Nuclear Safety, Risk Analysis, and the Limits of Calculabilitygoneri.nuc.berkeley.edu › 4S2009 › 2009_10_31_4S_Kinsella.pdfBeck’s Risk Society •Society and politics now structured

Nuclear Safety, Risk Analysis, and the Limits of Calculability

William J. Kinsella

Associate Professor of Communication

Program Director—Science, Technology & Society

North Carolina State University

[email protected]

Annual conference, Society for Social Studies of Science

Arlington, VA, 31 October 2009

Panel session: The Path-finding process

for Nuclear Waste Disposal

mailto:[email protected]

Background• Joined panel late in the process—original paper had different scope

• Revised paper to fit panel more closely: new focus on nuclear waste disposal and theory and practice of public-expert engagement

• Previous and related research:

-- Knowledge production in nuclear fusion community (1993-1997)

-- USDOE Hanford site (Hanford Advisory Board 2000-2006; Public

Involvement & Communication Committee Vice-Chair)

-- Projects on fusion research, nuclear discourse, expert-public-policy

engagement, USDOE nuclear complex, climate change discourse,

commercial nuclear power (see reference list for examples)

-- Fulbright project, University of Stuttgart, Spring 2010:

Nuclear Energy in Germany

-- Global political economy of nuclear energyKinsella, W.J. (2009). Nuclear safety, risk analysis, and the limits of calculability.

Annual conference, Society for Social Studies of Science (Arlington, VA, 31 October).2

Anecdote 1: Hanford Risk Workshop• Hanford Advisory Board meeting on DOE “Risk-

based End States,” 2003

• Multiple stations, each presenting risk models used by one project or work group at Hanford

• Different models and definitions presented at each station

• None of the models or definitions matched DOE master plan for Risk-based End States

• Implications: fragmentation across Hanford work groups; problematizes validity of separate approaches, impedes coordinated effort, impedes collaborative knowledge-production

Kinsella, W.J. (2009). Nuclear safety, risk analysis, and the limits of calculability. Annual conference, Society for Social Studies of Science (Arlington, VA, 31 October).

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Anecdote 2: Hanford Waste Treatment Plant Project

• Public meeting, Portland, OR, 2003

• Analysis does not include Columbia River dam breaches due to seismic events—according to representative “we don’t know how to model them”

• Implication: Analysis disregards phenomena not consistent with “unitary world picture” (Heidegger)

• Related incident: Construction halted for 22 months in 2006 after recognition that design inadequately addressed seismic vulnerabilities

• Cost estimate $4.3B $12.3B; startup date 2011 2019 (recently passed 50% completion)


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Phenomenological Critique of Risk Analysis and Risk Communication

• Phenomenology in philosophical sense: relation between the knower and the known

• Applying Heidegger’s phenomenological critique of “Modern Science as World Picture”

• Broad context: Beck’s “Risk Society,” Luhmann’s “Functional Social Subsystems”

• Specific context: Risk analysis and risk communication in nuclear safety and nuclear waste disposal


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Sociological Framework: Beck’s Risk Society

• Society and politics now structured by self-produced “modernization risks”

• Science and technology are sources of risk and instruments for risk management

• New fundamental problem for sociology and politics: equitable distribution of risks (parallels classical problem of equitable resource distribution)

• “Democratic risks” and “social risk positions”• “Risk communities” (Kinsella & Mullen, 2007)


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Sociological Framework: Luhmann’sFunctional Social Subsystems (I)

• Societal differentiation into quasi-independent functional subsystems: economics, education, law, religion, politics, science

• Communication as constitutive principle; operates through observations and distinctions

• “The rationalist tradition has been broadly accused of not seeing what it does not see” (Luhmann, 1993,p. 14).

• Unique binary code operates within each system (e.g., “profitable/not profitable,” “legal/not legal,” “true/not true”)


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Luhmann’s Functional Social Subsystems (II)

• Subsystems generally autonomous, except when resonances occur (exceptional events)

• System rationality replaces world rationality

• Examples:

-- Economic analyses “externalize” costs

-- Risk analyses ignore what can’t be modeled

-- NRC guideline (0.1% natural risk) is doubly

incalculable: natural and anthropogenic risks

-- Decisions blind to “opportunity costs”


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Luhmann’s Functional Social Subsystems (III)

• Implications:

-- Fragmentation (“stovepiping”)

-- Need for interdisciplinarity (or transdisciplinarity)

• Trust (interpersonal, social, institutional, political levels) (Luhmann, 1979)

• Time-binding (future state of affairs bound to decisions made in present)


