Energy democracy, nuclear power, and participatory knowledge production about radiation risks

What makes energy democracy democratic is arguably not just participatory decision making that involves multiple stakeholders but also more democratic organization of the production of relevant knowledge. This chapter considers challenges related to knowledge production about the risks of such large-scale energy projects as nuclear power. Specifically, the chapter analyzes the example of two participatory international projects meant to address the needs of several communities in Belarus affected by the fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. Analyzing these projects suggests two potential requirements or preconditions for energy democracy in the case of nuclear power: tools and communal places to make radiation and its health effects publicly visible, and opportunities for challenging underlying conceptual approaches, which in case of radiation protection are often explicitly meant to be authoritative, expert centered, and unreceptive to local or alternative knowledge. The chapter argues that the “shallow” approach to participatory knowledge production adopted by these projects sets a priori limits on the projects’ effectiveness. Energy democracy in a fuller sense of the word would require public engagement with deeper, fundamental issues of the production of knowledge about radiation health effects.