July 15, 2004
Confusion about Science and Policy
A story on Yucca Mountain in today’s New York Times by Matthew Wald contains this interesting, and I think very misplaced, observation:
“Congress has made other decisions that substitute policy for science.”
What decisions are being referred to?
“In 1982, [Congress] decided that waste should be buried, and in 1987, it said waste should be buried at Yucca, one of three sites the Energy Department was then considering. There was no presumption that Yucca was best, only that it was a site on which everybody outside Nevada could agree, and was better than leaving the waste at reactor sites around the country.”
… and …
“[Congress] alone decides what high-level waste is. It is considering a bill that would redefine some waste as not being high level, so the waste could stay where it is, in old steel tanks in South Carolina, rather than being solidified for burial at Yucca.”
“Science” alone cannot answer questions about whether or not to bury nuclear waste, where to bury that waste, what waste is risky, and how to bury or store that waste. The fact is that there is not a single technical answer to such questions because the answers involve considerations of different individuals’ and groups’ values and preferences, which differ widely. “Risk” is a subjective term. Politics is the process that we use to reconcile differences in values in preferences when we need to act together.
To suggest in this instance that Congress has made “decisions that substitute policy for science” is to fundamentally mischaracterize the role of science in decision making, and the differences between policy and politics.
On such confusion see: