Ethical assessment in radioactive waste management: a proposed reflective equilibrium-based deliberative approach

This article was downloaded by: [The University of Manchester] On: 28 July 2009 Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 773564139] Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Journal of Risk Research Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713685794 Ethical assessment in radioactive waste management: a proposed reflective equilibrium-based deliberative approach Matthew Cotton a a Manchester Architecture Research Centre, School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK Online Publication Date: 01 July 2009 To cite this Article Cotton, Matthew(2009)'Ethical assessment in radioactive waste management: a proposed reflective equilibrium- based deliberative approach',Journal of Risk Research,12:5,603 — 618 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13669870802519455 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13669870802519455 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. 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The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. Journal of Risk Research Vol. 12, No. 5, July 2009, 603–618 Ethical assessment in radioactive waste management: a proposed reflective equilibrium-based deliberative approach Matthew Cotton* Downloaded By: [The University of Manchester] At: 16:59 28 July 2009 Manchester Architecture Research Centre, School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK Radioactive waste management facility siting has often been surrounded by political controversy. By attempting to overcome accusations of technocracy, radioactive waste management organisations are reframing the problem in terms of socio-technical issues requiring the integrative assessment of complex scientific, political and ethical issues and establishing analytic-deliberative decision-making processes involving public and stakeholder involvement. One important aspect of a publicly supportable radioactive waste management strategy is that adequate ethical assessment is incorporated throughout the process. There are, however, certain incompatibilities between pluralistic public and stakeholder-led engagement processes and the types of ethical justification stemming from normative ethical theory and the input of ethical expertise. An evaluation of previous work on ethics by the UK Committee on Radioactive Waste Management highlights some of the pitfalls of utilising these types of ‘top-down’ inputs in a primarily ‘bottom-up’ decision-making process. This paper then proposes the development of a new approach inspired by John Rawls’s concept of ‘reflective equilibrium’, to better bridge the divide between pluralistic analytic-deliberative decision-making and ethical assessment. Keywords: radioactive waste management; analytic-deliberative decision-making; ethical assessment; reflective equilibrium Introduction The long-term management of radioactive wastes is a contentious environmental and political issue among nuclear power-producing countries. Radioactive wastes are generated by nuclear power production, fuel reprocessing, industrial applications of nuclear materials, military activities, research and medicine. This paper concerns the assessment of the ethical issues inherent to long-term radioactive waste management (hereafter referred to as RWM) technologies and the challenge of integrating this assessment into a participatory, analytic-deliberative decision-making process. It deals with the UK as a RWM case study, specifically examining previous work on ethics by the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) in the UK. It also outlines a proposal for a new research development framework for participatory ethical assessment inspired by John Rawls’s concept of ‘reflective equilibrium’, designed to overcome a number of previous shortcomings in this area, and gives some empirical examples of how such a process could be used in practice, reporting upon workshops run with participants from communities living in close proximity to existing UK nuclear facilities. *Email: matthew.cotton@manchester.ac.uk ISSN 1366-9877 print/ISSN 1466-4461 online # 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13669870802519455 http://www.informaworld.com 604 M. Cotton Downloaded By: [The University of Manchester] At: 16:59 28 July 2009 Socio-technical radioactive waste management Dealing with highly radioactive and potentially hazardous, end-of-pipe pollutants is a problem that has dogged political administrations throughout the developed world (Vari, Reagan-Cirincione, and Mumpower 1994). In the UK for example, a successful long-term RWM strategy has yet to be implemented despite continuing waste generation from the first nuclear build in the 1950s. RWM has thus remained an unresolved environmental and political issue for over five decades. Despite the continued protracted political conflict, however, significant progress towards a solution has been made in recent years. In the UK, the Government’s continuing ‘Managing Radioactive Waste Safely’ (MRWS) programme is an initiative seeking to establish a legitimate, technically sound and publicly supportable long-term management strategy (DEFRA, BERR, and Devolved Administrations for Wales and Northern Ireland 2008). This reveals a significant change in approach to previous RWM practices, reflecting broader changes in the political processes of environmental management, technology implementation, land-use and decision-making. Historically, radioactive waste management organisations (RWMOs) internationally have tended to frame RWM in terms of industrial processes and technical problems; hence there has been an overall tendency to base decision-making primarily upon the inputs of techno-scientific expertise. Broadly speaking, in the latter half of the twentieth century, RWM typically involved research into disposal techniques, followed by siting processes aimed at finding waste locations based primarily on outcomes that