What are the determinants for local communities’ acceptance and disbeliefs of interim nuclear waste storage? The case of high-level nuclear waste in the neighbourhood of NPP1 and NPP2 in Taiwan

The concept of risk society argued by Ulrich Beck implies science and technology are not undoubtedly objective and certain since a series of new forms of environmental crisis with the typicality of Chernobyl catastrophe disclosed the political and economic interest behind them. Nowadays the entire society is under overwhelming and uncontrollable scientific and technological errors. Various sectors in the society started to interpret science in their contexts and science needs to reconstruct its essence to be socially robust encountering with numerous doubts and distrusts. Nuclear power and waste issues have been experiencing social opposition internationally, and Taiwan, the country recognised as the most dangerous location of nuclear risk, particularly has to abolish the conventional policy mechanism of considering social opposition as irrational deeds by lay-public. It is vital to unravel the determinants for public acceptance and disbeliefs of high-level nuclear waste storage in the neighbourhood of NPP1 and NPP2 as the proposal to mitigate the social conflicts in waste management. Qualitative interviews and secondary data collection were conducted attempting to construct a coherent storyline in the case of NPP1 and NPP2 with retrospect of historical nuclear power and waste development. The selected case here has its index significance that it is the first time of initial local uptake of nuclear waste in Taiwan’s history of social conflicts over nuclear issues. The research approach is distinct from mainstream risk perception analysis which emphasises quantitative and psychometric models. This paper recognised the importance of contextualising active role of local lay people when interacting with scientific risk and historical background. Analysis and results presented the relevant determinants and the detailed contexts behind them. The local memory of tsunami, the constant discovery of deformed fish associated with nuclear incidents, long-term failure of low-level nuclear waste disposal, issue of public and democratic participation, issue of compensation were factors causing the local disbeliefs. Sub-politics in cooperation with international environmental movements and political ideology could lead to the initial but vulnerable consensus on nearby high-level nuclear waste interim storage with the government.