Public Acceptance of Geological Disposal of Carbon Dioxide and Radioactive Waste: Similarities and Differences

Public acceptance of geological disposal of carbon dioxide (CO2) and that of radioactive waste (RW) are fundamentally different problems because of the history, scale and nature of the two issues. CO2 capture and storage (CCS) is a technology in its infancy with no full-scale commercial application and there are only a handful of full-scale storage projects globally. CO2 storage is almost completely unknown whereas RW disposal has been the subject of highly charged (often unresolved) political debates for decades and all matters nuclear are viewed as both the subject of fear and fascination in the broader cultural and political context. Nevertheless, there are some notable similarities, including: the difficulty of extricating not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) considerations from other concerns; the inability to divorce the politics of waste streams from the underlying electricity generating technologies; the challenge of communicating the highly technical nature of both issues; and the role that both CO2 storage and RW play in the larger debate over energy policy, particularly as a proxy issue for non-governmental organizations. A key question identified is whether CCS will continue to be portrayed as the saviour of fossil fuels or whether it becomes an Achilles’ heel, much as resolving RW has become a necessary condition for further expansion of nuclear power. It is too early to draw any firm conclusions regarding the acceptability of CO2 storage because of the current low levels of awareness. Nevertheless, the nature of the CO2 storage problem tends to support the view that it will be less controversial than RW because of the large number of storage sites needed, public familiarity with CO2 and the need to resolve storage at the very beginning before CCS can proceed on large point source facilities.