Keywords

1 Introduction

Along with the development of China’s economy and society and the improvement of people’s livelihood, the public has enhanced their awareness of the environment and safety, and paid increasing attention to nuclear safety. Especially in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, public attention to nuclear safety has reached an unprecedented level. Many people have demanded that nuclear power development should be slowed down or suspended. There are two main reasons for it. On the one hand, the public have suffered psychological trauma from major nuclear accidents in history, fearing that similar accidents will occur in nearby nuclear power plants. On the other hand, they have little knowledge about nuclear or the safety of using nuclear energy and technology, which remains mysterious. The anti-nuclear campaigns in places such as Pengze County, Jiangmen City and Lianyungang City have fully demonstrated that public acceptance instead of technology will hinder the further utilization of nuclear energy and technology. Public participation is an efficient means to meet people’s right to know and protect their legitimate rights and interests as well as an essential way to supervise nuclear safety, thus playing a critical role in promoting the safe, efficient, and sustainable utilization of nuclear energy and technology.

2 Relationship Between Public Participation in Nuclear Safety and Social Psychology

Public participation in nuclear safety refers to a serious of systems and mechanisms for stakeholders and the general public to participate in the decision-making process by providing information, voicing opinions, making comments and expressing appeals on major issues related to personal or public interests during the site selection, design, construction, commissioning, operation and decommissioning of nuclear facilities to make decisions more fair, legitimate and reasonable.

Social psychology, a branch of psychology for social psychological phenomena of individuals and groups, studies psychological problems related to society. Based on the interactions between individuals and society, social psychology studies the law of development and change of individuals’ psychological activities in a certain social context. Social psychology focuses on the interactions between society and individuals, the explorations into social situations, and the internal psychological factors.

Overall, with the theoretical source of social psychology, public participation in nuclear safety is an collective activity that involves the public in nuclear safety. It stresses that ill-founded prohibition will further ignite people’s desire to explore the truth. Therefore, it is important to plan public participation in nuclear safety in steps, particularly when a nuclear project is approved and a nuclear accident occurs. Through the sound communication between the government, operators of nuclear facilities and the public, conflicts among them can be effectively prevented and resolved.

3 Current Situation and Problems of Public Participation in Nuclear Safety

The utilization of nuclear energy and technology started relatively late in China. Though public participation in nuclear safety had a even later start, it has been developing rapidly and made certain achievements. For example, the Qinshan nuclear base in Haiyan County and Tianwan nuclear power plant in Lianyungang City were listed as “demonstration sites of industrial tourism”. As a result of several major nuclear accidents, including the Three Mile Island accident, the Chernobyl disaster, especially the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, public participation in nuclear safety has received growing attention and played an increasingly important role.

3.1 Current Situation of Public Participation in Nuclear Safety in China

In China, active participation is the primary form of public participation throughout the overall life cycle of nuclear facilities from site selection to decommissioning. The content of participation varies by the stage of nuclear facilities. In the stage of site selection, the public can provide their opinions and suggestions according to the environmental impact assessment report on nuclear facilities released by the government and operators. In the stage of construction, they can learn about and advise on the preliminary design scheme for environmental protection of nuclear facilities. During the operation period, they can offer their inputs based on an understanding of the environmental impact of final design and construction of nuclear facilities, the operation of environmental protection facilities, and the implementation of environmental protection measures. In the decommissioning phase, the public can also advise on the time and method of decommissioning, in addition to the usage and final disposal of decommissioned nuclear facilities.

The main organizations for public participation in nuclear safety in China include government agencies, operators, societies and associations. Government agencies include the Ministry of Environmental Protection (National Nuclear Safety Administration), the National Energy Administration, the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence and local governments involved in nuclear energy. China National Nuclear Corporation, China General Nuclear Power Corporation, State Power Investment Corporation, and China National Nuclear Corporation are among the nuclear operators, while China Nuclear Energy Association and Chinese Nuclear Society are examples of societies and associations.

