Box 69, Item 1: Draft of Nuclear waste, obligations to the future, and social choice

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Nuclear waste, obligations to the future, and social choice.

The bus example.

very long journey.

Suppose we consider a bus which, hopefully, is to make a
Early in the journey of the bus someone consigns on it,

to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly toxic and explo­

sive gas.

This is packaged in a thin container, which as the consigner well

knows may well not contain the gas for the full distance for which it is con­
signed, and certainly will not do so if the bus should strike any trouble, for

example if there is a breakdown and the interior of the bus becomes very hot,
if the bus should strike a very large bump or pothole of the sort commonly found

on some of the bad roads it has to traverse, or if some passenger should interfere

deliberately or inadvertently with the cargo or perhaps try to steal some of the
freight.

If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably

kill at least some of the people on the bus, while others could be maimed or

contract serious diseases.

Most of us would condemn such an action.

parcel say to try to justify it?

What might the consigner of the

He might say that it is not certain that the

gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it will, that the world
needs his product and it is his duty to supply it, and that in any case he is not
responsible for the bus or the people on it.

These sorts of excuses however would

normally be seen as ludicrous.

Suppose he says that it is his own pressing needs which justify his action.

The firm he owns, which produces the material as a by-product, is in bad financial
straits, and couldn't afford to produce a better container (even if it knew how to
make one).

If the firm goes broke, he and his family will suffer, his employees

will lose their jobs and have to look for others, and the whole village, through

loss of spending and the cancellation of the Multiplier Effect, will be worse off.

The poor of the village whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will
suffer especially.

Few people would accept this story even if correct, as justification.

Even

where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom one is
concerned one is usually thought not to be entitled to simply transfer the burden

of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties, especially where they arise
from one’s own chosen life style and the transfer of costs creates a risk of

serious harm to others (the transfer principle).

2.

The nuclear comparison.
One of the major problems arising from the use of nuclear
power is the disposal of highly radioactive wastes which
must be segregated from the biosphere for periods on the
order of a million years (Ringwood 78, p.l).
The wastes are highly toxic and will be spread around the world if large-scale
nuclear development goes ahead as planned.

Yet there is no method of packaging

them whose safety has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt and which we can
be confident will be generally used.

Despite recent ’new strategies for safe

disposal of nuclear waste’, it remains true^ that
there is at present no generally accepted means by which
high level waste can be permanently isolated from the
environment and remain safe for very long periods. (Fox Report, p.110).

It was presumably largely for this sort of reason that the Fox Report endorsed
the conclusion of the British (Flowers) Report ’with respect to nuclear waste’
namely:-

There should be no commitment to a large programme of
nuclear fission power until it has been demonstrated
beyond reasonable doubt that a method exists to ensure
the safe containment of long-lived radioactive waste for
the indefinite future (Fox Report, p.189; our italics).

- a reliable method, the Report should have added, whose commercial viability and

use is assured.
example.

The need for these further conditions can be seen from the bus

The consigner can hardly justify his action as regards the people on

the bus, the people of the future, by saying that a better container is too

expensive, or that he does have a strategy for producing or theory which will

enable him to produce a superior container if he has failed to use the method.

It is thus a non sequitur to argue as Ringwood does on the basis of his
proposed strategy for the safe disposal of radwastes (i.e. high-level nuclear

wastes) that the radwaste problem is no reasonable ground upon which to curtail

use of nuclear power:
The principle conclusion of this book is that the problem
of isolating high level nuclear wastes from the biosphere
can be solved. Although there may be other objections to
the use of nuclear power, the radwaste problem cannot reasonably
be cited in justification of policies to abandon its use
(78, Ringwood’s italics).
Even if the premiss that the problem can be solved had been established — it

hasn’t

at all^ - the no-abandonment-of-nuclear-power conclusion in no way follows.

