Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T09:32:27.142Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The NIMBY syndrome: its significance in the history of the nuclear debate in Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Ian Welsh
Ian Welsh
Affiliation:
Faculty of Economics and Social Science, The University of the West of England, Bristol, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QY.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The labelling of public opposition to nuclear developments in Britain as a ‘not in my back yard’ (NIMBY) response gained widespread credibility in the 1980s. In particular the term gained wide usage to describe the public's response to the search for suitable nuclear waste disposal sites. This paper will briefly consider the events leading up to the emergence of the term NIMBY assessing key avenues through which it found its way into the realm of public discourse. The significance of various models of the public understanding of science, subsumed within official thinking on NIMBY, will be explored. Within the context of the nuclear debate it will be argued that these existing models do not adequately deal with a number of issues. These include the significance of dominant symbolic representations of nuclear science and also the relationship between opposition and locality.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , March 1993 , pp. 15 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For discussion of the political power of symbolic representations see Edelman, M., Politics as Symbolic Action. Chicago, 1971Google Scholar, and The Symbolic Uses of Politics, London, 1977.Google Scholar For a discussion of the role of symbolic representations in the formation of opposition see Melucci, A., Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society, London, 1989Google Scholar, especially pt 1.

2 For an account of the Mulwachar Inquiry see Poison In Our Hills, SCRAM, Edinburgh, 1980.Google Scholar

3 HC 1911–III, House of Commons Select Committee on The Environment, Radioactive Waste, HMSO, 1986.Google Scholar

4 The announcement that Sellafield had been selected as the preferred site was met by opposition from local councillors and residents. See The Guardian 24 07 1991Google Scholar and New Scientist 27 07 1991.Google Scholar

5 Wynne, B., ‘Knowledges in context’, Science Technology and Human Values (1991), 5 (16), 111–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Wynne, B., ‘Misunderstood misunderstanding: social identities and public uptake of science’, Public Understanding of Science, (1992), 1, 281–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 HC 191, op. cit. (3) vol. I, paras 217–245.

7 The evidence of T. O'Riordan, T. R. Lee and J. Brown, considered this minority to be less than 20 per cent of the population. HC 191, op. cit. (3), 529–30.Google Scholar

8 HC 191, op. cit. (3), 531.Google Scholar

9 HC 191, op. cit. (3), 532.Google Scholar

10 HC 191, op. cit. (3), 530.Google Scholar

11 HC 191, op. cit. (3), 533.Google Scholar

12 Wynne, B., Rationality and Ritual: The Windscale Inquiry and Nuclear Decisions in Britain, British Society for the History of Science, 1982, 54.Google Scholar

13 For an anthropological consideration of this distinction see McKechnie, R. B., ‘Insiders and outsiders: identifying experts on home ground’, in Misunderstanding Science (ed. Irwin, A. and Wynne, B.), Cambridge, 1993 (forthcoming).Google Scholar

14 An obvious example here would be those opposing nuclear power station developments due to the proliferation risks of the fuel cycle.

15 Bagguley, P. et al. , Restructuring: Place, Class and Gender, London, 1990, 11.Google Scholar

16 HC 191, op. cit. (3), 543.Google Scholar

17 Northumberland County Council, Visit to Sizewell Power Station, 1979, 6.Google Scholar

18 Berkhout, F., Radioactive Waste: Politics and Technology, London, 1991, 207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For an early account of waste disposal technologies see Saddington, K. and Templeton, W. L., Disposal of Radioactive Waste, London, 1958.Google Scholar

19 These included the series Science News launched in 1947.Google Scholar The second issue was devoted entirely to atomic energy.

20 Association of Scientific Workers, Science and the Nation, Harmondsworth, 1947, 205.Google Scholar

21 Crowther, J. G. et al. , Science and World Order, Harmondsworth, 1942, 17–19.Google Scholar

22 Stebbing, L. S., Philosophy and The Physicists, Harmondsworth, 1944.Google Scholar

23 Snow, C. P., The Two Cultures, Cambridge, 1965.Google Scholar See also Science and Government, Oxford, 1961.Google Scholar

24 See for example Haldane, J. B. S. (ed.), Science and Everyday Life, Harmondsworth, 1941Google Scholar, and Rossiter, A. P., The Growth of Science, Harmondsworth, 1943.Google Scholar

25 Haldane, , op. cit. (24), 187–8.Google Scholar

26 See Yearley, S., Science, Technology and Social Change, London, 1988, 2.Google Scholar

27 I am grateful to Rosemary McKechnie for clarifying discussion of these points.

28 Gowing, M., Independence and Deterrence: Britain and Atomic Energy 1945–1952, 2 vols., London, 1974.Google Scholar

29 Penny, W., ATOM (1968), No. 137, 59–63.Google Scholar

30 Landsell, N., The Atom and The Energy Revolution, Harmondsworth, 1958.Google Scholar

31 Ibid., 61.

32 See Luckin, B., Questions of Power: Electricity and the Environment in Inter War Britain, Manchester University Press, 1990.Google Scholar

33 Franks, C. E. S., Parliaments and Atomic Energy, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Oxford, 1973.Google Scholar

34 Interview with author, 16 February 1981.

35 See Welsh, I., British Nuclear Power: Protest and Legitimation 1945–1980, Ph.D. Thesis, Lancaster, 1988Google Scholar, Forthcoming as Nuclear Power: Generating Dissent, London, 1994.Google Scholar

36 Larsen, E., Atomic Energy. A Layman's Guide to the Nuclear Age, London, 1958, 136–7.Google Scholar

37 Ibid., 165–6.

38 Hecht, S. and Rabinowitch, E., Explaining the Atom, London, 1947, 1954, 1964, 222.Google Scholar

39 Cmd 9389, A Programme of Nuclear Power, HMSO, 1955.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., paras 48 and 53.