presented the lowest potential risk to the public (Openshaw, Carver, and Fernie 1989; Easterling and Kunreuther 1995) (using the term ‘risk’ in a primarily statistical sense). This approach has often caused significant concern among those communities affected by siting in their local area, alongside broader societal concerns about how best to manage these wastes whilst maintaining long-term public safety. Internationally, RWM processes have tended to follow a familiar pattern – local backlash against ‘technocratic’ siting of waste facilities leading to a lack of public trust in the institutions involved and the failure of siting proposals; followed by an adaptation of approach, reframing RWM as a ‘sociotechnical’ policy issue (Flüeler 2006). In light of this, recent RWM decision-making has involved analytic-deliberative processes (Chilvers 2007) that broaden out RWM policy-making through the involvement of specialist expertise alongside widespread public and stakeholder consultation and engagement (Atherton and Poole 2001). Changes in decision-making context The shift towards socio-technical framing of RWM necessitates an integrative and trans-disciplinary approach; combining stakeholder values with techno-scientific expertise to facilitate the move towards a legitimate, publicly supportable RWM policy. The supposed outcome of which is an implementation process of siting RWM facilities that successfully incorporates political, psychological, social and ethical factors (Kemp 1992; Slovic, Flynn, and Layman 2000; Atherton and Poole 2001) alongside scientific and technical ones. The reasons for this change are threefold. First, in many nuclear-producing countries (such as the UK), overall public trust in science has faltered despite well-publicised technological advances and the strengthening of societal and environmental protection regulations (O’Neill 2002). Public distrust in the authority of mainstream science, its relationship to political and Downloaded By: [The University of Manchester] At: 16:59 28 July 2009 Journal of Risk Research 605 commercial organisations and the validity of its advice is a problem that besets the successful implementation of long-term RWM technologies. In recent UK history for example, an engaged public has challenged techno-scientific authority following a series of widely publicised controversies – most notably in the wake of the BSE crisis (Jasanoff 1997), controversy over GM crops (Wynne 2001) and the disposal of oil rigs (Huxham and Sumner 1999). The relative importance of the relationship between public trust in institutions (particularly corporations and scientific authorities) and risk tolerance has been contested (Slovic, Flynn, and Layman 2000; Sjöberg 2001; Viklund 2003) although one might speculate upon the fact that countries such as Sweden and Finland that have comparatively high levels of public trust in nuclear authorities (Eurobarometer 2007) have also made significant political progress in long-term RWM implementation. Second, the concept of risk management has undergone significant change in light of social scientific research. In RWM among other techno-scientific fields, there has been a tendency towards quantifying risk, statistically modelling the probabilities of harm to individuals, communities or environments. The sociological study of risk has tended to broaden that conception however (Warner 1992). Sociologists, psychologists and philosophers have re-conceptualised risk as a multidimensional construct (Fischhoff, Bostrom, and Quadrel 1993) involving not just statistical probabilities related to harm and vulnerability but also the wider context of individuals’ beliefs, attitudes, judgements and feelings, along with broader cultural, social and ethical values (Jasonoff 1999; Joffe 2003). Thirdly, as Pellizzoni (2001) remarks, the strategic or ‘elitist’ approaches to environmental problems characterised by extreme complexity have proved inadequate. Thus, deliberation on science-based issues has begun to shift away from the exclusive realm of politicians and experts and hence new participatory structures are required to enable the decision-making involvement of a wider range of actors including the public (Irwin and Wynne 1996). In addition, the traditional theories of democracy that suggest that elected representatives respond to their constituents’ interests have been subject to significant challenges (Dryzek 1990; Zwart 2007) and arguably democracy has been undergoing a ‘deliberative turn’ whereby one, ‘[sees] the legitimacy of decision-making in terms of the ability or opportunity to participate in effective deliberation on the part of those subject to collective decisions’ (Dryzek 2000, 4), shifting decision-making from representative or ‘aggregative’ modes of democratic participation through the act of electoral voting (Gutmann and Thompson 2004) to a more ‘talk-centric’, deliberative and participatory model of individual involvement (Chambers 1997). This has resulted in more opportunities for citizens to participate in the processes of political governance (Rossi 1997) and also a change in the way that decision-making authorities approach environmental, technoscientific and planning objectives (Herzik and Statham 1993). These changes are being realised in RWM policy-making by an implicit political commitment to sustained and inclusive public and stakeholder engagement on socioeconomic, political and ethical issues and the incorporation of diverse values into the decision-making process (Chilvers, Burgess, and Murlis 2003). Consequently, RWM has developed around a more participatory decision-making structure, leading to a rise in the development of new deliberative and inclusionary processes (O’Riordan and Burgess 1999) to facilitate the incorporation of public and stakeholder values into environmental policy. 