The *Report: Analysis of Climate Risk for a Selection of Municipalities* (Proactima and The Governance Group 2020) is a very useful document for understanding the physical risk and transition risk for Stavanger Municipality. The *2020 Comprehensive Risk and Vulnerability Analysis* (HRVA) (Stavanger Municipality 2020b) has been employed here, as it has already identified physical climate risks, but the Report offers a more nuanced definition, by distinguishing acute from chronic physical climate risk according to the speed of development of the climate risk. Acute physical risk concerns, for instance, extreme weather, while chronic physical risk refers to long-term changes in weather patterns that can lead to, for example, sea level rise. Another way to describe physical climate risk is in terms of climate change's direct and indirect effects, taking into consideration the proximity of the risk. Examples of direct effects are increased costs for prevention of infrastructures or their maintenance and repair. Indirect effects occur when physical climate risk originates elsewhere but has cascading effects in the Municipality. For instance, the rise in temperatures provokes the melting of the Arctic, with a sea level rise that will touch the coastal line of Stavanger Municipality.

In addition, the *Report* (Proactima and The Governance Group 2020) seeks to offer an encompassing definition of transition risks by deepening the meaning: there are transition risks associated with municipal sectors and functions and others associated with business (mainly the petroleum industry) and their consequences for the Municipality. On the one side, political changes, new regulatory requirements and new technologies to fight climate change have a cost for the Municipality, which, for instance, has to improve the water and sewage system or make the transport system more sustainable. In the *Comprehensive Risk and Vulnerability Analysis* (HRVA) (Stavanger Municipality 2020b), the same sectors subject to these transition risks are also impacted by physical climate risks. On the other side, transition risks concern mainly the petroleum industry, which has to reconsider business activities, follow more sustainable and greener standards and meet the international obligations about emissions and the green shift. As it is, today, the industry with the highest employment rate and highest wages, transition risk has the biggest impact on the petroleum industry, with effects on the whole supply chain and Stavanger Municipality as well, with fewer high tax-paying residents, for instance. Higher capital costs and higher production prices to address the green shift could exert significant pressure on the petroleum industry, which will have a significantly reduced place in a low-emission society. The *Report* (Proactima and The Governance Group 2020) calls for faster transformation of the industry along the lines proposed by the *Industry and Business Development Strategy 2021–2030* (Stavanger Municipality 2021).

Another way proposed by the Report (Proactima and The Governance Group 2020) to define transition risks is to consider which societal sector is impacted: there are, thus, a regulatory risk, a technological risk, a market risk and a reputational risk. The first one concerns regulations that can bear unforeseen risks: for instance, an increase in the carbon tax, decided by an EU regulation, can hamper competition, since companies with fewer resources may struggle to implement the carbon tax. The second relates to a sector's use of new technologies, which can lead to unforeseen vulnerabilities by increasing the interdependence of the power supply, for instance. The third one refers to impacts on the market, as some companies are able to make investments, whereas others are not. Finally, reputational risk refers to the possibility that companies or sectors may not be willing to follow the rules regarding transition toward a low-emission society, boycotting the process.

Figure 6.1 summarizes the understanding of various types of risks applied in the documents and the relationships between these risks.

### **6.5 Final Remarks**

By focusing on Stavanger Municipality, this chapter sheds light on how different types of risks related to climate are understood in official policy documents and how strategies are developed to cope with these risks. Based on the content of these documents, we argue that Stavanger Municipality is aware of both the physical climate risks and the transition risks that need to be addressed to reach the goal of a lowemission society. However, it does not seem that Stavanger Municipality sufficiently realizes that climate risks and transition risks are systemic risks. Nonetheless, the Smart Cities concept has been adopted by Stavanger Municipality as a strategy to combine technologies, the mobilization of citizens and business activities to work together to achieve a more sustainable way of living. In this sense, it is, however, reasonable to suggest that Stavanger Municipality, to some extent, has understood the complexity and interconnectedness of climate risks but needs to fully acknowledge this by analyzing risks as complex, transboundary and nonlinear, leading to tipping points and producing gaps in perception and regulation.

In taking Smart City as a response to systemic risks, this response could integrate the following *modus operandi*: a long-term and comprehensive strategy, whereby the Smart City approach is encompassed in both urban and economic development; drawing upon available technologies to increase cooperation and sharing of knowledge across sectors; the formulation of cross-sectoral risk and vulnerability analyses and planning; inclusive processes where the needs of citizens and local communities are at the core of decision-making; more efficient and sustainable use of resources to improve the quality of life of citizens; and, at the same time, contribute to economic development that does not damage the environment and climate, through the smart use of technology. But, most of all, Stavanger Municipality needs a substantial transformation of its main industry, consisting of the redesigning of prevalent system structures and the rebranding of the Municipality from oil to energy capital. This approach is sustained by the introduction of new practices, complying with climate change considerations, without interrupting important systemic functions and services.

This transformation is the ultimate challenge, due to the paradox that it carries: on the one side, it is the petroleum industry that provides the basis for new sustainable technologies to support a greener economy. On the other side, oil and gas exploitation needs to continue, to benefit from these revenues, but this goes against the international requirements for a substantial reduction in fossil fuel use. Then, Stavanger Municipality uses these new technologies to cope with physical climate risks to be greener and more sustainable, but at the same time this impacts the petroleum industry, increasing transition risks. However, the goal of Norwegian petroleum politics is not to dismantle the entire petroleum industry, but to restructure the sector toward more climate-friendly technology, such as carbon capture, electrification of the petroleum platforms and financial support to develop renewable energy.

