been elaborated perhaps most effectively in connection with the UK railway system (see discussion in Horlick-Jones (2008)). In practice, whilst such valuation exercises are useful in terms of promoting consistency across disparate industries, and in providing a basis for the legal protection of operators in the courts, they do little to provide an acceptable rationalisation for those caught up in the adverse side-effects of accidents and other failures. Ultimately, there is a need for the society in question to decide whether it can live with the possible adverse side-effects of a given technology.
2.4 Perhaps the most significant obstacle to attempts to arrive at mechanistic models of lay perceptions, and measures of tolerable risks, has been a recognition in some quarters of the fluid and situational nature of sense-making about risk issues (see eg video material on themes in risk perception and risk communication at: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/contactsandpeople/academicstaff/G-H/professor-tom-horlickjones-overview.html. Recent empirical work has demonstrated the ways in which lay people reason about risk issues changes as they learn more about the issue in question. In this way, providing more information about a risk issue, including the nature of the organisations responsible for its management may serve to reduce trust in its effective management. Lay people typically reason on the basis of what has been termed “low information rationality”, basing their views on simple cues that serve to capture the acceptability of those risks “for all practical purposes” (Horlick-Jones, 2005; 2007; Horlick-Jones et al, 2007; cf Popkin, 1994).
2.5 More recent research has begun to glimpse the significance for lay (and professional) understanding of risk issues of the complex communications ecology which an increasing proportion of the world’s population inhabits, saturated as it is in a multiplicity of mediated knowledge (Horlick-Jones and Farré, 2010). This line of research poses a challenge to the established risk studies literature.
2.6 In the wake of the Fukushima incident, the contested acceptability of nuclear fission power technologies has been highlighted, with Germany for example deciding to discontinue its dependence upon such technologies. No matter how safe an industry can be made, with associated increased expenditure on safety measures, ultimately its acceptability turns of whether the society in question can live with possible failures.
2.7 In the following section I examine recent cross-cultural research that has shed new light on the nature of lay sensibilities about nuclear power technologies.
3. Recent Research-based Insights into the Character of Nuclear Stigma
3.1 Here I provide an outline of recent work that I have conducted into the nature of lay practical reasoning about nuclear fusion, a technology distinct from the nuclear fission that is used in conventional power stations, and which seeks to ‘capture the sun in a bottle’. Nuclear fusion is the form of power that powers the Sun and other stars, and which has long been recognised as a source of potentially safe, sustainable and essentially limitless power.
3.2 This work has been conducted in collaboration with colleagues in Spain led by Dr Ana Prades López, Head of the Socio-Technical Research Unit of the Spanish Government agency CIEMAT, which works on energy and environment issues. To date, our work has been published as a report by CIEMAT (Prades López et al, 2009) and as a paper in the international per-reviewed journal Public Understanding of Science (Horlick-Jones et al, in press). An article is also currently in press at the Bulletin of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (Horlick-Jones and Prades, in press).
3.3 We have used the term “nuclear stigma”, an expression coined by a number of North American scholars (eg Flynn et al, 2001), to reflect the idea that, in some sense, the “identity” of the associated technology has been “spoiled”. People are typically alarmed at the prospect of nuclear facilities being located anywhere in their vicinity. The very word “nuclear” seems to conjure up negative images of contamination and destruction. One can imagine how nuclear stigma came about. Despite the many gains associated with nuclear power, the accidents at Three mile island and Chernobyl, and the associations with nuclear weapons arguable continue to resonate in the public imagination.
3.4 Our recent work has taken a somewhat oblique approach to investigating the nature of nuclear stigma. We have been studying changes in reasoning practices among groups of lay publics as they encounter the idea of nuclear fusion for the first time, and begin to learn something about the technology. In a sense, we have been “taking a microscope” to the processes that occur when people respond to pollsters’ questions. In other words, we were interested in the specific ways in which people make practical sense of the nature of fusion technology. We recognised that, whilst opinion polls are good at gathering large amounts of data on things with which people have some familiarity, they are not so good when people do not understand the issue in question, or perhaps have mixed feelings about it. Also when people contribute data to opinion polls, it is not possible to “look inside their heads” as it were, to see what is going on. One way of addressing this latter problem is to get together groups of people to discuss the issues, and to listen very carefully to what they have to say.
3.5 We were interested in the participants’ early reactions to learning about the existence of fusion, and the fact that it is a specifically nuclear technology. Typically, we found talk that included disease metaphors and the figure of the Chernobyl disaster as interpretative devices. One participant spoke for many when she uttered “it sends shivers down your spine”. Others talked about nuclear weapons, and facilities that caused cancer in local children. All the groups displayed a great deal of reaction to the word nuclear that one might say was almost visceral in nature. Associating this technology with a nuclear label served to very powerfully communicate a rich set of ideas and images. Significantly, this was not a calculated response to information; indeed, it was evident that at the time these participants knew very little about fusion. Rather, the response seems to have been an instantaneous emotional sense of fear, prompted simply by learning that fusion is a nuclear technology.
3.6 As the participants came to learn more about fusion technology, and its possible role in future energy policy, we observed a noticeable degree of pragmatic support for the technology, and indeed for nuclear power technologies more generally. Interestingly, this support tended to be rationalised not in terms of, for example, high-profile climate change-related arguments, but as a way of addressing very real concerns they felt about the cost and security of energy supplies.
3.7 So does this research suggest that if only people were encouraged to learn more about nuclear power, they would tend to become less frightened and more pragmatically supportive of these technologies? Well, our findings suggest it is not nearly as simple as that.