There is a large gap between the theoretical possibility of a method of safe
storage (hardly an important issue in the nuclear debate) and the availability of

a commercial containment method whose reliability has been demonstrated beyond

3.
reasonable doubt and whose general use can be reasonably assumed.

It is the

latter that is required for Ringwood’s no-abandonment-of-nuclear-power conclusion;
but of the latter Ringwood’s strategy gives no assurance.

There is in fact

little reason to believe that nuclear pollution will be treated in a different

fashion from other forms of pollution, where the availability of more satisfactory

methods of control is by no means sufficient to guarantee their effective employ­
ment, especially if they are expensive.

It is methodologically unsound to ignore

social, ethical and political factors and to regard the radwaste problem as a
purely technological one which can be classed as solved should a theoretical

solution with practical application possibilities be reached.

The practical

likelihood, even given (what we lack) a disposal method proven safe beyond
reasonable doubt, remains — that nuclear wastes will not be adequately contained,
with the result that nuclear power will impose serious costs and risks on future
people who do not benefit.

For nuclear fission generates wastes which may remain toxic for a million years,
but even with the breeder reactor it could be an energy source for perhaps only

150 years.

Thus 30,000 generations of future people could be forced to bear

significant risks,'without any corresponding benefits, resulting from the provision

of the extravagant energy use of only 5 generations or so.

Like the consigner in

the bus example, contemporary industrial society proposes, in extricating itself
from a mess arising from its own life style - the creation of economies dependent
on an abundance of non-renewable energy which is limited in physical supply - to

pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding
energy benefits.

The solution may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable

changes in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just

as the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate
surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved
parties.

For these reasons the nuclear energy option is, like the consigner’s

action morally unacceptable.

What makes matters worse is that present industrial

society has clear alternatives to its nuclear choice, which is made essentially

to avoid changing wasteful patterns of consumption and to protect the interests
of those who profit from them.
Obligations to the future.

One way of trying to escape the conclusion that

present large-scale nuclear development involves serious injustice with respect
to people of the distant future is to deny, as the occasional philosopher has,
that there are moral obligations to remotely future people.

But the view that

there are no such obligations, that we are free to do as we like with respect
to future people, is a very difficult one to sustain.

Would scientists, for

example, in the course of conducting an experiment, be entitled to do something,
say release a disease-carrying organism with a very long incubation period, which

4.

while not affecting the present, could cause death and disease for many future
people, for example?

Most people would say they certainly are not.

Nevertheless

’The future can take case of itself;

why should we worry about it, we have enough

problems’ is also a common attitude.

But it is not as if in the nuclear case we

are simp1y leaving the future alone to take care of itself.

We are causally

influencing it and in doing so acquire moral responsibilities with respect to

future people, namely the obligation to take account of people affected and their

interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the

probability of our actions causing harm, and to see that we do not act so as to
rob future people of the chance of a good life — and a satisfactory environment.
That there are obligations to the distant future, which follows logically from
examples, such as that of scientists who act wrongly in deliberately or carelessly

damaging people displaced in time, may be argued, more generally, on the basis of

the spatial analogy (that the temporal dimension is like spatial dimensions and
remoteness in space does not eliminate, or substantially diminish, obligation),

or on the basis of ethical theories, and general principles common to such theories.
The main modern theories of obligation, e.g. utilitarian, contractual, intuitionistic,

when properly applied, converge to show that there are moral obligations to people
in the distant future of the same sort that there are to present people.

(Thus

the rejection of nuclear development as morally unacceptable does not depend on a
particular ethical theory, but uses only ground common to the main theories.)

The convergence of theories may be accounted for in terms of conditions of adequacy
an ethical theory should meet.

The principles of obligation of such a theory

should be universalisable or lawlike in that they do not make exceptions for
particular times or places or peoples (such as those of contemporary industrial

society):

to make exceptions would be to accept unfairness, and so injustice.

Thus the temporal position of a person cannot affect that person’s entitlement to
just and fair treatment;

these are the same sorts of general obligations to future

people as to present.
Engineering and economic comparisons and assessments of different energy options

are usually inadequate because they neglect these general features of obligation.