To conclude, the climate and transition risk approach of Stavanger Municipality is characterized by adaptation, rather than a systemic risk policy that would mean a dramatic transformation of the entire petroleum socio-technical system. Still relying on the knowledge, technology and innovation capacity of the petroleum industry is a form of adaptive strategy that may appear slow and incremental. Such an adaptive strategy can, in the longer run, become a real existential threat for society in general and suggests that the transition risk understanding of Stavanger Municipality is concealing, rather than revealing and enlightening, when it comes to climate change threats.

### **References**

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# **Chapter 7 The Groningen Gas Field: The Role of Science in a Slow-Onset Disaster**

**Tom Postmes, Nienke Busscher, Sanne Hupkes, Agustín De Julio, and Ena Vojvodic**

**Abstract** This chapter presents a case study of the Groningen gas field. We study the role of science and knowledge in the assessment, monitoring and management of escalating earthquake risks. The case is relevant to climate change in several ways. Around 2006, gas extraction from Groningen was increased with the narrative that gas was the "ideal energy transition fuel". Gas is more climate-friendly than burning coal or oil, and gas-fueled power plants combine well with renewables (Heath et al. in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 111(31):E3167–E3176, 2014). Much less attention was devoted to known risks: subsidence, pollution and earthquakes. The latter caused a slow-onset disaster in Groningen. Lessons from this case are relevant to renewable energy initiatives such as hydrogen storage and geothermal energy, as well as to the future exploitations of gas fields, made more likely by the Ukraine war. At the end of the chapter, we reflect on governance of big industrial risks amid climate change.

**Keywords** Energy · Induced earthquakes · Slow-onset disaster · Risk science

### **7.1 The Groningen Case: An Overview**

The Groningen field in the Netherlands is one of the largest in the world; 20% of its 2800 million m3 remains (Muntendam-Bos et al. 2022). It was exploited by the *Gasgebouw* (literally: gas building), a public–private partnership. The *Gasgebouw*  contains multiple legal entities, which function as a joint enterprise of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (representing the State) and oil companies. To the outside world, the state appears independent of the operator NAM and its shareholders (Shell and Exxon). But the partners in the *Gasgebouw* made strategic decisions jointly until around 2018. Production began in 1963. Gas sold in Northern Europe and Italy totaled e428 billion up to 2022, with 85% going to the state (Fig. 7.1a) (Been 2022). In economic terms, this was an extraordinary success, but it became a "disaster in slow motion" (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen

T. Postmes (B) · N. Busscher · S. Hupkes · A. De Julio · E. Vojvodic

Department of Social Psychology, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
© The Author(s) 2024

C. Bieder et al. (eds.), *Climate Change and Safety in High-Risk Industries*, SpringerBriefs in Safety Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56995-1\_7

**Fig. 7.1 a** Revenue and costs from the Groningen field, at 2020 price levels. The blue line shows the annual gas production in billion cubic meters (bcm). Drawn from data derived from Been (2022). **b** Evolution of seismicity in Groningen. The bars show the annual number of earthquakes in different magnitude classes. The dark line shows the 5-year moving average of annual *M* ≥ 1.5 events. Drawn from data derived from Muntendam-Bos et al. (2022), released under a CC BY 4.0 license1

2023). This was investigated by a parliamentary inquiry in a 1956-page report with a detailed historical account and English translation of conclusions (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023).

From the outset, there were known risks. One was soil subsidence—a major risk in a river delta. Publicly it was denied this could occur, even though research into it began in 1963. Only in 1972 was this risk publicly acknowledged: subsidence would be "even and limited". In the decades following, estimates ranged from 0.27 to 1 m, with revisions both downward and upward but always with small error margins, projecting certainty and confidence. Unknown to the public was that estimates ranged from 0.5 to 2.5 m in 1969. Later predictions converged, but as late as 1989 an internal review concluded that measurements and predictions still deviated for reasons unknown.

1 The data from which this graph is derived is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license.

The operator promised the regulator to "again delve into the theoretical foundation of the model" (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023).

Another known risk was pollution. Gas is separated from by-products that are condensed into a toxic and explosive liquid. A tank of condensate exploded (2005), and 30 m3 of it spilled into a canal (2018). Investigators questioned safety management and safety culture (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023; Staatstoezicht op de Mijnen 2019).

A third risk was initially ignored entirely: induced earthquakes. Tremors were felt already in the 1970s, but there were no seismometers and no follow-up. Installation of seismometers led to registration of numerous small earthquakes from the 1990s onward. In 1993, a large research project in which scientists collaborated with both operator and regulator concluded that these were not hazardous: they were small and would remain so. This consensus remained intact for two decades (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023).

In 2003 and 2006 (Fig. 7.1b), earthquakes of magnitude 3–3.5 caused widespread damage. These facts were not made public at the time. The outward appearance of consensus was maintained, but behind closed doors a few individuals raised questions. Similar magnitude earthquakes in a small field would have led to precautionary shutdown, but in Groningen production went up. Publicly, the Groningen gas was marketed as "the ideal transition fuel", because other fuels were more polluting. But the inquiry revealed that the real motive of the *Gasgebouw* was to maximize profit (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023).