606 M. Cotton Downloaded By: [The University of Manchester] At: 16:59 28 July 2009 Ethics and radioactive waste management Within this multi-faceted socio-technical problem lie a number of significant ethical issues. Broadly speaking, ethical issues are often among the most influential factors in risk decision-making contexts, with the most common problems revolving around the assessment of what is ‘fair’, ‘equitable’ and how this is decided upon (Jaworowski 1999; Shrader-Frechette and Cooke 2004). The case of RWM exemplifies this importance. Individuals tend to tolerate risks more readily if the risk distribution is perceived to be fair (Sjöberg and Winroth 1986; Keller and Sarin 1988; Sjöberg and Torell 1993). Sjöberg and Drottz-Sjöberg’s (2001) survey work around issues of radioactive waste acceptability, showed that issues around ‘fairness’ in risk siting came out as being ‘very important’ in a list of 22 separate risk dimensions. Still more important were the judgements that the risk presented was ‘unnatural’ and that it could harm children and future generations. ‘Moral sensitivity’ (Vari 1996) is also a key aspect in RWM risk decision-making, namely, that the ethical issues involved are complex and cannot be applied in a generic form in all situations but nevertheless must be addressed openly in the planning process in order to build legitimacy and public support for the proposed solutions. At the centre of RWM policy-making therefore are two important issues. First is a political commitment towards widening participation in decision-making to incorporate stakeholder and public involvement and second is the need for ontologically valid and transparent ethical justification. It must be noted, however, that although issues of public acceptability and ethical legitimacy are often related in a decision-making process, they are by no means synonymous. The popularity of ideas in public oriented decision-making does not automatically equate with adequate moral justification (Rawles 2000). Successfully bridging between these two aspects is an important step for legitimate RWM policy-making and it is therefore necessary to find ways to address the inherent ethical issues that are compatible with a participatory, analytic-deliberative decision-making approach. UK CoRWM’s decision-making process In the UK example, the options assessment phase of the MRWS process was based upon the recommendations of the government-appointed CoRWM set-up in 2003. CoRWM’s remit was to start a RWM options assessment process from a ‘blank sheet of paper’, critically examining all potentially credible management options (including the so-called ‘esoteric’ options such as disposal in space, ice sheets or subduction zones, etc). The membership of this committee was diverse, from areas including the nuclear industry, ex-Greenpeace and the Chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission. Each member was appointed upon the basis of their skills, experience and expertise rather than any specific stakeholder interest. The committee thus aimed to maintain an ‘arms length’ from industry and government, helping to ensure accountability and legitimacy (Durant 2007). CoRWM’s evaluation of RWM options was realised through a comprehensive programme of public and stakeholder engagement. There were three major rounds of public and stakeholder engagement, each 12 weeks in duration (labelled here as PSE1-3). This included an early ‘framing’ round followed by a progressive narrowing in the range of acceptable management options from a long-list of 15 to a short-list of four, with each stage being informed by the results of the PSE programme. A Journal of Risk Research 607 subsequent intensive specialist review followed and then a short-list of options was chosen involving input from scientific, technological, ethical and social scientific experts. The use of multi-criteria analysis as a framework for decision-making was common for much of the specialist input with ‘scoring’ of options done by specialists and ‘weighting’ by CoRWM following PSE review; although draft recommendations to government on options were also informed by ‘holistic assessment’ (which included ethical and environmental issues) (Ball 2006). Downloaded By: [The University of Manchester] At: 16:59 28 July 2009 UK CoRWM’s work on ethical issues UK CoRWM’s evaluation of the RWM problem recognised that ethical considerations would inevitably have an important part to play in its decision-making process. Their extensive multi-phased PSE programme involved work specifically examining the ethical issues involved in the decision-making process and the outcome of their options recommendations to the UK Government. During PSE1, the broad ethical concerns associated with the scope of the RWM problem were identified. The criteria that were used in the short-listing of options specifically incorporated the ethical aspects that had been identified early on in CoRWM’s programme of work. A set of ethical questions was then proposed and developed for PSE2 which led into a subsequent option assessment phase (Blowers 2006). CoRWM first underwent a process of gathering feedback from these events involving roundtables, open meetings, citizens’ panels and a national stakeholder forum, in addition to a wide range of written and website responses (ibid.). Also, ethical discussions of the option assessment specialist panels took place on a range of topic areas including safety, transport, site security, implementability and environmental and socio-economic impacts. These factors were key aspects of the multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) process that was undertaken (ibid.). CoRWM’s programme of specialist ethics and social science input was linked most directly to the holistic analysis stage, but the MCDA also addressed ethical issues directly and through a process of ‘weighting’, the implementation recommendations drew heavily on ethical input (Collier 2006). In September 2005, CoRWM held an external ethics workshop, and this was to be the main vehicle for specialist input on ethical issues (ibid.). It brought together members of CoRWM and various UK and international specialists. The overall aim of this workshop was to thoroughly ‘explore