Just as the fact that the consigner and his immediate environment will benefit
from sending the parcel does not show it is morally acceptable, so arguments for
nuclear power based on alleged economic benefits for the present, or a favourable

benefit-risk analysis, do not even begin to show that it is morally acceptable.
Economics and engineering must (like law) operate within the framework of moral

constraints, not determine those constraints.

5.

Uncertainty arguments*

Elements of uncertainty or indeterminacy in a situation

(especially in our knowledge of the situation) provide no exemptions from general
obligations, any more than they upset or modify the operation of general physical
laws.

It is commonly argued, however that we cannot really be expected to take

account of the interests of future people, because the damage to the future from

nuclear waste is by no means certain, we cannot be sure that future people will
not develop a way of coping with the problem or will care about the risk anyway.
Aren’t we being asked to forego tangible benefits for the present for the sake of

avoiding a merely speculative risk of harm to people we do not even know will exist?

This sort of argument may seem initially plausible, but a little reflection on

examples, such as the bus example, shows that it is mistaken.

It is like the

consigner saying that there is nothing wrong in his sending his parcel, since it

is not certain the gas will escape, or that there will be anybody on the bus when

it does, or that the people on the bus may think of a way of coping with the problem,

or may not care anyway.

Can he really be expected to forego tangible benefits for

himself and his family just to avoid speculative harm to the possibly non-existent
passengers?

The answer of course is yes.

The damage to the passengers does not

have to be certain or even probable - it is enough that a significant risk of
serious harm is imposed on the unconsenting and uninvolved passengers.

In the nuclear case it is clear that a significant risk will be imposed on
the future.

The circumstances in which nuclear waste disposal could be improper

or ineffective are only too easy to envisage, and must be considered real risks
with a real evidential basis, not merely idle speculation or science-fiction

possibility.

And uncertainty about the future is not so great as this line of

argument likes to make out - there is uncertainty about many details of little moral

consequence concerning the future, such as which girls’ names will be used commonly

in 100 years, but we do have good reason to believe, especially if we consider
3000 years of history, that future people will have basic needs and desires rather

like our own, that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life, and that
their lives will not be improved by an increased incidence of disease and cancer

from increased radiation.

written off in this way:
Moral conflict arguments.

The legitimate interests of future people cannot be

These uncertainty arguments are moral cop-outs.

The alternative to disputing obligations to the future

is to appeal to overriding obligations involving the present (which induce
situations where obligations conflict).

According to moral conflict arguments,

nuclear development does have its morally undesirable aspects, but the only
practical alternatives to nuclear development are morally even worse.

Observe

that such arguments are only satisfactory provided the options presented are

6.
genuine and exhaustive, all practicable alternatives being considered and shown

to be worse than the option under consideration:

this necessary condition is not satisfied.)

in the nuclear development case

Moral conflict arguments are commonly

advanced in favour of nuclear development, some alleging competing and overriding

duties to future people, and some analogous duties to present people.

The main (and representative) argument of the last class, laying stress on
duties to present people, is the Poverty Argument, according to which there is an

overriding obligation to the poor, both of the third world and the industrialized
countries who, according to the argument, will suffer or be denied the opportunity
to reach affluence if nuclear development does not proceed.

In neither case does

the argument stand up to examination.
There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to increase

unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very
much available capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor
provider of direct employment, but also helps to reduce available jobs through

encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use.

The argument that nuclear

energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing.

Nuclear energy is

both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it

requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and

engineers, and creates negligible employment.

Politically it increases foreign

dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for change

in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the problem something which may help explain why it is attractive to many of the military

governing elites of these countries.
The poverty argument then — like many modern economic arguments for development

which appeal to the way in which development will, allegedly, assist the poor - is
a fraud.

Nuclear energy will not be used, except incidentally, to help the poor.