A 3.6M earthquake in 2012 became a turning point. The regulator in 2013 called for production to be reduced "as fast as possible and as much as realistically possible". This was triggered by a site visit: the regulator noticed the extent of residents' fear and independently re-assessed risks. After a few weeks of research, they showed that the consensus was flawed: the frequency and magnitude of earthquakes were not stable, as was assumed, but increased the more gas was extracted (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023).

The appreciation of risks involved also gradually changed. In the 10 weeks after the M3.6 earthquake, 1937 claims were filed. This showed that widespread damage could occur, contradicting the narrative that damage would be limited and small (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023). Nevertheless, the *Gasgebouw* continued to treat damage as only a nuisance, not as a hazard. We shall argue below that this was a major mistake of risk management.

Another novelty was that induced earthquakes in Groningen cause more ground motion than tectonic earthquakes of a similar magnitude. Groningen earthquakes occur at a shallower depth than most tectonic earthquakes: they hit a small area hard. And yet the area affected can be unusually large: earthquakes of M3.4 can be felt up to 25 km away (Postmes et al. 2018a). The current reasoning behind this is that the top layer consists of several meters of clay or peat: wet substances that absorb the energy of the shockwave and cause tsunami-like waves that form complex patterns of direct and indirect (refracted) waves (den Bezemer and van Elk 2018).

In sum, there were alarming signs: risks were larger and more diverse than assumed. But no new consensus was reached: the next decade, operating company, regulator and scientists would disagree about the magnitude of risks and the best way to mitigate. The regulator's recommendation to reduce production was not followed (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023). Instead, the operator launched a major research program. As this research was ongoing, *more* gas was extracted in 2013 and production remained high in 2014. Court rulings eventually forced the *Gasgebouw* to reduce production because it had taken insufficient account of residents' risks. The oil companies involved changed direction only when the Public Prosecution Service investigated their liability for criminal prosecution. In 2018, the government made a sudden U-turn and decided to shut down the field (now foreseen in 2023/4) (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023).

The initial mitigation focused on the risk of collapse. In order for production to remain high, it was announced in 2014 that buildings would be made safe again: 8000 would be reinforced over the next two years. This proved wildly optimistic and extremely costly. Until 2023, just 3326 were reinforced. The total number necessary has reduced a lot because of the decision to end extraction, but because earthquakes will continue for at least a decade, a further 14,000 still need doing (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023). Reinforcement ended up being a completely ineffective mitigation strategy (Sintubin 2018; Vlek 2018).

Over the years, there were 267,466 damage claims. Around 85,000 addresses had damage repeatedly. The operator argued that since most damage was relatively small, it is a nuisance and not hazardous. Accordingly, their risk assessment ignored it. Moreover, damage claim handling became a major source of conflict: claims were often disputed, and repairs were cosmetic. The inquiry points out that some damage is more major. In fact, over the years 675 homes were declared acutely unsafe, resulting in emergency measures and/or immediate evacuation of residents. Moreover, the report concludes there is a "structural reluctance to acknowledge damages and to pay compensation. The matters often proceed at a painfully slow pace" (p. 24) (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023). Below, we shall argue that this structural reluctance and lack of urgency meant that even minor earthquake damage became hazardous.

### **7.2 Perspectives on Risk**

To analyze how risks were mismanaged, we begin by considering perceptions of risk by the *Gasgebouw* and by residents, before integrating them.

### *7.2.1 The Gasgebouw's Perspective*

The Dutch mining law states that the operator ensures that mining is safe, prevents negative impacts for people and the environment and prevents damage (Dutch Mining Law, art. 33). In practice, however, the Gasgebouw decided to focus risk assessment and risk management entirely on *physical safety*. Damage and other negative impacts were considered a nuisance, and no boundaries or norms were established for it.

To assess physical safety, the Gasgebouw chose to make a rational scientific assessment of the risk of catastrophic earthquakes. For this, seismic risk had to be established in conjunction with structural safety of buildings (Sintubin 2018). When earthquakes were first detected in the 1990s, the scientific consensus was that seismic risk was negligible. When the regulator punctured this consensus in 2012, it became clear that risks were under-researched and under-legislated. Not only were risks uncertain and unknown (see above), an entirely new approach to risk assessment and management had to be developed. A government-established committee advised that it was best to adopt an exact scientific approach to assessing risks. It set the boundary norm of collapse leading to loss of life at < 10−5 per year: each building had to be so solid that less than one life would be lost in 100,000 years.

The feasibility of this approach, given the uncertainties surrounding seismic risk and building safety, was questionable. Also, the norm for other industrial hazards in the Netherlands is < 10−6 per year. The new norm also ignored the safety board's advice that "it matters that residents of Groningen are safe and feel safe in their daily environment" (p. 15) (Onderzoeksraad voor Veiligheid 2015). It took until 2018, after the decision to reduce extraction to zero, for the government to incorporate societal consequences like delays in damage repairs, health effects and social unrest into legislation. Until then, risk assessment and mitigation revolved entirely around the physical safety of *buildings*.

### *7.2.2 Risks from Residents' Perspective*

From 2016 onward, a large-scale research project studied residents' perspectives and experiences (see www.groningsperspectief.nl). It combines qualitative data with large surveys and panel data. Representative groups of residents exposed to earthquakes are compared with control groups. The central findings are that residents who experience earthquakes and who have damage (a) feel unsafe in their homes and (b) that those who have damage multiple times experience chronic stress symptoms and have poorer mental and perceived general health (Postmes et al. 2017, 2018a; Stroebe et al. 2021; Dückers et al. 2023). The research shows that perceived unsafety mediates these health effects. Other factors such as injustice and a lack of trust in government also play a (small) role in the experienced unsafety (Fig. 7.2).

