Nobel Prize Summit

26-28 April 2021

The Nobel Prize Summit is hosted by the Nobel Foundation and organised by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in partnership with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and the Stockholm Resilience Centre/Beijer Institute. It will bring together the world’s brightest and most creative thinkers to focus on three key areas critical to the future of humanity:

Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss

Reducing Inequality

Technologies with the Power to Transform the Way We Live and Work

For more information, go to https://nobelprizesummit.nationalacademies.org/s/Nobel_Prize_Summit/home

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Since 2000, I have worked as a Senior Program Officer for the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, primarily managing applied research projects. In 1986, long before joining the staff at the National Academies in the United States, I worked on a research project for the Beijer Institute of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In that assignment I had the good fortune to spend several weeks on the road as a research assistant to senior authors from Sweden and the United States discussing (among other things) questions of social equity and political bargaining; acceptable risk; and the “likelihood that there will be neither scientific nor societal consensus on the appropriate risk management.” That experience has informed my career ever since. Seeing how the work was organized and overseen at the Beijer Institute inspired me to go into research management.

It is an honor and a privilege to participate in the Nobel Prize Summit.  

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April 26, 2021, is the 35th anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. It took place as a small research team assembled by the Beijer Institute was preparing for the first of two sets of visits with persons and organizations in the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Great Britain, Sweden, and Switzerland as well as international organizations headquartered in Belgium. 

As stated in the Foreword to Technical and Sociopolitical Issues in Radioactive Waste Disposal, 1986, by Gordon T. Goodman, Executive Director, and Lars Kristoferson, Vice Executive Director of the Beijer Institute:

“We are extremely grateful to the Research Team for the highly competent and penetrating way in which they have prepared the material for this report. Not only is the topic an inherently difficult and complex one from the scientific point of view, but a series of extra complications were added by the Chernobyl accident which happened during the course of the Study. This made several drastic revisions of the original workplan necessary. Finally, the whole issue of radioactive waste management is so highly politicized that serious social controversies are the order of the day. We are sure that readers will be able to appreciate the team’s efforts in analyzing, assessing and presenting the issues and problems in a fair and comprehensive way.”

The work was ordered and funded by Statens K?rnbr?nslen?mnd, SKN (The Swedish National Board for Spent Nuclear Fuel) and organized by The Beijer Institute. The report is now more than 30 years old; much has happened in many of the countries described, even if these processes generally are very slow.

In Chapter 1’s Initial Considerations section of Technical and Sociopolitical Issues in Radioactive Waste Disposal, 1986:

“…there is no single ‘correct’ answer to any of these questions any more than there is to what constitutes a ‘good life.’ In the succeeding chapters we shall detail how the commonalities as well as the differences affect the solutions reached in each of the countries. 

“To make our understanding of the problems within the individual countries more complete, we visited not only the producers of nuclear waste, (which, depending upon the country, are state-owned, privately-owned, or some combination thereof) but also the agencies which regulate the disposal of nuclear waste(which, again, depending upon each country, may be the federal government, or be highly dependent upon local governments). In some countries, even though there is no legal requirement for the local political unit to make a decision, in fact, because of the power or influence of those units, it would be very difficult for the central government to establish a repository without the concurrence or at least the tolerance of the local government unit.

”In addition, we interviewed members of the environmental and ecological movements and/or political opposition or proponents in each of the countries.”

One of the members of the small research team assembled by the Beijer Institute was Tor Leif Andersson, Tellus Energi AB. SKN Report 17 was published in English; Tor Leif Andersson subsequently prepared a very popular, short version of SKN Report 17 in Swedish, issued as SKN Rapport 32.

Andersson, T. L. Teknik och politik kring f?rvaring av radioaktivt avfall. En internationell j?mf?relse. Stockholm: Statens K?rnbr?nslen?mnd, 1989.

Tor Leif Andersson described our research team in his 1989 report Bakgrund (in part):

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F?rfattarna

Frank Parker ?r professor i Environmental and Water Resources Engineering vid Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn, USA. Han ?r ?ven ordf?rande i Styrelsen f?r hantering av radioaktivt avfall (Chairman of the the Board of Radioactive Waste Management) nom USA:s vetenskapsakademi (US National Academy of Science).