Both for the third world and for the industrialised countries there are well-known

energy conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing other energy

sources, alternatives which are morally acceptable and socially preferable to

nuclear development, and which have far better prospects for helping the poor.
The other, major, moral conflict argument appeals to a set of supposedly
overriding and competing obligations to present and future people.

We have, it is

said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions which our
culture has developed.

The argument is essentially that without nuclear power,

without the continued level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible,

the lights of our civilization will go out, our valuable institutions and traditions
will fall into decay or be swept away.

Future people also will be the losers.

The assumptions upon which this Lights-going-out Argument is based are

untenable.

It appears to assume that existing high-energy consumption society

is uniformly and uniquely valuable and that it cannot be directed towards energy

conservation or alternative energy sources without utter collapse.

But no enormou:

reduction in energy use, and perhaps little in real welfare, is needed to obviate
the need for nuclear power in the shorter term, and alternative energy strategies
to nuclear will have, in any case, to be adopted for the longer term anyway.

High

rates of energy use may be necessary to maintain the political and economic status

quo, but they are scarcely necessary to maintain what is really valuable in our
society, much of which we inherited from a past with a vastly lower energy con­

sumption, and much of which might well be better fostered in lower (energy) con­
sumption society with less concentration of political and economic power.

Not

only are the extravagant levels of energy consumption upon which the "need" for

nuclear power is premissed unnecessary to maintain what is valuable, but there is
some reason to believe they are positively inimical to doing so.

Nuclear develop­

ment may help in passing on to future generations some of the worse aspects of
our society, the consumerism, alienation, destruction of nature and latent authori­
tarianism, while many valuable aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and

those opportunities for personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost

or diminished.

But it is not the status quo, but what is valuable in our society,

presumably, that we have an obligation to pass on to the future, and if possible
enhance.
Both moral conflict escape routes are closed then, because the arguments

depend on false contrasts, ignore practicable alternatives which are not morally

worse than nuclear power, and in painting their picture of inevitability, vastly

understate the extent of available social choice.

It is like the consigner of

the parcel arguing that if he does not send his parcel his family and the village
will starve, when in fact there appear to be viable, but perhaps less profitable,

alternatives he has not troubled to consider or investigate seriously

Alternative energy options.

The future energy option that is most frequently

contrasted with nuclear, that based on coal, is not without ethical problems.

Certainly there is no radioactive waste disposal problem, and other important

grounds for moral and political concern over extensive reliance on nuclear energy

are removed, namely problems arising from the real possibilities of proliferation
of nuclear weapons, of deliberate release or threat of release of radioactive

materials as a measure of terrorism or of extortion, and of catastrophic releases
of radiation or of radioactive fuel or waste into the environment following an

accident such as reactor melt-down, and from security measures adopted to reduce

such eventualities.

But the coal-based option carries nonetheless serious

costs and risks both to the environment and to health — because of the likelihood
of severe pollution and associated damaging phenomena such as acid rain and
atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by extensive strip

mining, all of which will result from use of coal in meeting very high projected
consumption figures.

Such an option would also fail, it seems, to satisfy the

transfer principle, because it would impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries

for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to some contemporary
users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacement.
These are the conventional options and a third is often added which emphasizes

soft or benign technologies, such as those of solar energy.

However the fundamental

choice, such options usually neglect, is not technological but social, and involves
both the restructuring of production, and change of consumption, away from energy
intensive uses: at a more basic level there is a choice between consumeristic
and nonconsumeristic futures.^ It is not just a matter of deciding in which way

to meet unexamined goals but also a matter of examining the goals and underlying
values.

That is, we are not just faced with the question of comparing different

technologies or substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given demand or level of

nonsumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this with soft rather than
hard technologies;

we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining

those alleged needs and the cost of society that creates them.

It is not just

a question of devising less damaging ways to meet these alleged needs conceived
of us inevitable and unchangeable.