In this research, perceived unsafety is very strongly associated with concrete risk perceptions, including the likelihood of experiencing an earthquake in the future, the likelihood of one's property being damaged and the likelihood of physical injury. Perceived risk is influenced by two factors in particular: earthquake damage and seismicity. Earthquake damage has a *long-term* effect on risk perception and safety: of the people who have no damage, 85% feel safe in their home (and in the control group outside the earthquake zone this is > 90%). Among people whose house was

**Fig. 7.2** Illustration of the relationship between exposure to earthquakes and damage, perceived trust, perceived unsafety and health outcomes in statistical path analyses (Stroebe et al. 2021)

damaged once this drops to 69%. Of those whose house was damaged multiple times, only 48% feel safe. Experiencing the ground motion of an earthquake is the second factor. Its impact is more *short term*. After experiencing a 3.4M earthquake, the percentage who feel safe in their homes drops by about 15–20%. After this dip, safety perceptions slowly recover over a period of 6–12 months (Postmes et al. 2018b).

It is also important to know what makes residents feel unsafe. We examined this in in-depth qualitative research (open-ended survey questions, interviews) and quantitative research (Postmes et al. 2018a; Stroebe et al. 2021). Residents feel unsafe mainly because of (a) the seismicity itself, (b) the recurring and widespread damage, (c) the uncertainty and lack of clarity about mitigation and repair and (d) the hassles over damage and compensation. Only 12% of residents feel unsafe because they might get hurt or because a catastrophic event may occur.

### *7.2.3 Integration: The Social Impact of Small Hazards*

In Groningen, experts restricted their risk assessment to the big risks of a catastrophic earthquake. Residents are more concerned about smaller hazards. Small hazards can be disastrous when they are uncontrolled and large numbers are affected. Based on insights from psychological, health, economic, legal and other literatures, we outline the current state of knowledge (Hupkes et al. 2021).

*Small recurrent damage* is impactful and hazardous. Damage erodes people's confidence in their home because it demonstrates vulnerability to frequent and recurring earthquakes. The settlement of damage claims was inadequate due to disputes over claims, cosmetic repairs and neglect of structural faults. People with complex damage trajectories (most likely > 10,000 households) often faced lengthy bureaucratic and legal wrangling. Our research showed that around 20% of residents stopped claiming altogether. This is problematic because small damage can accumulate and cause or exacerbate structural faults. In sum, recurrent damage is impactful because it puts people's lives on hold, curtails freedoms and threatens livelihoods.

*Mitigation measures* to restore physical safety are a burden for residents (Postmes et al. 2018a; Dückers et al. 2023). Uncertainties about seismic risk and structural safety caused continuous disputes about the amount of reinforcement required. As a result, residents were kept in uncertainty for many years. Once building work starts, the process is arduous. Residents did not choose to have building work done: it is forced upon them. But they still have to invest large amounts of time and energy (and sometimes money). The trajectory is prone to conflicts between the many parties involved. Moving into a temporary home is stressful too and disrupts social ties. For all these reasons, subjective safety *declines* during the reinforcement operation (Dückers et al. 2023). In sum, mitigation has a substantial negative impact.

*Trust* in institutions has been damaged in this "unprecedented system failure by public as well as private parties who failed in the execution of their duty" (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023). Relations are damaged (Hupkes et al. 2021). The first victim was residents' trust in government, the operator and its shareholders. The Gasgebouw broke down: oil companies and the government are in arbitration. And local and national governments hold each other responsible and disagree about solutions (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023; Stroebe et al. 2021).

This undermines trust in the responsible institutions and the system: competence is in doubt, but also morality (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023; Hupkes et al. 2021). Politicians including Prime Minister Rutte repeatedly said the problems would be dealt with speedily and resolved generously.2 The inquiry concludes "The empty promises are a disappointment again and again". Key decisions revolved around money, not safety or care for residents: "for a long time one element was missing from the debate on the many reports and recommendations: the moral perspective".

The perceived unreliability of the Dutch state and the companies involved has had knock-on consequences for the "license to operate", the granting of concessions and regulation of other mining and energy projects. This hinders the transition to renewables such as windmills, solar energy and geothermal energy.

*The economy and reputation* have suffered. Widespread damage and a flagging reinforcement program have disrupted the housing market for a considerable time. Compensation for depreciation (e1.4 billion) will not compensate for the inability to sell homes when residents want to or need to. This situation has harmed residents' freedom of movement and damaged Groningen's reputation as a place to live. With respect to livability, however, the negative impact was small: in the eyes of residents the region continues to be a good place to live, also for its identity and cultural heritage (Hupkes et al. 2021).

The *health and well-being* of residents are affected by all the above factors together, combined with the seismicity itself. Residents feel powerless and unsafe.

2 The Dutch expression they used is "ruimhartig", which literally means with a generous heart.

### **7.3 Reflection: Science, Power and Politics**

What was the role of science in this case? The inquiry is scathing about the very close collaboration between exact science, government and operator in the assessment of risks.

This is an early forerunner of what is currently praised as the "triple helix", in which the government, business community and science work together to create innovations and new insights … The focus of the research questions remained on gas extraction for too long, instead of on the effects of gas extraction. The Committee finds that there was a blameworthy lack of ambition to increase the expertise (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023).

