CARL - SLOVENIA Drago Kos University of Ljubljana Faculty of Social Science 1.INTRODUCTION: Willingness to learn from past failures?

First “technocratic” approach to site selection (1990 to 1993)  Specific social and political situation at the time;  Specific participatory culture;  Lack of public information and public participation in decision-making process;  Strong political support to close NPP;  Rather strong green movement/party;  No waste management policy at the time;  High estimated risk from nuclear waste;

The most dangerous waste

Field work (1993): “Searching for oil”  specific local situation not considered  communicative dilettantism  underestimation of perceived risk  no participation of community  »Naive« confidence in efficiency of rational (expert) argumentation Result: shocking failure of the technocratic site selection in 1993

2. BASIC FACTS ABOUT PRESENT SITUATION Too slow progress?  No disposal facility for any type of waste in Slovenia;  Present storage capacities: on site of NPP Krško, RIM at the research centre in Ljubljana;  Limited and no final solution;  Local community and local authorities on site so far tolerate provisional storage;  Rather high compensation aspiration;  Low level of trust in authorities, expert, governmental agency,...

TRUST

Good points:  Founding of ARAO;  Consent on participatory approach;  Removing the LILW waste from improvised building and illegal location; and  Reconstruction of LILW (from MIR) storage at Research Reactor Center near Ljubljana

3. NEW SITE SELECTION (from 1996) Dis/continious process of confidence building?  New process for the LILW repository siting started in 1996  New approach, two main criteria:  1. a safe disposal solution proved by technical safety assessment, and  2. site selection in agreement with the host community.  Balanced technical and social criteria: 50 : 50  Main social strategy: consistent and continuous process of confidence building:

BUT: “ Diligent and hard work of many is easily spoiled by few”.  The shock effect has almost disappeared, technocratic temptations on horizont:  Not all activities are consistent with confidence building;  Basic facts still not known to general public  Local – national political disputes: love hate local national relation  Local community formally cannot veto but in fact it can!  Small country, everybody knows everybody: Local specific formal/informal parallelism!

Want to know more about RW

Who should decide?

 Low rank of the issue on the national political agenda;  Difficulties in coordination of main actors Unstable administrative system (untransparent local national competences)  Unstable political arena: discontinuity;  Sporadic counter activism of NGO;  Unsustainable dialog between stakeholders;  Inconsistent information process;

ARAO – unknown agnecy !

NE is useful to people

RW in SLO is serious problem

SLO has to find location