The public can participate in nuclear safety through ways of telephone, fax, letter, email, website, exhibition, lecture, open day and questionnaire. Government departments will also hold press conferences, hearings and symposiums, which enable the public to feed back their concerns to the government or operators and demand a response. Currently, nuclear power enterprises have done a good job of public participation, some government agencies and operators have set up a special team for public participation, some have even established a committee for handling relations with the people living around the plant site.

However, there is a lack of laws that support public participation in nuclear safety. Existing laws only include the Environmental Impact Assessment Law of the People’s Republic of China and the newly revised Environmental Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China. The former provided that “The state encourages relevant entities, experts and the general public to participate in the appraisal of the environmental impacts in appropriate ways.” The latter stated that “The competent environmental protection administrations of the people’s governments at various levels and other departments with environmental supervision responsibilities shall disclose environmental information pursuant to the law, improve public participation procedures, and facilitate citizens, legal persons and other organizations to participate in, and supervise, environmental protection work.”

In 2008, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (National Nuclear Safety Administration) issued the Implementation Measures for Public Participation in the Environmental Impact Assessment of Nuclear Power Plants (Draft for Comment), which emphasized public participation in the site approval, construction and operation of nuclear power plants. It also clarified the relevant work of such plants concerning public participation, including ways of participation, main content of participation, organizational forms of participation, time requirements of participation, and principles of selecting people for comment. In addition, it made clear that project construction units are the subjects for engaging the public in environmental impact assessment activities of nuclear power plants.

3.2 Problems of Public Participation in Nuclear Safety

After years of development, China has made certain achievements in encouraging public participation in nuclear safety, but there are some misunderstandings as well. It is critical to use the theory of social psychology to identify the shortcomings in public participation and analyze causes of those misunderstandings. Based on analysis, the misunderstandings about public participation in nuclear safety are as follows:

Misunderstanding 1: Public participation requires a high level of knowledge because more knowledgeable people are more supportive of nuclear energy. Almost all staff working on public participation are committed to the view that the public generally lack the knowledge about nuclear energy, and see it as a main reason why they do not support or even oppose nuclear energy. That’s not true, because more knowledge does not necessarily result in greater support. A poll by Electricite De France (EDF) showed that support for nuclear energy is not related to educational level. See Table 1 for more details.

Table 1. Public knowledge level and attitude toward nuclear power
Full size table

This is a widespread phenomenon in social psychology. Social psychologists argue that those who have a higher knowledge level and social status are more likely to act on their independent values instead of the alleged authority. The values, once formed, are stable and enduring, so nuclear knowledge should be imparted during the time when values are informed rather than after they are developed.

Misunderstanding 2: The public must either support or oppose nuclear energy, without a third option. Almost all people believe that they can only support or oppose nuclear energy instead of staying neutral. However, according to the poll by EDF, 32% strongly opposed the development of nuclear energy, 23% were highly supportive of nuclear, and the remaining 45% stayed neutral. Those who neither support nor oppose nuclear energy are critical for public support, and should be the target group for efforts to increase public participation.

Actually this is the so-called conformity in social psychology. It means that in unknown and mysterious fields, the public have no idea of how to make a choice because their information for judgment is vague. They’d rather wait for government decisions and answers from authorities, and popularization of new knowledge.

Misunderstanding 3: Public opposition to nuclear energy is attributed to insufficient public participation. Many practitioners in the nuclear industry consider insufficient public participation as the reason for public opposition, and think that enhanced participation can lead to public support. In fact, stakeholders who are most sensitive to nuclear energy pay much more attention to their own economic interests than nuclear safety. The majority of opponents are not the people within the relocation area of or faraway from the nuclear project, but rather those close to the project but outside the relocation area. They generally believe that nuclear projects are acceptable only if “they are not in my backyard”. It a tough issue in the public participation work to properly address the effect of not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY).

It is the prevailing rational decision-making theory in social psychology. This theory emphasizes that when making a choice, people will estimate different interests and their costs, and choose the behaviors with minimum risks and maximum benefits. For this reason, the top priority of public participation should be finding the balance of interest between the public and operators that is accepted by the people.