This "closed knowledge stronghold that is the mining sector" remained intact until the regulator broke ranks in 2012. The inquiry repeatedly describes how these parties conducted science and used the results as "objectionable" (pp. 42, 77 and 78). We see four problems:

In this partnership, to paraphrase Slovic, *scientific risk assessment was used as an instrument of power* (Slovic et al. 2004). When residents first noticed earthquakes, this was said to be impossible due to the geophysical makeup of the field. When earthquakes were proven, it was claimed they could not originate from the field. Then it was said earthquakes were so small, and they hardly caused damage. When the regulator falsified these claims and advised cutting production, new research was commissioned. This showed how much was unknown and how wide the margins of error were. Now, the *Gasgebouw* claimed that the regulator's advice was unsound: cutting production would reduce risk (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023). This is a deplorable abuse of science, first to construct certainty that production is safe and, when this is disproven, to construct uncertainty about mitigation.

Second, the scientists who developed the risk assessments were a relatively small group working for many different (often competing) institutions, all of whom were dependent on the operator for data and often funding. Together this "closed knowledge stronghold" disregarded insights from other disciplines, other approaches to risk assessment or alternative views about the hazards of cumulative damage (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023; Onderzoeksraad voor Veiligheid 2015). The scientific reputations inside this stronghold, meanwhile, meant that their own approach to risk assessments was presented as an exact science based on solid facts. In this way, *structural shortcomings of science in the sector made a balanced risk assessment impossible* (Wynne 2015).

Third, the inquiry concludes there was a "shortage of knowledge" and "instead … a lot of hollow reassuring words" (p. 77). One problem was an absence of good data. Seismometers were not sensitive enough at first. Ground motion detectors were installed quite late, and then, in 2018, it was discovered they were poorly calibrated: only 4 of the 114 were accurate. Most sensors underestimated ground motion by half (Staatstoezicht op de Mijnen 2021). Another problem was an over-reliance on assumptions instead of observations: policy researchers concluded that government decisions were based on "models [that] harbor too many uncertainties and are based on too many poorly founded assumptions" (p. 9) (Derksen and Gebben 2021). We conclude that the *science in the sector was not sufficiently reliable for good risk assessment*.

Finally, the inquiry has revealed how the *Gasgebouw* and the operator used scientific expertise to advance their interests. The civil servants in the *Gasgebouw* wrote in 2013 that "the ministry seeks to move the regulator in the direction of the vision of professor …" (p. 682) (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023). This person was then appointed to several influential committees. One advised in 2015 that risk regulation should be based on an exact scientific approach, even though the scientific knowledge at that time was quite imprecise. Another was formed when the regulator expressed criticism about the operator's plan to abandon the current mitigation strategy and adopt a new one, based on a newly developed hazard and risk assessment model. The regulator had warned that the model was non-transparent, unvalidated and potentially unreliable. Despite it being untested in practice, the professor contradicted this and told parliament it would be irrational not to use it: this was "the best that science has to offer". Most of the regulator's concerns were later borne out: despite its excellence there were so many unreliabilities that it soon became very contentious. We conclude that there was a *selective use of safety science for political purposes*.

### **7.4 Conclusions and Implications for Science and Safety**

What can we learn from this case? First the role of risk assessment and risk management itself. To date it focuses only on the high risk: catastrophic earthquakes causing deaths. When extraction began (1960s), this was ignored. When earthquakes did occur, the risks were considered negligible (1990–2012). After 2012, when earthquakes had increased in number and magnitude, everyone agreed that risks were substantial after all, but the issue had become contentious, there were large uncertainties and many unknowns. Different risk assessments (based on inspected buildings vs. modeled impacts) produced contradictory results. Throughout this time, the risk assessment has ignored the impact of "smaller" hazards such as damage.

All risk assessments revolved around dollars and deaths: they assumed that a rational decision would put financial benefits against lives lost. Above we have provided several illustrations of the fact that these metrics ignore many costs. Even if no one dies, a situation might be undesirable, inhumane or unlawful. This approach is also problematic because it turned risk management, mitigation and compensation into financial questions, rather than questions of effectiveness, achievability or morality.

We conclude that the incompleteness of risk assessment contributed to a slowonset creeping disaster. Risk assessment was uncertain and contradictory and therefore a poor foundation for policies. Risk assessment ignored smaller risks and so failed to stem a growing hazard. And by ignoring the hazards of mitigation, a new problem could be created. Risk assessment may have been incomplete because its scope was decided inside the "closed stronghold" of the mining sector itself. And to us at least, it appears that risk assessment was used by the Gasgebouw to define risk and thereby block any dissenting views on it, to circumvent the regulator and influence parliament. Risk assessment was thus used to control revenue and costs and to exert power (Slovic 1999). This reminds us less of science than of "*scientism*" as an anti-democratic and "instrumental assessment and control of selectively defined risks" (p. 109) (Wynne 2015).