There are solar ways of producing unnecessary

trivia no one really wants and of squandering energy, as well as nuclear ways.
This is not to deny that softer options may be superior to the ethically unacceptable

features of the others.

But it is doubtful that any technology however benign in principle will be
likely to leave a tolerable world for future people if it is expected to meet

limitless and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands.

Even the more benign

technologies such as solar technology may well be used in ways which create costs

for future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world being transmitted
to them.

Consider, to take one important example, the effect on the world’s

forests, which are commonly counted as a solar resource, of use for production of
methonal or of electricity by woodchipping, as already planned by forest authorities

in California and contemplated by many other energy organisations.

Few would

object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, but the un­
restricted exploitation of forests - whether it goes under the name of "solar

energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands would have a very damaging

effect on the world’s already hard pressed natural forests.

Some of us do not

9.
want to pass on - we are not entitled to pass on

- to the future a world largely

devoid of natural forests and accordingly much impoverished in fauna and flora,
any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by

coal products.

In short, a mere switch to a more benign technology - important

though this is - without any more basic structural and social changes is inadequate.

Social options.

The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to

change a social structure which promotes consumerism and an economic structure

which encourages the use of highly energy-intensive modes of production.

This

involves, for instance, trying to change a social structure in which those who are
fortunate enough to make it into the work force are cogs in a production machine

over which they have very little real control and in which most people do unpleasant
or boring work from which they derive very little real satisfaction in order to

obtain the reward of consumer goods and services.

A society in which social rewards

are obtained primarily from products rather than processes, from consumption, rather
than from satisfaction in work and in social relations and other activities, is

bound to be one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption.

(A

production system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but for created

and nongenuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce.)

Consumption frequently

becomes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas.
The social change option is a hard option, but it seems the only way to avoid
passing on serious costs and risks to the future5

and there are not only ethical

grounds, but ecological reasons for choosing it.

Conventional technology-oriented

discussions of energy options and of how to meet future energy "needs” obscures

the social change option, in part because the option questions values underlying
current social arrangements.

The conventional discussion proceeds by taking

alleged demand (often restated as wants or needs) as unchallengeable,

and the

issue to be one which technology can be most profitably employed to meet them.

This effectively presents a false choice, and is the result of taking needs and
demand as lacking a social context so that the social structure which produces

the needs is similarly taken as unchallengable and unchangeable.

The social

changes that the option requires will be strongly resisted because they mean
changes in current social organisation and power structure, and to the extent that
the option represents some kind of threat to parts of present political and economic
arrangements it is not surprising that official energy option discussion proceeds
g
by misrepresenting and often obscuring it.

FOOTNOTES

1.

2.

Some leading proponents of nuclear development admit the absence of
satisfactory storage and disposal methods;
others do not.
Some
of the newer strategies for waste disposal, e.g. that promoted by
Cohen 77 fail, conspicuously, to meet conditions of adequacy on
disposal (see Routley and Routley 78, footnote 1).
Ringwood’s
new strategy, in 78, was immediately rejected by some of the
pronuclear establishment both as too expensive (even allowing
Ringwood’s optimistic costguestimates) and as unnecessary, which
does not augur well for its use.
Yet Ringwood cast serious doubt
on the adequacy of alternative disposal strategies, notably
immobilisation of wastes in glass and in supercalcine.

All Ringwood has shown conclusively is that he can
create an artificial equivalent of a uranium one-body
(Hallam 79)
What Ringwood’s ’strategy for radwaste disposal’ amounts to is a
further possible method of treating radwaste, with significant gaps
in the argument, a considerable lack of experimental and practical
support, no commercial feasibility studies, etc: see Martin 78 and
Hallam 79.

3.

It depends on several processes whose large-scale commercial viability
has very definitely not been shown beyond reasonable doubt, including
reprocessing (Fox Report, p.29).
It appears to be far too expensive
for the nuclear industry, and certainly for poorer nations that have
embarked on nuclear power projects.
There are moreover reasons for
thinking that governments may not want or favour permanent irretrievable
disposal methods; they may want to keep open their options for
employing waste components either for military purposes or for use in
breeder reactors or elsewhere.

