1 Copyright © 2005 by ASME ICEM’05: The 10 th International Conference on Environmental Remediation and Radioactive Waste Management September 4-8, 2005, Scottish Exhibition & Conference Centre, Glasgow, Scotland ICEM05-1480 THE PROBLEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND INTERGENERATIONAL EQUITY IN A POTENTIAL RADIOACTIVE WASTE SITING PROCESS: AN ETHICAL CONUNDRUM WITH A PRAGMATIC SOLUTION Matthew Cotton Centre for Environmental Risk Zuckerman Institute for Connective Environmental Research School of Environmental Sciences The University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ The conditioning and long-term management of long-lived radioactive wastes involves isolating materials from the biosphere that can remain potentially harmful for periods of 100,000 years or more: a period of time that far outlasts any known dynasty of humankind so far. The elevated risks to human health and wellbeing are inevitably transferred into the future as a result. With the slow disintegration of the protective shielding of wastes, radio-nuclides can begin to enter the human environment, causing potential harm to the peoples of the future. The transference of risk in this way poses a fundamental ethical conundrum in how to create the ‘morally right’ strategy that can protect future generations. This paper assesses how theories from moral philosophy can inform the decisions made in implementing a radioactive waste management strategy, by drawing upon conceptual models from: 1. utilitarianism - in discounting the value of future lives 2. rights discourse - in the extension of human rights across generations 3. theories of justice – from John Rawls’ theory of ‘justice as fairness’ 4. the philosophy of logic - in questioning whether future generations can be harmed (or helped!) by the actions of current generations 5. ethical pragmatism - in the search for an ‘ethical toolbox’, for seeking practicable and publicly acceptable solutions. By outlining the differing approaches proposed by these five philosophical traditions, I will highlight the fundamental tensions lying at the heart of how, in the management of these wastes, we can begin to envisage and plan for the treatment of our future descendants. The paper will propose that the traditional moral frameworks that dominate ethical debates are insufficient in finding an ethically informed and publicly acceptable solution. This is an issue that requires ‘bottom-up’ empirical investigation using tools to allow stakeholders to engage with and critically assess the moral issues involved and thus generate practical policy solutions, rather than complex and contentious ‘top-down’ moral theories that present idealized, hypothetical ethical scenarios. Introduction The problem that radioactive waste presents is one that has a number of distinctive ethical dimensions. A key ethical issue arises in that the processes involved in managing wastes include the conditioning and containment of long-lived radioactive materials that will remain dangerous to human beings and the environment [1] for periods of time in excess of 100,000 years; a time frame that far exceeds the dynasty of any human civilisation thus far [2]. As the timeframe for containment moves from the creation of long-term management facility (such as for example a sealed deep geological repository) into subsequent centuries, the post-closure risks to the future inhabitants of the repository site and their natural environment will inevitably increase. The risks from leaking radioactive waste containers are therefore transferred from the people of this current generation to generations in the future [3]. Thus one of the primary moral concerns recognised by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is that radioactive waste management presents a challenge to intergenerational equity. This is an inequity of risk distribution between the present nuclear producing generations that benefit from nuclear powered electricity, and future generations that suffer only the costs, both in terms of resources in cleaning up a potentially contaminated radioactive environment, and in terms of elevated risk to health and well-being. The policy decisions surrounding radioactive waste management options involve choices about how to allocate financial resources now, while anticipating on a trans-generational timescale where future harms may occur. Put simply, we must question whether it is ethically correct to