We can also learn from the public debate about risk in Groningen. The risk literature loves its dichotomies: risk assessment versus precaution (Lofstedt 2011), rational analysis versus affective responses (Slovic et al. 2004), expert judgment versus public perception (Gardner and Gould 1989) and quantitative versus qualitative risk assessment (Breakwell 2014). All these occasionally entered public discourse as frames to explain a complex issue. Implicitly or explicitly, such frames invite audiences (such as the wider Dutch public) to take sides. Are you with the people or with the experts? Should we take precautions now, based on gut feelings, or should we wait for a sober assessment of risks? As many have pointed out, these are false and divisive choices (Slovic et al. 2004; Slovic 1999; Breakwell 2014). It is evident that precautionary measures should have been taken much sooner (as the inquiry concludes) but that does not preclude good risk assessment: the challenge is to better integrate the two in policy decisions. Similarly, risk analysis becomes more rational when it integrates affect and emotions, experts and the public become wiser through collaboration, etc. We conclude that the classic dichotomies of the risk literature introduced noise.

A third reflection concerns civil society. How could this happen in a highly developed democracy? Key aspects of the partnership between government and industry were undisclosed. The oil companies wanted "to not make public the participation of the State in the extraction and sale of gas". Even parliament was not informed. One ministry (Economic Affairs) was tasked with three different and potentially conflicting public interests: the maximization of profit, energy supply and public safety. All this may explain why the *Gasgebouw* could resist mounting pressure after 2012. The regulator was worked around. Social movement organizations, journalists, politicians and mayors raised public awareness, and the seriousness of residents' problems was documented in research and opposition in parliament mounted. But the *Gasgebouw* only responded when the judiciary investigated the operator's liability for criminal prosecution. This "had enormous impact on the decision-making within the Gasgebouw" (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen 2023). It is ironic that captains of industry do not change because of mounting evidence that their operation is risky and causes harm, but because they themselves risk being prosecuted.

What does the case tell us about climate change? Gas extraction has similar risks to various "green" energy initiatives: storage of greenhouse gases, hydrogen or geothermal energy. Here, we also see that the interests of government and corporations are aligned. Our case shows there is a need for critical dialogue about these new technologies, close monitoring and transparent decision-making. One further lesson is that local residents may be the first to notice negative impacts: regulators and operators need to heed their perceptions and concerns.

We heard in Groningen an "extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures" argument that may become more common as the climate changes. Extracting more gas was justified by it being the "ideal transition fuel" to ward off climate catastrophe. This may have been a convenience argument. The inquiry shows there was only ever one goal: to maximize profit. But either way, ignoring risks backfired badly. The field rapidly became a loss-maker, and the events eroded the public license to operate also of "green" initiatives such as geothermal energy. We conclude: extraordinary measures call for solid risk governance.

**Acknowledgements** The authors are affiliated with the Knowledge Platform (Kennisplatform Leefbaar en Kansrijk Groningen), funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate and by local government in Groningen.

### **References**

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# **Nuclear Safety in the Face of Climate Change**

### **Stéphanie Tillement**

**Abstract** Climate objectives, as well as the recent objectives of energy sobriety and security in response to crises, have underpinned a call for the urgent development of nuclear generation capacity. At the same time, recent events have highlighted fragilities in nuclear infrastructures, both in their operation and in their design and construction. This chapter focuses on the French case to examine the conditions under which the nuclear industry can provide an appropriate response to climate change, as well as the risks and vulnerabilities associated with a nuclear revival. In particular, we analyze the two regimes at the heart of this revival: the extension and the acceleration regimes. We show that the interplay between nuclear power and climate change calls into question the social and temporal scales at which risks need to be defined and governed.

**Keywords** Nuclear infrastructures · Safety · Climate urgency · Time · Scales

### **8.1 Introduction**

On May 16, 2023, the French Parliament officially passed a new law (Nuclear Acceleration Act) aimed at accelerating administrative procedures for the construction of new nuclear reactors, of the EPR2 type, as soon as 2024. Concurrently, the intended change in French nuclear safety doctrine and organization—the merger of the ASN (Nuclear Safety Authority) with the IRSN (Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety)—was temporarily rejected.

Climate goals, as well as recent objectives of sobriety and energy security in reaction to crises, have supported a call for an urgent development of nuclear production capacity. Meanwhile, recent events have highlighted (unsuspected) fragilities in nuclear infrastructures, concerning both their operation and their design and construction. In the Summer of 2022, France had 32 out of 56 nuclear reactors shut down, a record number. This unprecedented situation has raised fears about energy security

S. Tillement (B)

LEMNA, IMT Atlantique, Nantes, France e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
SpringerBriefs in Safety Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56995-1\_8

© The Author(s) 2024

C. Bieder et al. (eds.), *Climate Change and Safety in High-Risk Industries*,

in a country that still had 69% nuclear power in its electricity mix in 2021. Many contingencies and disruptions have combined to lead to this situation. The COVID-19 crisis was partly responsible for delays in planned maintenance outages. Stress corrosion cracking was fortuitously discovered on safety equipment of the most recent reactors (P'4 and N4 series). This led the operator EDF to shut down 12 reactors in order to carry out extensive checks to assess whether stress corrosion was a threat to nuclear safety. Design and construction projects have been halted or significantly delayed, preventing them from compensating for the drop in production. Extreme climatic events have added to this, with a record number of heatwave days and severe drought. Low water levels in rivers used to cool the reactors led to a reduction of nuclear power production. For those who were not yet fully convinced of the acuteness of the problems to come, 2022 was a powerful reminder. Experts agree that this situation, previously considered as exceptional, will unfortunately become the norm (IPCC 2021). Anticipating and preparing for the consequences of climate change on the operation of high-hazard organizations (including nuclear power plants) has thus become urgent.