the ethical aspects of radioactive waste’ and in doing so to (Blowers 2006): N N N N help [members] understand the importance of ethical considerations and how they may be taken into account inform and generate discussion on ethical issues to enable CoRWM, stakeholders and the public to think about the ethical aspects of the different options for managing radioactive waste provide an input into the PSE round associated with options assessment and to reflect on outputs from earlier rounds of PSE understand how ethics need to be integrated with scientific outputs in a process of holistic decision-making. This workshop took the format of a series of presentations and discussions on four main topics (Blowers 2006): 608 M. Cotton Downloaded By: [The University of Manchester] At: 16:59 28 July 2009 (1) (2) (3) (4) in what ways is radioactive waste an ethical issue? inter-generational equity intra-generational equity ethics and the environment. Following the deliberative process, the expert participants were asked at the end for their intuitive preference amongst the short-listed options. A report was made from the workshop outputs along with a video shown to subsequent Citizens’ Panels (Collier 2006). This initial workshop was followed by two option assessment ‘ethics sessions’. At the October 2005 London Plenary Session, CoRWM Members considered the pros and cons of the short-listed options against a set of ethical tests based on the concepts surfaced at the workshop. The December 2005 London Plenary Session then considered the options against a set of environmental principles based in part upon the workshop outputs. As a result of the specialist input to the options assessment process and the feedback from the PSE programme, these events (and the feedback that followed) were a major contributor to the holistic analysis (which was arguably equivalent in function to the MCDA workshops (Collier 2006)), but were also major inputs to the work on implementation. From this range of ethical inputs into the process, CoRWM concluded that ‘all in all, the ethical dimension of decision making has played an integral role in the CoRWM process’ (Blowers 2006, 4). Limitations within CoRWM’s ethical deliberation process In many respects, the ethics programme that CoRWM implemented was highly successful. Input from the public through the PSE1 phase and then specialist input from ‘ethical experts’ was successfully incorporated into the decision-making process. As a result, ethics became a serious criterion for the option assessment and questions over aspects such as intergenerational equity became the primary discriminating factors between final disposal and long-term storage (Blowers 2006). However, it is important to recognise and address the limitations of CoRWM’s approach when examining future RWM processes, both in the implementation phase of UK policy and for analyticdeliberative policy-making in other waste-producing nations. The first and perhaps most controversial aspect of this critique, is questioning whether or not expert input into the ethics programme is necessary at all. In complex socio-technical debates, ethical questions are most often handled by specialised expert ethics committees or panels. Similar to the CoRWM specialist input, the use of expert ethics panels has been seen frequently in bioethics fields, for example the Standing Ethics Committee of the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO), the Nanoethics Advisory Board to the UK’s Nuffield Council on Bioethics and the Food Ethics Council. These forums are generally characterised by a group of experts from diverse fields charged with assessing the ‘ethical impacts’ of proposed technologies; whether gene therapies, human cloning, novel foods or nano-technologies. In CoRWM’s case, there was an early stage of wider involvement on the ethical issues in the PSE1 programme when defining the broad area of work and issues to be examined. However, when it came to examining specific ethical issues in greater detail for their holistic assessment and MCDA stages, CoRWM chose to base its ethical evaluations primarily on the advice of ethics specialists rather than that of non-expert citizens. One could argue that at the national-level option assessment Journal of Risk Research 609 stage, this is satisfactory, as deliberative evaluation of RWM options remains relatively generalised with no specific community or siting procedure under consideration. Adopting a similar approach towards implementing a long-term RWM solution, with local-level siting and community involvement, could, however, become fraught with political difficulties. In the UK, many of the problems previously experienced by the RWMO Nirex stemmed from the techno-centric nature of the proposed siting process for RWM facilities, principally based upon the evaluations of experts (Malone 1991; Rosa and Freudenburg 1993). In light of this fact, it would be unwise to adopt a similarly expert-driven model for the consideration of ethical issues in implementing such a siting process, as this essentially substitutes one form of techno-centrism for another. Downloaded By: [The University of Manchester] At: 16:59 28 July 2009 The problem with ethical expertise CoRWM’s primary workshop tool for ethical assessment involved a ‘top-down’ expert-driven approach. This is meta-ethically contentious, however, as the advice of experts even when there are a selection of viewpoints, is insufficient to ensure a balanced judgement (Reber 2006). This is because experts have no special insight into right and wrong, justice and injustice (Levine 2007). Rawls (1995, 140) argued that ‘there are no experts: a philosopher has no more authority than other citizens’; essentially, trained ethicists have no superior competence or knowledge on normative matters to specially qualify them as moral arbiters (Imwinkelried 2005) and are thus no more than ‘specialised citizens’ (Fischer 1993) on normative issues. The opinions of expert-ethicists are not necessarily ‘better’ than that of the