“The safety issue harbours potential for controversy”

You are currently leading an extensive project of the Swiss National Science Foundation that investigates the situation surrounding the deep geological repository. What questions are you grappling with?
The project sheds light on how the geological underground is made accessible, visible and tangible to a broad public within the framework of the current site selection process for a deep geological repository – and enquires after the political consequences. The debate has long ignored the fact that deep geological disposal of radioactive waste is not only a complex geoscientific problem, but also a social one.

In what way?
The central hypothesis of my project is that the success or failure of a deep geological repository project depends not only on whether the right rock is found or whether the site selection process is fair. Just as important is the question whether society can be made to believe that the geological underground is stable and can ensure safe deep geological disposal for a period of one million years. The issue of the long-term stability of the geological conditions cannot be answered conclusively and therefore has the potential for social controversy.

Do you also make recommendations to politicians on the basis of your analyses?
No, my political contribution should not be interpreted as a recommendation. In my function as a social scientist, I have a descriptive role. I always try to keep an outside perspective. This is important in the context of my research precisely because I have to deal with many different stakeholders from a variety of political backgrounds.

How did you come up with the idea of submitting this particular project?
After completing my doctoral thesis, I started to explore a new range of topics – just as Nagra launched its deep borehole campaign. This campaign marked a milestone in Switzerland’s attempt to resolve the search
for a repository site. In turn, I realised that several of my interests come together in the context of deep geological disposal. So I began to follow and analyse the deep borehole campaign intensively. How did the boreholes represent a milestone? The boreholes drilled since 2019 brought the geological underground of Northern Switzerland to the surface. For the first time, the ground below the siting regions became visible.

How did you perceive the drilling process in Stadel?
When the decision in favour of Nördlich Lägern was communicated, it was all about geology: Nagra said that geology has the final say; at the press conference in Bern, a drill core was shown; the mayor of Stadel, on the other hand, took pride in the community’s literally “hardcore” geology. In this context, I like to call this the “geologisation of the debate.” Subsequently, however, the discussions shifted to more superficial topics,
with a particular focus on potential financial settlements. There is a clear demarcation between geological issues, which are assessed by the safety experts, and superficial issues, which are dealt with by the affected region. In this context, I don’t want to give the term “superficial” a derogatory connotation, to the contrary, it is very concrete.

Can we humans really assess the safety of such a complex project?
In his book on risk society, Ulrich Beck writes that generating risks goes hand in hand with creating institutes tasked with risk management. We are trying to control our creations – in the case of nuclear energy, this would be radioactive waste. Initially, the search for a repository site was mostly based on risk analyses. It was only later that post-closure safety was considered and became a priority.

Were we more willing to embrace risks in the past? Or simply more ignorant?
I am not interested in assessing how an individual perceives safety. My focus is on the overall social and historical context. I find it interesting that risk perception only became possible with the invention of probability theory in the 17th century. This greatly impacted the way social life was organised.

The more society knows about risks, the more risk-averse it becomes?
In our field, the core insight is a different one: that we keep taking more risks in order to cope with risks that we ourselves have created. Climate change is a good example: to solve the underlying problem, we are considering geoengineering, which comes with its own risks. While this example cannot be applied one-to-one to deep geological disposal, here, too, we introduce a new starting position, which in turn is associated with new risks. As a result, society has to decide time and again on the significance of each individual risk.

How do you perceive the site selection process for a deep geological repository in Switzerland?
Like many other countries, we have a long history of failed searches for a repository site. For a long time, the motto was: decide, announce, defend. But then it became clear that the top-down approach in the search for a repository site had no future, because local resistance largely stemmed from the decision not to involve affected stakeholders in this process. During the 1990s, participatory and process-orientated procedures were increasingly used around the world. Switzerland’s decision to lay down a Sectoral Plan process for a repository, which foresees the involvement of local stakeholders in the regional conferences, arose from this context. The Sectoral Plan process was not the only trust-building measure taken – but it was a very central one.

How exactly did the Sectoral Plan process come about?
The Sectoral Plan was developed in 2008 in response to projects that had failed in the 1990s. The Nuclear Energy Act, which was adopted in 2003, abolished the local right of affected regions to veto a project. This was replaced with the right to hold an optional national referendum – in other words, bring the issue to a vote. At the same time, the Sectoral Plan process foresaw the participation of locally affected stakeholders. This configuration leads to an exciting question: what does participation mean if you are allowed to voice your opinion but have no real say?

What would be your answer?
The Sectoral Plan process ensures far-reaching participation. Proposals relating to spatial planning issues or the positioning of the surface facilities were discussed in depth. Participation is more difficult to implement when it comes to safety issues and geological assessment. In this context, participation has largely been reduced to the right to be fully informed – which is important but has also been criticised.

One last question that I ask everyone I interview: if you could leave a message in the planned deep geological repository, what would you write in your note?
I don’t think I would write anything. I would try to experiment with materials and then perhaps emplace an object that dissolves when touched – to challenge the finder into thinking about it.