The situation of French nuclear infrastructures is an exemplary case of how economics, politics and technical and environmental contingencies interact and affect safety and climate goals. It also highlights how latent shortcomings and normalized forms of deviance (Vaughan 1997) combine with crises and their side effects. Drawing on the case of the French nuclear industry—and its long-term trajectory of operation and development—this chapter aims to open a conversation about the interplay between safety and climate change challenges when it comes to nuclear power plants. This problem can be tackled in two ways:

The first question involves analyzing the many imperatives that these systems should meet and how they can (or not) be articulated, in the short and long terms. In particular, it questions whether nuclear safety should always be treated in a relatively isolated way or whether this imperative could be articulated with others, such as production and security of supply, in a more integrated risk governance approach. The second question entails examining which technologies and innovation regimes (exploitation/exploration) are most likely to contribute effectively and rapidly to decarbonization and GHG reduction, in the face of the climate emergency.

### **8.2 From Nuclear Risks to Climate Risks: Toward a "Nuclear Renaissance"?**

Civil nuclear power is emblematic of the risk society that emerged with modernization (Beck 1996; Lockie and Wong 2018). Its history has been marked by three major accidents, which have rekindled concerns about the use of nuclear technologies1 (Perrow 2011). The most recent one, Fukushima, fell into the category of "Natech" accidents that "are seldom purely natural or technological" (Knowles 2014, cited in Verma 2021). It forcefully revealed the vulnerability of these "ultra-safe" systems to extreme climatic events, an increasingly serious threat with climate change. While experts used to consider as very low the probability of a natural disaster causing an industrial disaster, they now agree on the importance of being prepared for such a combination of natural and industrial events, in a cascading effect. The French nuclear industry did not wait for the summer of 2022 to think about the effects of climate change on the operation of nuclear facilities. The particularly critical 2003 heatwave prompted nuclear safety experts to assess the vulnerabilities to extreme weather events and ways of dealing with them. Fukushima has further reinforced this concern. Safety authorities asked operators to assess the risks induced (among others) by natural hazards on existing and future nuclear facilities and to propose measures in order to prevent or protect from them.2

On the one hand, socio-environmental changes worldwide induce new vulnerabilities that challenge traditional methods of risk calculation, management and governance. Rather than treating natural and industrial disasters as separate events, it calls for an integrated approach to these hazards, as suggested by the "Natech" accident concept. Beyond safety, these extreme climate events raise sustainability concerns, leading some researchers to consider that sustainability now includes safety (Kermisch and Taebi 2017). For example, the reduction in nuclear production capacity from May 2022 in response to drought and low water levels in rivers was mainly aimed at avoiding environmental pollution.

On the other hand, the fight against climate change has become increasingly central in the framing of nuclear issues. As François Jacq stated on December 7, 2022:

Twenty to thirty years ago there were two main issues: security of supply and cost; you needed energy and you needed it cheap. A third imperative was added, relating to the climate: decarbonisation. The whole energy issue is contained in this triptych, being understood that the mix of these different concerns varies over time. (Assemblée Nationale 2023)

While the opponents to nuclear power put forward nuclear risks and unsustainability due to nuclear waste, the nuclear industry and new ecologists tend to frame

1 Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011).

2 At the European scale, this operation was known as the "Stress tests". Its French equivalent is "Complementary Safety Assessment" (Evaluations complémentaires de sûreté—ECS), which defined the concept of a "Hard Core" as a set of materials and organizational arrangements to ensure the control of crucial safety functions in extreme situations.

nuclear power as a "clean and green energy" and thus as a "pragmatic response to interrelated challenges of energy independence, climate change, and resource scarcity" (Ialenti 2014). The increasing concerns about global warming and the objectives of GHG emissions' reduction opened the way to a so-called nuclear renaissance. In 2022, the European Commission officialized nuclear power's contribution to the decarbonization of the energy mix, awarding it a "green" label.

In the world energy landscape, France is often described as an exception. It remains the most "nuclearized" country in the world considering the share of nuclear power in total electricity production. In some years, nuclear power produced more than 80% of the total electricity, which led Gabrielle Hecht to consider that "France is nuclear like nowhere else". This production is assured by 56 pressurized water reactors (PWRs), now known as a "generation 2" technology. They were built between 1974 and the late 1990s, under the Messmer Plan that supported a massive deployment of civil nuclear power. This industry is the third largest industry in France, with 220,000 employees. Beyond these figures, the singularity of the French ecosystem pertains to its history and the network of actors on which it rests. The main French licensees, EDF and the CEA, have been present from the very beginning of the French nuclear history, contributing to a very stable nuclear ecosystem. This exceptionalism is reflected in the governance of this ecosystem, which leans on tight and complex links between operators and the State, and hence between technology and politics (Hecht 2009).