nonexpert as they have no special access to or monopoly on moral truth. Such ethical experts may possess technical competence; however normative problems are not technical questions (Baylis 2000; Imwinkelried 2005). Given the political importance of ‘fairness’ (both procedurally in terms of institutional input in the decision-making process and outcome-based in terms of risk/benefit distribution, etc.), one must question whether an ethical expert or range of experts can adequately represent or incorporate the diversity of moral values and viewpoints that a potential RWM facility host community may hold. One possibility is that this kind of approach would lead to criticisms of a new kind of ‘ethical technocracy’ that mirrors previous science-centred RWM policies, and hence generates a similar backlash against the RWMO trying to base its decisions upon the input of ethical experts. This ‘ethical techno-centrism’ problem is compounded by the contentious relationship between the ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ aspects of decision-making. The top-down/bottom-up dichotomy is evident in two senses. First, the term topdown has been used thus far to refer to the control of decision-making processes over RWM facility siting based primarily upon expert input. Such top-down decisionmaking contrasts with the deliberative, bottom-up and citizen-led participatory model that RWMOs have adopted to alleviate the political problems involved in facility siting. However, ‘top-down’ could also refer to the application of normative ethical theories, primarily the dominant deontological, utilitarian and justice-based frameworks prevalent in ethical analysis. These tend to be general, universalising normative rule-based models that stand in contrast to ‘bottom-up’ situation and context specific moral judgements – the kind that could be expressed in pluralistic deliberative and inclusionary processes. The difficulty in developing an ethically Downloaded By: [The University of Manchester] At: 16:59 28 July 2009 610 M. Cotton informed RWM strategy lies in successfully balancing both of these complex and conflicting aspects. Public and stakeholder engagement in planning long-term RWM is a political priority. One could therefore contend that neither a single ethical theory approach nor a multitudinous set of ethical theory approaches could satisfactorily provide a practical solution to the problems presented. Despite the commitment to incorporating diverse values and viewpoints, decision-makers are also charged with finding some metric or standard by which to measure the validity of expressed ethical values (Fabre and Miller 2003). Hence, there remains a fundamental tension between these two aspects of ethical assessment. The roots of this problem lie in the ‘applied ethics’ tradition. As philosophers began to realise the seriousness of environmental challenges, they tended to turn to standard ethical theories and principles for guidance – and as the need arose, applied the theories to practical matters (Des Jardins 1997). This implied that ethics had a negative and conservative function in dealing with environmental problems such as RWM (ibid.). The problem with this approach is that the means to finding a set of clear, justifiable and ethically informed decisions on RWM cannot be reached by simply applying a theoretical framework with a universal set of ethical values in order to find a de facto solution. This is because the competition between ethical frameworks generates philosophical and political controversy, primarily due to the fact that ethical theories tend to be ‘reductionist’, taking one aspect of morality to be the whole of morality (Kaler 1999). The adoption of one normative framework cannot encompass all moral perspectives and hence would present a challenge to deliberative decision-making processes. The use of universalising ethical theories as ‘applied tools’ could potentially add social and political difficulties to an already protracted policy issue. It would therefore be unwise to present solutions to controversial social and technological issues such as radioactive waste siting, by utilising and adopting universalising and controversial ethical theories (Condit 1987; Kaiser 2004). The tension between ethical analysis and deliberative decision-making lies in the perceived role of negotiation, consensus building and the pragmatic value of theory in each. In stakeholder and public engagement processes, the emphasis is on the practical implications of negotiation between and (in some cases) consensus building among participants. Encouraging conflicting and antagonistic groups to accept compromise, consensus and mutual support is dependent upon this negotiation process between the involved parties, to reach agreements or at the very least, clarify the terms of their disputes with the hope of moving towards more consensual agreements in the future. Traditional normative and applied ethics are to some extent incompatible with this approach. In ‘traditional’ normative ethical analysis, negotiation is at the very least undesirable. One of the central elements of a negotiation process involves convincing others to accept the accuracy or reality of information that will influence their decision. To normative ethics which is based primarily in metaphysics, ethical maxims are general and often applied universally; negotiation is therefore at best considered inappropriate and at worst, counterintuitive to the search for objective ethical truth. Ethicists are therefore often reluctant to rely upon the negotiation skills of individuals to provide adequate justification for ethical claims. Reflective equilibrium The proposed solution to this dichotomy is the adoption of a reflective equilibrium inspired approach to ethical deliberation within a public and stakeholder Downloaded By: [The University of Manchester] At: 16:59 28 July 2009 Journal of Risk Research 611 engagement-led decision-making framework. Reflective equilibrium originally stems from Goodman’s (1955) work on ‘justification by balance’, validating the rules of inference in inductive or deductive logic by bringing them into reflective equilibrium with what one judges to be acceptable inferences in a broad range of particular cases. This approach was later introduced to moral theory by John Rawls, however, by applying it as a complementary theory to the Original Position in his work ‘A Theory of Justice’ (1999). The method of reflective equilibrium involves an individual working back and forth between considered judgements about specific instances or particular cases, the normative (often ethical theory-based) principles or moral rules that are believed to govern them and the theoretical considerations believed to be relevant in accepting these considered judgements, principles, or rules, and revising any of these elements wherever necessary in order to achieve an acceptable coherence among them (Scanlon 2002; Cohen 2004). The reflective equilibrium is therefore the end-point of a deliberative process in which one reflects upon and revises their beliefs about an area of moral inquiry. In practical terms, the process of reflective equilibrium involves the specification, reciprocal weighing, testing, revising and balancing of principles, rules, background theories, and particular judgements (McCarthy 2003). Reflective equilibrium involves the use of top-down and bottom-up terminology, by balancing between the bottom-up judgements and intuitions that individuals attribute to ethical issues and principles that are theory driven, based on metaphysics and hence top-down in nature. It has been developed as a methodological instrument in order to obtain a coherent ethical theory that is sensitive to the ‘facts’ of moral life (Burg and van Willigenburg 1998) as opposed to traditional applied ethics which essentially tries to ‘plug facts into principles’ (Daniels 1996) by taking (in this case) the ‘real world’ issue of RWM and then applying theory in a manner much like applied science or mathematics. Reflective equilibrium’s flat-structured, coherentist position by contrast, reveals the relationship between principles, theories and judgements as one that must balance according to the relevance of principles to inform the case and the specificities of the case to contextualise the principle. This is the reflective aspect, thinking about what judgement a principle might require and about what principle could accommodate a particular judgement or stance on a particular issue, considering variations on the particular case, ‘testing’ the principle against them and then refining and specifying the principle to accommodate judgements about these variations. One might also revise certain cases if the initial views do not fit with the principles they grow inclined to accept (Daniels 1996). As Daniels argues, such a revision may constitute a moral surprise or discovery (ibid.), implying that it is a learning process as much as an analytical one. By synthesising new moral positions, one can allow an element of creativity into the moral evaluations, rather than the negative or conservative tendencies of applying top-down normative ethical theories through an applied ethics framework, hence improving the compatibility between ethical evaluation and participatory decision-making. The theoretical model of reflective equilibrium could potentially be transposed from individual moral deliberations to group ones, pragmatically ‘functionalising’ it as a practical stakeholder and community engagement tool or analytic-deliberative method. It is proposed that reflective equilibrium could form the basis of a new analytic-deliberative decision-support procedure that coherently and systematically applies principles grounded in ethical theory-based perspectives that have been Downloaded By: [The University of Manchester] At: 16:59 28 July 2009 612 M. Cotton developed within a community of expertise (the analytic part), with the communicative, dialogic and reflective aspects of public and stakeholder formulated moral judgements (the deliberative part). It could therefore prove a useful tool for the consideration of ethical issues in a real world decision-problem such as RWM. Such an approach has inherent similarities to existing analytic-deliberative methods, such as deliberative mapping (Burgess et al. 2007) or citizens’ juries (Fishkin 1995) for example. However, each existing analytic-deliberative method has a specific structure involving different types of information provision, participant numbers and balance, i.e. they tend to have proprietary formats not immediately compatible with this type of ethical deliberation. The ‘functionalisation’ of reflective equilibrium should therefore involve the development of a more generic format. One potential solution is to formulate a reflective equilibrium-based public and stakeholder engagement ‘workshop’, i.e. a forum bringing together a group of non-expert participants for a discussion (or series of discussions) in which they work intensively on the issue of RWM ethics. Such a process would combine elements of qualitative research, brainstorming and problem solving. The advantage of such an approach is that it allows time to explore the attitudes, values and beliefs of participants and also provide them with information and arguments in order to reach an informed position (White 2003). Such a workshop has the advantage of being both familiar to existing stakeholder participants engaged in existing RWM processes and also flexible enough to be integrated into a broader public and stakeholder engagement programme. The workshop structure could be utilised in the context of locally controlled decisionsupport processes, consistent with the ‘partnership approach’ proposed in the recent White Paper on implementing geological disposal in the UK (DEFRA, BERR, and Devolved Administrations for Wales and Northern Ireland 2008). The application of the reflective equilibrium-based procedure as part of this analytic-deliberative workshop would involve three primary stages: first, the