3.8 We made audio recordings of all the participants’ conversations, and examined the talk in great detail. Our analysis revealed a number of features that were not immediately apparent at the time we ran the groups. Significantly, we found that the structure of the talk took on a characteristically apologetic form whenever participants said anything that might reasonably have been interpreted by fellow group members as pro-nuclear in nature. In its most explicit form, there were numerous instances when participants said “sorry” to preface their rejection of energy sources that might be regarded as “greener” in some respect. On other occasions, they displayed a clear need to account for the fact that they held views that might have been viewed as in tension with what one might call “a reasonable suspicion of nuclear power”.
3.9 What is going on here? Well, these “apologies” do not take the form of thought-out, formal, statements of regret. Rather, they seem to reflect a subconscious desire to be regarded by fellow participants as “reasonable sort of people”. We suspect that they reflect deeply-held views about what constitutes socially-appropriate ways of behaving. As such, they suggest that the social norms and cultural formations of both Spanish and British societies possess an underlying fear of nuclear power technologies.
4. Some Provisional Conclusions from the Research
4.1 What conclusions can one draw from the research described in section 3, above? First, there seems little doubt that the nuclear label, or ‘brand’ as we have come to think about it, continues to exert a powerful negative influence on the public imagination, certainly in the UK and Spain, and very likely in many countries around the world.
4.2 Second, we found what we regard as a considerable degree of pragmatic support for nuclear power technologies. Perhaps it is most significant that we found this tendency among environmentalists. This support did not simply reflect an “absorption” of the technical debates about energy policy to be found in the media, but, more importantly, it was grounded in the everyday practical experience of our participants’ rising energy bills and their worries about energy security.
4.3 Finally, and we feel, most important, there appears to be an unresolved tension between this pragmatic acceptance of nuclear power, and an underlying anxiety about these technologies that appears to operate, at least in part, at a subconscious, culturally-embedded, level. Significantly, it is not at all clear to us how any amount of public information would be able to address this source of anxiety. As such, nuclear stigma seems likely to continue to pose a serious challenge for the future development of nuclear power.
References
Flynn, J, Slovic, P and Kunreuther, H (eds) (2001) Risk, Media and Stigma: Understanding Public Challenges to Modern Science and Technology, London: Earthscan.
Horlick-Jones, T (2005) “Informal logics of risk: contingency and modes of practical reasoning”, Journal of Risk Research, 8(3): 253–272.
Horlick-Jones, T (2007) “On the Signature of new technologies: sociality, materiality and practical reasoning” in Flynn, R and Bellaby, P (eds) Risk and the Public Acceptance of New Technologies, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 41–65.
Horlick-Jones, T (2008) “Reasoning about safety management policy in everyday terms: a pilot study in citizen engagement for the UK railway industry”, Journal of Risk Research, 11(6): 679–718.
Horlick-Jones, T and Farré, J (eds.) (2010) The Communicative Turn in Risk Communication: Theory and Practice. Special issue of the Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies, 2(2): 127–285.
Horlick-Jones, T and Prades, A (in press) “The enduring challenge of nuclear stigma”, IAEA Bulletin (published by the International Atomic Energy Agency).
Horlick-Jones, T, Prades, A, and Espluga, J (in press; published online in July 2010) “Investigating the degree of ‘stigma’ associated with nuclear energy technologies: a cross-cultural examination of the case of fusion power”, Public Understanding of Science.
Horlick-Jones, T, Walls, J and Kitzinger, J (2007) “Bricolage in action: learning about, making sense of, and discussing issues about genetically modified crops and food”, Health, Risk & Society, 9(1): 83–103.
House of Lords (2000) Science and Society, Third Report of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, London: The Stationery Office.
Popkin, S (1994) The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns, Second edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Prades López, A, Horlick-Jones, T, Oltra, C, and Navajas, J (2009) Lay Understanding and Reasoning about Fusion Energy: Results of an Empirical Study, Madrid: CIEMAT.
Annex A
The Author
Professor Tom Horlick-Jones has a personal chair in the sociology of risk at Cardiff University’s School of Social Sciences. He has research degrees in Mathematics (MSc, Wales) and Sociology (PhD, Surrey). Over a period of some 30 years he has specialised in investigating risk-related behaviour, and associated reasoning, communication and decision-making processes. This experience includes a decade spent as a senior policy adviser in public sector administration, working primarily on emergency planning issues. He previously held academic posts at the London School of Economics and the University of Surrey.
He has advised many organisations, including: Department of Business, Innovation and Skills; Environment Agency, Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, European Commission, European Fusion Development Agreement, Health & Safety Executive, H.M. Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, Home Office, Post Office Group, Railtrack, Railway Safety & Standards Board, Science Museum, Sciencewise, Welsh Assembly Government and World Health Organization. In 1998, he was summoned to provide oral and written evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee inquiry into railway safety. In 2000, he was summoned to provide evidence to the Ladbroke Grove rail crash inquiry. During 2000–02, he acted as an adviser to the Mayor of London’s strategic review of the safety of the Notting Hill Carnival. In 2001–02 he was appointed (together with a health specialist) by the Economic & Social Research Council and Medical Research Council to carry out a research review on Risk and Health. In 2002–04, he led the independent, and officially accredited, evaluation of the GM Nation? public debate on the possible commercialisation of transgenic crops in the UK.
He has produced over 100 publications, including the books Natural Risk and Civil Protection (lead editor, Spon, 1995), Social Amplification of Risk: the Media and the Public (co-author, HSE Books, 2001) and The GM Debate: Risk, Politics and Public Engagement (lead author, Routledge, 2007; paperback 2009).
Professor Tom Horlick-Jones
Cardiff University School of Social Sciences
December 2011