Misunderstanding 4: Wrong views should be downplayed and will disappear over time. Today, personnel in some government agencies and operators still have a fluke mind that downplaying is the best solution to wrong views in reality or on the Internet, which will disappear over a period of time. However, the opposite is true. Murphy’s laws in social psychology indicate that: nothing is as easy as it looks; everything takes longer than you think; anything that can go wrong will go wrong; if you worry about something happening, it is more likely to happen. When you choose to downplay the wrong views, instead of disappearing with time, they will be long-lasting and be repeatedly mentioned, thus exerting a greater influence. Then it will be much more difficult to deal with them. Social psychology suggests that early persuasion is more effective, and bringing out the facts and reasons when things occur only plays a fairly limited role.

Misunderstanding 5: Public participation is only the responsibility of dedicated staff. Some staff of nuclear operators think they only need to their part to ensure the safety of nuclear facilities, and public participation is the responsibility of the government. This is actually one-sided thinking. Social psychology holds the opinion that when there is a larger group of people who agree with some idea or take certain action, they will exert greater pressure on individuals, the group will become more cohesive with more consensus among its members, and individuals are more likely to follow the crowd. Just as the saying goes, “Birds of a feather flock together.” Those who are of the same gender with similar educational level, economic income, native place, occupation, social status, social value and qualifications will more easily become attractive to each other. Only when nuclear practitioners are involved to affect more people from the similar background will public participation be further improved.

4 Conclusions

Social psychology can help identify and avoid the misunderstandings about public participation, improve the pertinence and effectiveness of public participation, and better utilize nuclear energy and technology in China. Hence, the following suggestions are provided:

4.1 Understand the Conformity Among Individuals

Social psychology stresses that conformity is more obvious in a more mysterious field for two reasons: individuals want to be accepted by the group; individuals have limited access to information. For some historical reasons, nuclear remains a mysterious field for the public. Since many people are fairly ignorant about nuclear, conformity is quite commonly seen. To deal with this problem, the two measures below can be helpful:

First, use the authority of the government. In countries with a credible government, government decisions tend to exert huge influences on public opinions. Therefore, it is imperative to enhance government credibility and timely issue authoritative opinions in case of rumors or negative public sentiments to minimize their adverse effects.

Second, cultivate role models and opinion leaders. Efforts should to made to cultivate role models and authority figures to guide the conformity behavior. Opinion leaders, especially those on new media, should be fostered to guide the people’s acquisition of correct nuclear knowledge.

4.2 Apply Various Measures to Engage People from Different Groups to Improve the Effectiveness of Public Participation

People with a high level of knowledge and a high social status can make full use of their resources to obtain related knowledge and make independent judgments. Given this situation, nuclear knowledge can be imparted by integrating media, especially new media, with lectures to persuade them with actual data. For student groups who are forming values, science popularization can be adopted to help students master correct nuclear knowledge and spread such knowledge among their family members. For the general public with limited nuclear knowledge, government authority should be used to provide the guidance they need. More often, government decision is exactly what their attitude is.

Different measures should be adopted for people in various areas. For people within the relocation area of nuclear projects, relocation grants should be reasonable. For those outside the area but close to such projects, the NIMBY effect should be avoided through two ways: improving the transparency of operators and providing the public with more nuclear information to reduce information asymmetry; increasing material compensation to bring surrounding residents real benefits while enhancing mental compensation through psychological guidance to ease their anxiety.

4.3 Encourage Extensive Participation to Create Synergy

Nuclear safety is a common issue which cannot be managed by any institution or company alone. In this context, the work for public participation requires concerted efforts from the whole industry as well as enhanced coordination between government agencies and operators to create synergy for sustained progress. Meanwhile, social forces should be fully engaged to help create a favorable public opinion atmosphere and improve people’s nuclear knowledge so as to minimize public resistance.

4.4 Step up International Cooperation to Promote Public Participation

Nuclear safety transcends national boundaries. China should work with countries with a high level of public participation in nuclear safety, pay attention to their problems and avoid our previous misunderstandings. As a major country in the utilization of nuclear energy and technology, France has developed its nuclear energy by virtue of advanced technology, sound management and a transparent mechanism of public participation. In the future, China should step up cooperation with other countries to jointly promote public participation.