The Emergence And Solution Of Nuclear NIMBY Conflicts

With the impact of the Industrial Revolution in nowadays society,environmental issues and energy shortages are becoming increasingly prominent.Every country is looking for clean energy to take place of oil.Because of its characteristics of high efficiency,energy saving,and environmental protection,nuclear energy has become one of the main energy sources to meet the current electricity demand.China,in this case,has its attempt on developing the nuclear energy.However,the construction of nuclear power plants regarding as "high-risk avoidance facilities" may cause dissatisfaction among the surrounding people,and even worse,may trigger off "avoidance movements".Therefore,how to avoid the " nuclear NIMBY conlfict " trend to be the most difficult issue when it comes to the construction of nuclear power plants.This paper establish an analytical framework to explain the interaction between the government and the public during the preparatory of nuclear power plant construction based on the political process theories and cost-benefit analysis.In further,taking the Rushan Nuclear Power Plant at Hongshiding in Shandong as a case to discuss the causes and approaches of the nuclear NIMBY conflict and its generation of policy influence.This paper points out that the key to the occurrence of the Shandong Nuclear Abyss Movement--the policy-making system of the Rushan Municipal Government is relatively closed while the government information transparency is low.This leads to the owners of Yintan who attracted by Rushan’s“Tourism and Xingcheng” development policy were lack of information on local planning and construction of nuclear power projects,also were short of channels to participate in Rushan ’s policy formulation causing the exclusion from the nuclear power project ’s policy formulation in further.All of these features greatly promoted the Yintan owners generate complex towards nuclear neighbor avoidance and their distrust of local governments run deep.Unfortunately,the further strategic selection of local government has led to a lack of credibility while the environmental assessment system is still in perfect,the owners of Yintan started to fight for their rights and interests,which continued and upgraded the nuclear NIMBY conflict.Under the "trust of the poor government",the owners of Yintan mainly appealed to the central government and put pressure on them by means of petitions and the creation of public opinion on the Internet,which in turn affected the Rushan nuclear power project.Due to the prudent attitude of the central government and the flaws in the site selection of the project and the problems in the project environmental assessment,the Rushan nuclear power project was eventually suspended.At the end of this paper,the author raise a proposal from two aspect to respond the nuclear NIMBY conflict: alleviating the public’s complex of nuclear neighborhoods and establishing and maintaining trust between the public and the government.Specifically,we should launch scientific popularization in advance and comprehensively,formulate a clear and fair compensation mechanism,conduct public discussions on nuclear power and adopt all different voices.Through these measures,we can better resolve the public’s complex towards the nuclear neighborhoods in forms of fundamentally preventing the emergence of large-scale nuclear neighborhoods movements.At the same time,the following strategies are encouraging:promote information disclosure and improve the transparency of government information;deepen the reform of the political system,broaden the public’s political participation channels,and strengthen the orderly and democratic participation of the public;improve the system design,and strengthen the risk assessment and safety supervision of nuclear power projects.Through the efforts from these three aspects,we aim to established a long-term and effective trust between the public and the government,formed a benign interaction between the government and the public,jointly solved existing social problems,resolved social contradictions and conflicts in order to avoided nuclear NIMBY conflict and anti-nuclear movements.