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Philosophical Framework:“Modern Science as World Picture”

(Heidegger, 1964, 1977)

• Modern science as representational “world picture” and “mathematical project of nature”

• Representation structured by throwness (“path dependence”) and projection (“agendas” and “projects”)

• World picture orders and enframes phenomena into a unitary system, disregards phenomena that don’t fit in

• Progressive, increasingly rigorous elaboration reveals and conceals (productivity and “trained incapacity” or “insight and blindness”)


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Phenomenology, Politics, and Communication (I)

• Stakeholder “representation” as “social world picture”

• Stakeholder processes ignore what’s not within the framework:

-- “Irrational” (vs. “other rationality,” cf. Douglas & Wildavsky)

-- “Non-sense”

-- “Beyond the pale”

-- “Scoping” of public involvement processes

(Hanford FFTF example)

• Institutional analysis illuminates throwness and projection


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Phenomenology, Politics, and Communication (II)

• From “objectivity” to “interests”

All “interested” parties have interests at stake—interests are:

-- Partial

-- Positional

-- Political

• Knowledge is grounded in and produced through interests:

-- Partial, positional, political

• Consensus often masks power relations

(cf. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests;

Deetz, Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization)

Kinsella, W.J. (2009). Nuclear safety, risk analysis, and the limits of calculability.Annual conference, Society for Social Studies of Science (Arlington, VA, 31 October).

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Related Critiques of Stakeholder and Risk Communication

• “Contemptuous view” of the public (Katz & Miller, 1996)

• Counterpublics theory: No unitary “public”; publics organize in response or opposition (cf. Asen & Brouwer)

• “Deficit model” of lay knowledge (Wynne)

• “Contempt” & “deficit models” can operate in both directions

• “Accidental rhetoric” (Farrell & Goodnight)

• “Discursive containment” (Kinsella, 2001)

• Role of “local knowledge” and “public expertise” (Fischer, 2000; Kinsella, 2004; Kinsella & Mullen, 2007)

• Critiques of “Decide, Announce, Defend” (DAD) modelKinsella, W.J. (2009). Nuclear safety, risk analysis, and the limits of calculability.

Annual conference, Society for Social Studies of Science (Arlington, VA, 31 October).13

Programmatic Observations: Toward Dialogic, Rhetorical Engagement

• Calls for “upstream engagement” are valuable, but problematic• Roles of narrative and public moral argument (Fisher, 1987)• From technical to public “argument spheres” (Goodnight)• Moral conflict (Pearce & Littlejohn; Kaleidoscope project):

-- incommensurable world views-- rhetorical attenuation-- moral attenuation-- building new grammars and rules

• Ideal speech situation (Habermas); four symmetry conditions:-- access, competence, regulation, scope

• From positions to interests; from conflict to collaborative civic discovery (Daniels & Walker)


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Role of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

• Close reading of risk discourse

• “Public acceptance,” “social acceptance,”

“gain support” – suggests “DAD” model and commitment to predefined technical solution

• “Risk perceptions,” “lack knowledge,” “subjective” – suggests deficit model

• Focus on semantic “translation” without collaborative knowledge production

• Actor-network theory (ANT) views translation differently


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Implications for Risk Analysis and Risk Communication

• “Mathematical project of nature” constrains “world picture” (Heidegger); science “not seeing what it does not see” (Luhmann, 1993)

• Path-dependent nature (“historicity”) of world picture • Role of institutional influences (cf. Eden, 2004, Whole

World on Fire)• Importance of interdisciplinary technical analysis

(“technical interdisciplinarity”)• Importance of “trans-technical interdisciplinarity”

including social sciences and other ways of knowing (aesthetic, creative, performative, intuitive)

• Importance of local knowledge, broad public participation, multiple perspectives, continuous critique, deferral of closure, questioning “consensus”


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References (I)• Asen, R., & Brouwer, D. C. (Eds.) (2001). Counterpublics and the state. Albany: SUNY Press.

• Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

• Beck, U. (1995). Ecological enlightenment: Essays on the politics of the risk society. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.

• Beck, U. (1995). Ecological politics in an age of risk. London: Polity.

• Daniels, S. E., & Walker, G. B. (2001). Working through environmental conflict: The collaborative learning approach. Westport, CT: Praeger.

• Deetz, S. A. (1992). Democracy in an age of corporate colonization: Developments in communication and the politics of everyday life. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

• Douglas, M., & Wildavsky, A. (1982). Risk and culture: An essay on the selections of technological and environmental dangers. Berkeley: University of California Press.