41 ATOM (11 1956) No. 1.Google Scholar

42 Atomic Energy: A Financial Times Survey, published with The Times, 9 04 1956.Google Scholar

43 Larsen, , op. cit. (36), 167.Google Scholar

44 Williams, R., The Nuclear Power Decisions – British Politics 1953–1978, London, 1980.Google Scholar

45 Luckin, , op. cit. (32), 174.Google Scholar

46 Welsh, I., ‘Nuclear nation: local reaction’, Journal of Regional and Local Studies (1989), 9, 1–28.Google Scholar Also Welsh, , op. cit. (35).Google Scholar

47 Report of the Public Inquiry into the Planning Application by the Central Electricity Authority to Build a Nuclear Power Station at Bradwell, Essex, Ministry of Fuel and Power, London, 1956, 51.Google Scholar

48 Berkhout, , op. cit. (18), especially ch. 1.Google Scholar

49 Welsh, , op. cit. (35), especially 200–3.Google Scholar

50 See Wraith, R. E., Public Inquiries as an Instrument of Government, London, 1971.Google Scholar

51 Op. cit. (47), 2.

52 Ibid., 11.

53 East Anglia Daily Times, 26 05 1956.Google Scholar

54 Op. cit. (47), 6.

55 Ibid., 7.

56 Ibid., 9.

57 Ibid., 10.

58 Ibid., 11.

59 The Financial Times, 9 04 1956.Google Scholar

60 Op. cit. (47), 12.

61 Burnham and Maldon Standard, 10 05 1956.Google Scholar

62 Op. cit. (47), 40.

63 Ibid., 51.

64 This number easily exceeds the daily average attending the Windscale Inquiry.

65 Op. cit. (47), 56.

66 Ibid., 60.

67 See Carruthers, H. M., ‘The evolution of Magnox designs’, British Nuclear Energy Society Journal (07 1965), 171–80.Google Scholar

68 The Times, 8 05 1956.Google Scholar

69 The Times, 23 05 1956.Google Scholar

70 Ibid.

71 Nuclear Generating Station. Report on the Public Local Inquiries into the Applications by the South of Scotland Electricity Board to the Secretary of State for Scotland for his Consent to the Construction of a Nuclear Generating Station at Hunterston, Ayrshire and into the South of Scotland Electricity Board (Hunterston) Compulsory Purchase Order, 1956, HMSO, Edinburgh, 1957.Google Scholar

72 Ibid., 5.

73 Ibid., 9.

74 Ibid., 25.

75 Ibid., 31.

76 HCD 569: 107–9.

77 Ibid.

78 Cmd 9780, The Hazards to Man of Nuclear and Allied Radiations, HMSO, London, 1956.Google Scholar

79 Op. cit. (71), 33.

80 Ibid.

81 HLD202: 532.

82 HLD202: 549–50.

83 Ibid.

84 Ibid., col. 552.

85 Waddington, C. H., The Scientific Attitude, London, 1941, 46.Google Scholar

86 Interview with author, 16 February 1981.

87 See Edwards, R., ‘A new kind of nuclear victim’, New Statesman, 22 07 1983.Google Scholar

88 For example, the UKAEA's Radiochemical Centre considered that the public ‘are completely dependent upon reassurance given by experts who are unknown to them’. ATOM (05 1960), 31.Google Scholar

89 Welsh, , op. cit. (35), ch. 1.Google Scholar

90 O'Riordan, T., ‘The politics and economics of nuclear electricity’, Catalyst (1986) 5 (12), 41–53.Google Scholar

91 The number of discourses involved within the Inquiry forum is indicated by Lowry, D. and Gamble, I. (eds.), Issues in the Sizewell Inquiry, i–vi, Polytechnic of the South Bank, London, 1982.Google Scholar Attention to internal and external legitimation consequences of Inquiries can be found in: Kemp, R., ‘Planning, public hearings and the politics of discourse’, in Critical Theory and Public Life (ed. Forester, J.), Massachusetts, 1985Google Scholar; Kemp, R. et al. , ‘Investigation as legitimacy: the maturing of the big public inquiry’, Geoforum (1984), 15, 477–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Purdue, M. et al. , ‘The context and conduct of the Sizewell B Inquiry’, Energy Policy (09 1984), 277–82.Google Scholar For a treatment of the nuclear waste issue within an Inquiry format see Kemp, R. et al. , ‘Environmental politics in the 1980s: the public examination of radioactive waste disposal’, Policy and Politics (1986), 14, 9–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

92 Figures for expenditure of the UKAEA and Department of Energy published in Hansard, 15 02 1988Google Scholar, col. 513–14.

93 This was the approach advocated by the Environment Select Committee with an emphasis on ‘Rolls-Royce’ technology and wider consultation, HC 191, op. cit. (3).

94 The work of the Environment Select Committee directed attention towards immediate and simplistic measures such as generous financial compensation to local residents. The Chairman, Sir Hugh Rossi, even considered that without such payments ‘the NIMBY syndrome will prevail’, transcript of conference ‘Nuclear Power: Restoring Public Confidence?’, University of Lancaster, 9 May 1986. This was one of the key ways in which limited academic conceptions of locality found their way into public discourse.