4.

On alternative technology and softer energy options, see especially
Lovins 77; also Lovins 76.
For criticism of Lovins’ comparative
neglect of social alternatives, see Martin 77 (and Lovins’ reply
thereto).

5.

The already very serious situation of the world’s forests, especially
the wet tropical forests, is not sufficiently widely appreciated.
It is a commonplace reflection, however, among rainforest botanists
and ecologists that nearly all tropical lowland rainforest and much
highlevel rainforest will have been cut over by about the year 2000.
Moreover such forests cannot at present be utilised on a sustained
yield basis or as a renewable resource (see, e.g. p.219 of Prance and
Elias 77).
Worse, there are now few forestry operations anywhere in
the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the
sense of the renewal of all their values.
In many temperate regions
too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already been
exceeded.
The addition of a major further demand source - that for
energy, whether advertised as part of a ’’soft” energy path or otherwise and especially one which shows every sign of being not readily limitable,
on top of the present sources is a development which anyone with a
realistic appreciation of the conduct of forestry operations, who is also
properly concerned about the longterm integrity of the forests and
remaining natural communities, must regard with considerable alarm.

6.

The transmission principle, that one should not hand the world on to
our successors in substantially worse shape than we received it, is a
corollary of the transfer principle - applied in the bus example and
suggested as a necessary condition on energy options - that to be
morally acceptable
a course of action should not involve the transfer
of significant cost and risks onto uninvolved parties who are not
beneficiaries.
For if we violated the transmission principle, there
would be a significant transfer of costs, contradicting the transfer
principle.
The transmission principle can be independently argued for,
e.g. on the basis of contract (and other) theories of obligation.

7.

Thus it is argued by representatives of such industries as transportation
and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co.,
that people want deep freezers, air conditioners, power boats, ... and
that it would be authoritarian to stop them satisfying these wants.
The
argument conveniently ignores the social framework in which such needs
and wants arise or are produced.
To point to the determination of many
such wants at the framework level is not however to accept a Marxist
approach according to which they are entirely determined at the framework
level (e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as
individual choice or determination at all.
It is to see the social
framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds of choices and
to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled
and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of
commercial and political advantage.

8.

This paper draws on material from Routley and Routley 78 and 79 where
fuller discussion of many of the topics covered, especially the question
of obligations to the future and uncertainty arguments, may be found.

REFERENCES

B.L. Cohen, ’The disposal of radioactive wastes from fission reactors’,
Scientific American 236 (June 1977) 22-31.

Flowers Report: Nuclear Power and the Environment. Sixth Report of
the British Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, London, 1976.

Fox Report: Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report,
Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977.

J.R. Hallam, ’Synroc or Cinroc? *, (Wn tetion 4 (2-3) (1979)

4-5.

A. Lovins, ’Energy strategy: the road not taken:’, Foreign Affairs
55 (1) (October 1976) 65-96.

A. Lovins, Soft Energy Paths, Friends of the Earth, San Francisco, 1977.

B. Martin, ’Is alternative technology enough?’, Chain Reaction
3 (2) (1977) 17-21.

B. Martin, ’Call for research into Synroc’, The Canberra Times,
December 6, 1978, p.15.

G.T. Prance and T.S. Elias (editors), Extinction is Forever, New York
Botanic Garden, 1977.

A.E. Ringwood, Safe Disposal of High Level Nuclear Reactor Wastes:
A New strategy, ANU Press, Canberra, 1978.

R. and V. Routley, ’Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’,
Inquiry 21 (1978) 133-179.

R. and V. Routley, ’Some ethical aspects of energy options’, in
Energy and People: Social Implications of Different Energy Futures,
edited by M. Diesendorf, Society for Social Responsibility in Science
(A.C.T.), Canberra, 1979.