TACOMA, Wash. – In July of this year, President Obama and the public will hear from members of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future on the topic of what to do with our nuclear waste. A lot will be riding on their words.
Obama would like to see the way cleared for more nuclear power facilities. The public would like to know their towns and children will be safe. Environmental and civil rights activists will want to know about every comma and every omission in whatever is proposed.
Somewhere in the process, it can only be hoped that a major decision maker or two will read Daniel Sherman’s new book Not Here, Not There, Not Anywhere: Politics, Social Movements, and the Disposal of Low-Level Radioactive Waste (RFF Press, March 2011).
Sherman’s book is both a siren and a beacon for politicians and the voting public, who face not only the question, “If we ramp up nuclear power, what do we do with the radioactive waste?”, but questions about how communities might react to a new swathe of wind or solar energy farms. All three can be highly disruptive. All three would face some opposition.
Currently licenses for 26 new American reactors have been submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Even if not a single one is built, the rejection of Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a disposal site by the Obama administration means our current growing piles of nuclear waste have no permanent home.
Sherman draws lessons on what to do and not to do, as we take steps to solve this problem, from the powerful outcry from American communities following the 1979 Three Mile Island (pictured above) nuclear accident. Provoked by the disaster, governors of states hosting disposal facilities for low-level radioactive waste refused to accept additional shipments. The resulting shortage of disposal sites spurred Congress to devolve the responsibility for creating new waste sites to states and regions, and to enforce its decision with various sticks and carrots. Desperate for a workable solution, some regional officials began targeting poorer, diverse communities where they expected little resistance to new sites.
The communities, however, were far from compliant. Sherman (photo left) tells the story of how small communities, often led by unlikely individuals, were able to organize 1,000 events and successfully stop every single state from creating new disposal sites. A cartoon in New Jersey summed up the clumsy attempt by authorities to win over residents with a picture of a fistful of cash and the slogan “How’d you like to own a dump, chump?!!”
Lessons emerge from the pages of Not Here, Not There, Not Anywhere regarding the formatting and enforcement of legislation, the communication of information, the seesaw of power between voters and local officials, keys to the triumphs and defeats of protesters, and the setting of economic incentives.
“Daniel Sherman has provided us with the best analysis of consequences stemming from government by delegation and devolution,” wrote Theodore J. Lowi, John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions at Cornell University, in a review. “He shows how local social movements are like balloons pumped quickly to the intensity of bursting by threat and opportunity, capable of thwarting the policy goals of national, state, and regional authorities.”
Not Here, Not There, Not Anywhere is a political and sociological study, rich with data and case studies. But it is also a trove of human stories, including one tale about how the line between whites and blacks in Richmond County, N. C. dissolved as the carved-up community found a common cause, and another about how distrust of city officials drove peaceful residents of Allegany County in New York state, to side with a more radical element, leading to 129 arrests.
Sherman’s book also looks to our future, exploring a recent, ground-breaking move in Texas that has led to plans for a new low-level radioactive waste disposal site there, and pointing to the Pandora’s box of unknowns that could open up with this seemingly forward-thinking step.
Daniel J. Sherman
Daniel J. Sherman (Ph.D., Cornell University) is the Luce-funded Professor of Environmental Policy and Decision Making at University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash. He also directs the university's Sound Policy Institute, which strives to facilitate innovative policy solutions to environmental problems in the south Puget Sound region.
Photos of the author and the book cover are available upon request.
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