The views represented here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization or of Royal Roads University.

Royal Roads University is committed to leading open and informed dialogue on critical public policy issues. Many of the issues are highly contentious and deeply value-laden, with multiple perspectives on the ways forward. We believe that inaction is not a solution, especially considering some of the sustainable development challenges humankind is currently facing. These challenges demand unprecedented levels of co-operation and dialogue between disciplinary scholars, practitioners and between sectors. We believe the creation of on-line neutral spaces that are actively moderated by academic experts designed to make values explicit and that provide a venue for a diversity of perspectives to be ‘heard’ is critical to the resolution of some of these issues.

The biosphere is home to two very dynamic and complex living systems: the ecosystems that blanket it, and the human societies that have evolved within those ecosystems. As the scale of human activities has grown, their effect upon Earth’s ecosystems has risen as well. The biosphere and society have now reached a point where they are evolving together; they are co-evolutionary. Change in one of these systems effects the other, and the boundaries between these two systems are becoming more and more indistinct.

This co-evolution has led to levels of complexity that are new to us, and that are changing the very nature of the problems we encounter. Within our human activity systems, it has become much harder to quantify risks. Our information is often incomplete, and our science will remain uncertain because of this dynamic co-evolution. Anticipation has become difficult, as unexpected changes have become the norm; indeed prediction and control in the face of this uncertainty is no longer adaptive. Our problems have changed accordingly; discreet problems have given way to ones in which economic, social and ecological considerations are inseparable. This interdependence strains our largely reductionist knowledge base. The time frames of our problems have changed as well, and questions of intergenerational equity are difficult to comprehend and reconcile with our present needs and our short term desires.

We face such a long-term complex interdisciplinary problem in the management of used nuclear fuel. Such waste will remain very dangerous to the health of humans and ecosystems for tens of thousands of years, posing a problem in management on an unprecedented scale. The questions surrounding disposal of nuclear waste are deeply complex. Do we leave waste on site at nuclear generating stations, even though those stations are located near population centres? Or do we risk transporting the waste to remote locations? Do we attempt to entomb the waste for all time, or do we leave some level of accessibility in case a future innovation provides a better disposal method? While we ponder these questions we must also grapple with how to ensure this waste is not used by terrorists as a weapon against us, and we must ponder how to communicate to far future generations that this waste is dangerous, even though they might know nothing of our societies. As such, nuclear waste management will be a bellwether of our ability to deal with complexity and uncertainty.

Royal Roads University
Science, Technology & Environment Division
edialogues@royalroads.ca