Nuclear power leaves waste that has to be stored for a very long time. Most people agree the waste has to go somewhere. Almost nobody wants it to go near them.
Economists have a standard answer. If a project is worth it for the country as a whole, take some of the gain and pay the town that hosts it, until its residents come out ahead.
In the spring of 1993, Bruno Frey and Felix Oberholzer-Gee of the University of Zurich put that answer to the people it was meant for. Two neighboring communities in central Switzerland had been designated as possible sites for a repository for low- and mid-level radioactive waste. A survey institute interviewed 305 residents in their homes, one week before a cantonal referendum on underground facilities, when, by the authors’ account, the issue had been debated extensively.
First, each resident went through the expected costs and benefits. Nearly 40 percent thought the risk of a serious accident or groundwater contamination was considerable. Thirty-four percent believed some local residents would die if the site leaked. Then: if the federal parliament decided to build the repository in your community, would you accept it at the town meeting?
50.8 percent said yes.
The interviewer asked again. This time, parliament would also pay every resident of the host community each year, for the lifetime of the facility: 2,500, 5,000 or 7,500 Swiss francs per person, depending on the version. The median household income of the respondents was about 5,250 francs a month.
Acceptance fell to 24.6 percent. It was about the same at every amount. Residents who said no were offered more, and only one of them changed their mind. Fewer than one in twenty said the money was too little, and about one in sixteen thought a bigger payment meant a more dangerous site. The researchers ran the same survey in six communities in northeastern Switzerland, candidates for a second repository for highly radioactive waste. Acceptance there went from 41 percent to 27.4 percent once compensation was offered.
Their conclusion was that the money had crowded out civic duty, a willingness to help with a national problem, and that the loss outweighed what the money added.
The paper does not name the two villages. It does place the survey in the canton of Nidwalden, where the national waste cooperative, NAGRA, had chosen Mount Wellenberg in 1989 for the country’s low-level waste. In 1995 the village at its foot, Wolfenschiessen, was in favor, the Christian Science Monitor reported, in large part because it would receive $3.1 million a year. A cantonwide vote turned the proposal down 52 percent to 48.
In 2002 Nidwalden voted on Wellenberg again. Nearly 60 percent said no.