elicitation and recording of moral judgements, second, selection of relevant moral principles and third, critical reflection upon both moral judgements and ethical principles to form a coherent balance of ‘reflective judgements’ and context-situated principles. It must be noted that ideally this process is an iterative one. Participants engaged in the reflective equilibrium could begin either with their judgements or principles and go through a continual revision process to achieve a coherent balance. Such a procedure facilitates competent ethical evaluation by stakeholders or members of affected radioactive waste site communities, without recourse to complex theory or the input or arbitration of experts. A specific structure is needed in order to make a reflective equilibrium-style approach operable within a deliberative process. A deliberative workshop must therefore have a number of key features. First, a convenor/facilitator requires a series of tools or methodological techniques in order to stimulate participant discussion of moral judgements. There are a variety of methods that could fit such a purpose. The adaptation of established techniques for eliciting, constructing and clarifying individuals’ affective judgements and values could provide a useful starting point. Approaches such as image-based (Satterfield 2001; Harper 2002) or narrative-based (Shanahan, Pelstring, and McComas 1999) elicitation techniques have been successfully used to encourage interviewees to discuss a broad range of values and judgements. Thus, elements of such techniques could potentially be employed to suit the needs of facilitated group deliberative processes. Second, a list of suitable ethical principles need to be defined through group deliberation in order to provide the Journal of Risk Research 613 evaluation criteria against which these judgements are to be critically revised. By applying the range of identified principles to the judgements elicited through group deliberation and subsequent reflection upon the context of the principles in relation to the case, the outputs would be a series of ‘considered’ judgements that are coherent with a set of adapted principles that are in turn case-specific and relevant to RWM. Finally, the outputs of the reflective equilibrium-based workshop must then be formulated into a series of ethically informed policy options or alternatives, by reflecting upon the practical implications of their implementation. Thus, the more abstract elements of ethical deliberation are pragmatically re-contextualised within the political, social and techno-scientific context of RWM decision-making. Downloaded By: [The University of Manchester] At: 16:59 28 July 2009 Some empirical examples To illustrate how a reflective equilibrium-based analytic-deliberative approach could work in practice, it is necessary to sketch out some empirical examples drawn from deliberations among local stakeholders. Further details of participant recruitment, methodological tools used and workshop structure can be found in Cotton (2008). A brief summary of the methodology along with some examples is detailed, however, in the following section. A series of small-scale (8–11 participants) workshops were run with volunteers living in communities close to current nuclear facilities. Through facilitated group deliberation, a variety of context relevant judgements and ethical principles were formulated, discussed and recorded by participants (on different coloured sticky notes, one colour for principles and another for judgements) and arranged in conceptually contiguous groups. These were then joined together with arrows and labels to create a visual map of the discussion as it progressed, in a manner similar to conceptual mapping techniques (Novak 1990). To give a practical example, during discussions in a workshop in Leiston (a community close to the Sizewell power station), the principle of honesty was raised in relation to the role of scientific and technical expertise in the decision-making process. This principle was interpreted as a commitment to open and transparent communication of scientific information between technical experts and radioactive waste facility host communities. This was judged to be a key factor in establishing trust in the relevant techno-scientific authorities involved. Honesty was also discussed in relation to scrutinising sources of scientific funding and the influence of institutional affiliation on the objectivity of the technical advice given to decision-makers and local communities, i.e. participants expressed concern that nuclear industry scientists were more prone to dishonesty than governmental, NGO or academic scientists (although it was acknowledged that this was not a strict rule). Related to honest scientific dialogue was the principle of fairness. It was judged that ongoing research into new RWM solutions was necessary (in spite of current government policy towards a geological disposal) as it was argued that future generations would benefit from increased choice if and when future technologies progressed, potentially offering better radiological protection than current technologies. Participants therefore judged that technical specialists should continue research into novel RWM options in spite of any associated economic costs in the short term. In contrast to the fairness principle was the principle of autonomy applied in reference to techno-scientific expertise. Some judged that too much information Downloaded By: [The University of Manchester] At: 16:59 28 July 2009 614 M. Cotton around risk issues was available to the public, causing unnecessary moral panic (controversies over BSE in cattle and the MMR vaccine were mentioned) and hence an irrational public over-reaction to radioactive waste facility sites. Some expressed that ‘ignorance is bliss’ and that honesty does not automatically mean telling the public everything, as scientific information can be misconstrued. Autonomy (as it was applied in this instance) therefore entailed greater decision-making control for technical authorities and was ethically justified on the grounds that they have ‘professional objectivity’, i.e. RWM is a value-laden political decision and some participants asserted that more objectively rational decision-making would counter the (inherent) dishonesty of politicians or the comparative irrationality of the public. In another workshop run in the Hartlepool area, the principles of fairness and autonomy were discussed in relation to the ‘agenda setting’ power of British Energy in site consultations in the local area. Some participants who had been to the site consultation stakeholder meetings commented on how the meeting agenda was set by the director of British Energy, not the stakeholders, and judged that this was set up ‘too far down the line’ to be fair to local communities. The recorded judgements illustrated that previous stakeholder consultations failed to empower local stakeholders and most agreed them to be public relations exercises that failed to relinquish any decision-making control to the community. It was suggested that this undermined confidence in any stakeholder consultations, when such previous experiences were shown to be expensive, time consuming and ultimately having no impact upon decision-making. A related problem was the short-termism of political decision-making around 4– 5-year election cycles. It was suggested that there was no guarantee that a locally controlled decision-making process would be upheld by subsequent political administrations if power changed hands to new governing bodies (hence the principle of autonomy was further discussed). Local autonomy in the decisionmaking process was also perceived as difficult to uphold because of challenges in defining who should have a say (whether it would be local representatives, elected officials or community groups), and where the boundaries lay in their decisionmaking jurisdiction. Some questioned the geographic borders of decision-making involvement, i.e. that neighbouring communities such as Middlesbrough, or Billingham should be involved, whereas others questioned how such decisions could be arbitrated between local communities if conflicting interests emerged. Both examples show the mapping of conflicting ethical positions emerging through deliberation using the reflective equilibrium based approach. The facilitated discussions revealed to participants how contrasting principles and judgements resulted in divergent conclusions and hence opportunities for novel moral decision-making options. It is argued here, that where contrasts among judgements and principles occur, participants coherently related one to the other in a manner that is theoretically informed, sensitive to technical, political and socio-economic facts, is based upon participant-formulated judgements (and hence bottom-up) and is grounded in rational deliberation among those (potentially) affected by the decision-making outcome. Conclusions This paper proposes that a reflective equilibrium-based approach could be adopted as the conceptual basis for a pragmatic ‘tool’ or decision-support procedure to Downloaded By: [The University of Manchester] At: 16:59 28 July 2009 Journal of Risk Research 615 structure deliberation and reflection upon the ethical issues inherent in RWM facility implementation. Instead of relying upon the critical expertise of professional ethicists to decipher the moral issues and assess a course of action, the tools for critically reflecting upon ethics can be placed in the hands of those involved in or affected by the RWM process itself, thus alleviating the problem of ‘technocratisation’ resulting from primary reliance upon expert input and theory-driven assessments. This would make ethical deliberation more amenable to democratic accountability and local decision-making control. A reflective equilibrium-based approach is coherentist and hence sensitive to diversity of moral values as it does not arbitrarily ascribe greater ‘weight’ to any particular normative perspective. This has potential in bridging between the two kinds of top-down and bottom-up incompatibility previously mentioned. By harnessing the reflective equilibrium-inspired approach in a deliberative forum, intuitive, affect-laden moral values can be critically reviewed and justified in light of established theorygrounded principles. As such, one pragmatically treats moral principles as conceptual tools to illustrate ethical issues, provide a framework for stakeholder-led ethical assessment and allow opportunities for innovative ethical reasoning and the consideration of a range of values and perspectives. In conclusion, however, one must assess the potential limitations of a reflective equilibrium approach. It could potentially be utilised as a ‘decision-support’ tool for RWM, providing the means for scoping, deliberating and evaluating the ethical implications of long-term RWM by critically and transparently assessing the relationship between judgements, intuitions, principles and non-ethical contextual factors. However, this alone does not provide the necessary steps to turn coherentist moral deliberation into an ‘ethically informed’ decision and as such is solely a dialogic rather than a ‘decisionmaking’ tool. A reflective equilibrium-based approach could thus become one tool within a ‘toolbox’ (Kaiser et al. 2004) of techniques designed for eliciting and evaluating the ethical issues, judgements and principles and weighting ethical criteria. What one could gain by utilising the outputs from this deliberative reflective equilibrium-style tool is a critically evaluated conceptual ‘map’ of the issues, judgements and principles involved. Therefore, although it could be used as a technique to generate a detailed and structured representation of the issues, it requires the use of further techniques and procedures to integrate this critical information into the broader framework of sociotechnical decision-making over the long-term management of radioactive wastes. 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