Radwaste in Canada: a political economy of uncertainty

Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) proposed Adaptive Phased Management (APM) as an approach for managing used nuclear fuel in November 2005, and this approach was approved by government in June 2007. APM involves either disposing of or storing used nuclear fuel in geological formations, but leaves decisions about options and timing to political contest. Site assessment processes are now underway, with site selection expected within 30 years. This paper shows how APM developed out of repeated public policy failures and decreasing political support for nuclear projects, including at early site assessments (1978--1981), when the mandate for a public inquiry was set (1989), and at a public inquiry into a waste disposal concept (in 1996--1997). I argue that the current NWMO approach was shaped by these failures, but in an ambiguous fashion. APM both incorporates critics' demands and thus limits the institutional discretion of elites, but also converts those demands into less challenging kinds of questions. Concerns about the origins of options are being translated into concerns about the management of consequences. The extent to which one accepts the scope of assumptions embedded in APM is the extent to which the expansion of nuclear power itself is reinforced.