• Eden, L. (2004). Whole world on fire: Organizations, knowledge, and nuclear weapons

devastation. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

• Farrell, T. B., & Goodnight, G. T. (1981). Accidental rhetoric: The root metaphors of Three Mile Island. Communication Monographs, 48, 271-300.

• Fischer, F. (2000). Citizens, experts, and environment: The politics of local knowledge. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

• Fisher, Walter R. (1987). Human communication as narration: Toward a philosophy of reason, value, and action. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press.

• Goodnight, G. T. (1982). The personal, technical, and public spheres of argument: A speculative inquiry into the art of public deliberation. Journal of the American Forensic Association, 18, 214-227.


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References (II)• Habermas, J. (1971). Knowledge and human interests. Boston: Beacon.

• Heidegger, M. (1996). Being and time (trans. J. Stambaugh). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

• Heidegger, M. (1977). The age of the world picture. In M. Heidegger (trans. W. Lovitt), The question concerning technology and other essays (pp. 115-154). New York: Harper & Row.

• Katz, S. B., & Miller, C. R. (1996). The low-level radioactive waste-siting controversy in North Carolina: Toward a rhetorical model of risk communication. In C. G. Herndl & S. C. Brown (Eds.), Green culture: Environmental rhetoric in contemporary America (pp. 111-139).

• Kinsella, W. J. (1999). Discourse, power, and knowledge in the management of “big science”: The production of consensus in a nuclear fusion research laboratory. Management Communication Quarterly, 13(2), 171-208.

• Kinsella, W. J. (2001). Nuclear boundaries: Material and discursive containment at the Hanford nuclear reservation. Science as Culture, 10(2), 163-194.

• Kinsella, W. J. (2004). Public expertise: A foundation for citizen participation in energy and environmental decisions. In S. P. Depoe, J. W. Delicath, & M. A. Elsenbeer (Eds.), Communication and public participation in environmental decision making (pp. 83-95). Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

• Kinsella, W. J. (2005). One hundred years of nuclear discourse: Four master themes and their implications for environmental communication. Environmental Communication Yearbook, vol. 2, 49-72.

• Kinsella, W. J. (2005). Rhetoric, action, and agency in institutionalized science and technology. Technical Communication Quarterly, 14(3), 303-310.

• Kinsella, W. J. (2007). Heidegger and being at the Hanford reservation: Standing reserve, enframing, and environmental communication theory. Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, 1(2), 194-217.


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References (III)• Kinsella, W. J., & Mullen, J. (2007, 2008). Becoming Hanford downwinders: Producing community and

challenging discursive containment. In Taylor, B. C., Kinsella, W. J., Depoe, S. P., & Metzler, M. S. (Eds.), Nuclear legacies: Communication, controversy, and the U.S. nuclear weapons complex (pp. 73-107). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

• Luhmann, N. (1990). Technology, environment, and social risk: A systems perspective. Industrial Crisis Quarterly, 4, 223-231.

• Luhmann, N. (1979). Trust and power: Two works (Ed. T Burns & G. Poggi; Trans. H. Davis, J. Raffan, & K. Rooney). New York: Wiley.

• Luhmann, N. (1989). Ecological communication (trans. J. Bednarz). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

• Luhmann, N. (1993). Risk: A sociological theory (trans. R. Barrett). New York: de Gruyter.

• Pearce, W.B., & Littlejohn, S. (1997). Moral conflict: When social worlds collide. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

• Taylor, B. C., Kinsella, W. J., Depoe, S. P., & Metzler, M. S. (Eds.) (2007, 2008). Nuclear legacies: Communication, controversy, and the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. Lanham, MD: Lexington.

• U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (2004). Effective risk communication: Guidelines for external risk communication. NUREG/BR-0308, available at:

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/brochures/br0308/

• Wynne, B. (1991). Knowledges in context. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 16(1), 111-121.

• Wynne, B. (1992). Risk and social learning: Reification to engagement. In S. Krimsky & D. Golding (Eds.), Social theories of risk (pp. 275-297). Westport, CT: Praeger.

• Wynne, B. (1996). May the sheep safely graze? A reflexive view of the expert-lay knowledge divide. In S. Lash, B. Szerzynski, & B. Wynne (Eds.), Risk, environment, and modernity: Toward a new ecology (pp. 45-80). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.


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Nuclear Safety, Risk Analysis, and the Limits of Calculabilitygoneri.nuc.berkeley.edu › 4S2009 › 2009_10_31_4S_Kinsella.pdfBeck’s Risk Society •Society and politics now structured