Perceptions of justice influencing community acceptance of spent nuclear fuel disposal. A case study in two Finnish nuclear communities

Final disposal of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) from nuclear power plants (NPPs) is an ethical issue with implications within and across generations. We address this issue from the perspective of nuclear communities that host nuclear waste disposal sites. These are primarily the communities that face injustice due to the potential radiological...

By accident or by design? Pushing global governance of nuclear safety

Nuclear safety governance should move towards a more robust regime including elements of international monitoring and verification. This is needed because nuclear energy production is likely to grow and new reactors will have different global dispersal, veering towards less experienced countries. In addition, there is growing interest in...

On Effectiveness and Legitimacy of ‘Shaming’ as a Strategy for Combatting Climate Change

While states have agreed to substantial reduction of emissions in the Paris Agreement, the success of the Agreement strongly depends on the cooperation of large Multinational Corporations. Short of legal obligations, we discuss the effectiveness and moral legitimacy of voluntary approaches based on naming and shaming. We argue that...

Rawls’s Wide Reflective Equilibrium as a Method for Engaged Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Potentials and Limitations for the Context of Technological Risks

The introduction of new technologies in society is sometimes met with public resistance. Supported by public policy calls for “upstream engagement” and “responsible innovation,” recent years have seen a notable rise in attempts to attune research and innovation processes to societal needs, so that stakeholders’ concerns are taken into account in...

Sustainability, Ethics and Nuclear Energy: Escaping the Dichotomy

In this paper we suggest considering sustainability as a moral framework based on social justice, which can be used to evaluate technological choices. In order to make sustainability applicable to discussions of nuclear energy production and waste management, we focus on three key ethical questions, namely: (i) what should be sustained; (ii) why...

Teaching Engineering Ethics to PhD Students: A Berkeley–Delft Initiative: Commentary on “Ethics Across the Curriculum: Prospects for Broader (and Deeper) Teaching and Learning in Research and Engineering Ethics”

A joint effort by the University of California at Berkeley and Delft University of Technology to develop a graduate engineering ethics course for PhD students encountered two types of challenges: academic and institutional. Academically, long-term collaborative research efforts between engineering and philosophy faculty members might be...

Bridging the Gap between Social Acceptance and Ethical Acceptability

New technology brings great benefits, but it can also create new and significant risks. When evaluating those risks in policymaking, there is a tendency to focus on social acceptance. By solely focusing on social acceptance, we could, however, overlook important ethical aspects of technological risk, particularly when we evaluate technologies...

Energy justice and controversies: Formal and informal assessment in energy projects

In this paper we develop a framework for understanding how justice-related claims play a role in the dynamics of controversy in energy projects. We do so by distinguishing two interacting trajectories of assessment: a formal trajectory that is embedded in the legal system and an informal trajectory that is mainly embedded in public discourse....

Contested Technologies and Design for Values: The Case of Shale Gas

The introduction of new energy technologies may lead to public resistance and contestation. It is often argued that this phenomenon is caused by an inadequate inclusion of relevant public values in the design of technology. In this paper we examine the applicability of the value sensitive design (VSD) approach. While VSD was primarily introduced...

Responsible innovation of shale gas: Understanding the controversy

Responsible innovation of shale gas (extended abstract)

The acceptability of shale gas? Values in the design of technologies, institutions and stakeholder interactions

Shale gas is a relatively new technology that is embraced by some as the ‘game changer’ in energy land, and opposed by others because of its risks and other potentially negative impacts. Recent experiences in the US and Europe have shown that the technology witnesses divergent societal acceptance issues. The value-laden basis of such resistance...

Responsible innovation of shale gas...

Nuclear Power and Justice between Generations. A Moral Analysis of Fuel Cycles

When we produce nuclear power we are depleting a non-renewable resource (uranium) that will eventually not be available to future generations. Furthermore the ensuing nuclear waste needs to be isolated from the biosphere for long periods of time to come. This gives rise to the problem of justice to posterity or intergenerational justice....

To Recycle or Not to Recycle? An Intergenerational Approach to Nuclear Fuel Cycles

AbstractThis paper approaches the choice between the open and closed nuclear fuel cycles as a matter of intergenerational justice, by revealing the value conflicts in the production of nuclear energy. The closed fuel cycle improve sustainability in terms of the supply certainty of uranium and involves less long-term radiological risks and...

Vincent's echo: Revealing underlayers in old paintings by Terahertz and Ultrasonic Imaging: A feasibility study