Nuclear Safety - Transparency and Ethics

Transparency and Ethics

According to Stephanie Cooke, it is difficult to know what really goes on inside nuclear power plants because the industry is shrouded in secrecy. Corporations and governments control what information is made available to the public. Cooke says "when information is made available, it is often couched in jargon and incomprehensible prose".

Kennette Benedict has said that nuclear technology and plant operations continue to lack transparency and to be relatively closed to public view:

Despite victories like the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission, and later the Nuclear Regular Commission, the secrecy that began with the Manhattan Project has tended to permeate the civilian nuclear program, as well as the military and defense programs.

In 1986, Soviet officials held off reporting the Chernobyl disaster for several days. The operators of the Fukushima plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co, were also criticised for not quickly disclosing information on radiation leaks from the plant. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said there must be greater transparency in nuclear emergencies.

Historically many scientists and engineers have made decisions on behalf of potentially affected populations about whether a particular level of risk and uncertainty is acceptable for them. Many nuclear engineers and scientists that have made such decisions, even for good reasons relating to long term energy availability, now consider that doing so without informed consent is wrong, and that nuclear power safety and nuclear technologies should be based fundamentally on morality, rather than purely on technical, economic and business considerations.

Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy Strategy is a 1975 book by Amory B. Lovins and John H. Price. The main theme of the book is that the most important parts of the nuclear power debate are not technical disputes but relate to personal values, and are the legitimate province of every citizen, whether technically trained or not.