Roger Kasperson ?r professor i geografi vid Clark University, Worcester, Mass, USA. Han har s?rskilt intresserat sig f?r hur allm?nheten agerar i samband med olika stora projekt som i h?g grad kan ber?ra st?rre eller mindre grupper av befolkningen, s?som anl?ggning av storflygplatser, hamnar etc. Han har bl a skrivit boken “Equity Issues in Radioactive Waste Management” (R?ttvisefr?gor i samband med hantering av radioaktiv avfall).

Tor Leif Andersson ?r docent i fysik och verksam som energikonsult i Sverige.

Stephan Parker ?r forskningsassistent och redakt?r. Sammanfattningen av materialet har gjorts av Tor Leif Anderson.

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Roger Kasperson is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and in 1999 was elected Director of the Stockholm Environment Institute, a post he held through 2004. He now serves on the Human Dimensions of Global Change Committee and the Committee on Strategic Advice for the Climate Change Program of the U.S. National Research Council, is co-chair of the scientific advisory committee of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change, and is on the Executive Steering Committee of the START Programme of the IGBH. He is Research Professor and Distinguished Scientist at Clark University.

Frank Parker was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (part of the National Academies) in 1988, the year after our report was published. He celebrated his 95th birthday in March. He is also my father. On a recent visit with him, Frank mentioned that the report that he, Roger Kasperson, Tor Leif Andersson, and I authored is cited in the seminal work of the sustainability movement.

 United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, ed. Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. https://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf 

“The UN’s World Commission for Environment and Development, chaired by former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and thus referred to as the Brundtland Commission, published the report “Our Common Future,” also known as the “Brundtland Report,” in 1987. Influenced by the 1980 “World Conservation Strategy” of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) the report defined the principle of sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” The publication of the report is considered a milestone in triggering international awareness and discourse on the importance of global sustainable development.” - Source: The Rachel Carson Center's Environment & Society Portal https://www.environmentandsociety.org/mml/un-world-commission-environment-and-development-ed-report-world-commission-environment-and 

The relevant section of Our Common Future is:

2.4 Radioactive Waste Disposal

52. Civil nuclear energy programmes worldwide have already generated many thousands of tons of spent fuel and high-level waste. Many governments have embarked on large-scale programmes to develop ways of isolating these from the biosphere for the many hundreds of thousands of years that they will remain hazardously radioactive.

53. But the problem of nuclear waste disposal remains unsolved. Nuclear waste technology has reached an advanced level of sophistication./50

Our Common Future footnote, on page 170:

50/ F.L. Parker et al., The Disposal of High Level Radioactive Waste - 1984, Vols. 1 & 2 (Stockholm: The Beijer Institute, 1984); F.L. Parker and R.E. Kasperson, International Radwaste Policies (Stockholm: The Beijer Institute, in press).

There are two Beijer Institute reports cited; the latter, cited while in press, was eventually published as

Parker, F., R.E. Kasperson, T. Anderson, and S. Parker. 1987. Technical and socio-political issues in radioactive waste disposal. Vol. I: Safety, siting, and interim storage. Vol. II: Subseabed disposal. Stockholm: The Beijer Institute. Also published under the same title by Statens K?rnbr?nsle N?mnd (National Board of Spent Fuel) of Sweden, SKN Report 17, Stockholm: 1987.

Full text PDFs of Technical and Sociopolitical Issues in Radioactive Waste Disposal, 1986, are available for free download:

Volume I: Safety, Siting and Interim Storage. https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/19/059/19059761.pdf?r=1 

Vol. IA: Safety, Siting and Interim Storage. 

Appendices: Countries and International Organizations.

https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/19/059/19059665.pdf

Volume II: Subseabed Disposal https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/19/059/19059762.pdf?r=1&r=1

APA Citation

Parker, F. L. (1987). Technical and socio-political issues in radioactive waste disposal 1986. vol 0001: Safety, siting and interim storage. Stockholm: Statens Kaernbraensle Naemnd.

Chicago Style Citation

Parker, F. L. Technical and Socio-political Issues in Radioactive Waste Disposal 1986. Vol 0001: Safety, Siting and Interim Storage. Stockholm: Statens Kaernbraensle Naemnd, 1987.

MLA Citation

Parker, F. L. Technical and Socio-political Issues in Radioactive Waste Disposal 1986. Vol 0001: Safety, Siting and Interim Storage. Stockholm: Statens Kaernbraensle Naemnd, 1987.