In the early 2000s, after a phase of severe slowdown—described by some parliamentarians as a "nuclear winter"—France also believed in a possible nuclear renaissance. This hope was part of an international effort to boost R&D in the civil nuclear industry, marked by the launch in 2000 of the "Generation4 International Forum" (GIF) by the American Department of Energy (DOE), along with 12 countries (including France).3 The emergence of the term "generation" during this forum was far from neutral: it supported an evolutionary reading advancing the idea of an almost linear and natural succession of ever safer, more sustainable and more efficient reactor generations. In France, this translated into the launch of the Flamanville EPR4 in 2007 and ASTRID5 in 2010, spearheading the third and fourth generations of nuclear reactors, respectively, and setting high objectives in terms of sustainability and safety. Yet, in 2019, the difficulties of the French industry became visible with two announcements a few months apart: (1) the official abandonment of the ASTRID project; (2) the severe analysis of the EPR by Jean-Martin Folz who described the project as an industrial failure (Folz 2019). These two events sounded like a major warning, tarnishing the image of the main organizations involved, primarily EDF, ex-Areva (now split between Orano and Framatome) and the CEA. This paved the way for major questions in the press and in the political and academic arenas. Was the French nuclear industry able to meet the twenty-first century's major challenge: to give France, through its capacity to operate and build reactors, a leading role in the decarbonization of electricity production? It was no longer just a matter of knowing

3 See GIF Charter, 2001.

4 European Pressurized Reactor.

5 Advanced Sodium Technological Reactor for Industrial Demonstration.

whether the use of nuclear energy and thus the continuation of the French nuclear adventure were desirable, but whether this continuation was possible, at what price and under what conditions.

### **8.3 "Time Matters"**

The difficulties encountered by the nuclear industry were widely commented upon. The President of the nuclear safety authority (ASN) declared in 2022 that the main source of fragility of the nuclear system was the lack of anticipation from EDF; the operators blamed the lack of long-term planning from the State; Folz evoked an unrealistic initial assessment of delays and a generalized loss of skills to explain the setbacks of the EPR. All these explanations relate to time. In the same vein, the recent *Commission of Inquiry* (Assemblée Nationale 2023) highlighted the extent to which nuclear projects are affected by the conflict between short-termism and long-termism that drastically limits the possibilities of anticipating plausible futures and planning actions (Slawinski and Bansal 2012), with huge consequences on the nuclear industry. This classical conflict translates the inter-temporal tension between "political time" (a maximum of one electoral term) and "nuclear time" (the life cycle of nuclear installations—several decades, from the decision to build a facility to its dismantling). Its major projects have faced the difficulty of resolving, in the very short term, the contradictions produced over a very long time period.

For the first time in almost 30 years, the government seems to be backing a largescale nuclear revival, reflected in the Acceleration Act. We propose the notion of "temporal regime" as an analytical tool to explore the timing and tempo of this nuclear revival and to analyze the risks and emerging vulnerabilities it may entail. The nuclear industry's activities fall within two main temporal regimes, anchored in two narratives: the *extension regime* and the *acceleration regime*. 6 Both regimes respond to the climate emergency, but each refers to specific activities and carries its own risks or vulnerabilities (Table 8.1).

The extension regime is in line with the need to maintain the existing fleet, to "make it last" beyond the 40 years initially planned to meet the decarbonization objective, but also to supply electricity at an acceptable cost. This regime is based on a highly centralized and stable organization, involving the operator EDF that remains solely responsible for nuclear safety under the law, the nuclear safety authority and its technical support organization, IRSN. Safety is built through constant technical dialogue between these three players7 . This highly stable system entails its own

6 The identification of these regimes is based on a careful analysis of the minutes of the meetings of the *Commission of inquiry on the loss of sovereignty and energy independence of France* (November 2022–February 2023). It also draws on the numerous formal and informal interviews held within the framework of the research projects conducted over the last ten years in relation to the nuclear sector (RESOH Chair, AGORAS project—Grant ANR-11-RSNR-0001—and NEEDS program).

7 The parliament finally voted to merge the ASN and IRSN in March 2024, despite strong protests. This is likely to alter the dynamics of relations and naturally calls into question the stability of the

**Table 8.1** Temporal regimes of the French nuclear industry

vulnerabilities. "Making nuclear installations last" presupposes an army of maintenance workers who perform very substantial work within short deadlines so as not to penalize production, while guaranteeing a very high level of safety. This, of course, implies maintaining and renewing the expert knowledge and skills of these maintainers. It also calls into question the nature of the relationships involved:

They point to a major potential weakness of the extension regime, i.e., the increasing complexity of the regulatory, managerial and cognitive infrastructures of maintenance activities, at the risk of a lesser understanding of the systems by those responsible for maintaining them. The challenge is to ensure that the care given to existing installations (and their partial renewal) is part of a sustainable form of innovation, i.e., toward systems that are easier to control, hence more robust.

The acceleration regime fits in with the urgency to act in the face of climate change and endorses the framing of nuclear power as a pragmatic response to the objective of decarbonized energy production. It is materialized in the recent "French

regime. The way in which safety will be affected by this change will be interesting to analyze over the coming years.

Acceleration Act" and mainly involves the development of a series of six EPR2.8 Unlike the extension regime, which relies on perennial organizations, the acceleration regime unfolds within projects, thus temporary organizations. The most recent projects, EPR and ASTRID, have shown the fragilities induced by largely unstable physical, managerial (planning) and regulatory infrastructures. This contributed to the difficulties in steering and running these projects. The size and complexity of the infrastructure contributed to the failure of the EPR project (Folz 2019), in particular by preventing the simultaneous pursuit of safety and industrial performance objectives. ASTRID suffered from the CEA's pro-innovation bias, with the introduction of unplanned and unshared breakthrough innovations, making it difficult to steer and defend the project. Both projects faced the "knowledge crisis" inherent to the design profession, and particularly critical in the nuclear sector, firstly because it requires expert, distributed skills and secondly because of the intermittent nature of design and construction activities. The drop in activity following the Messmer Plan, combined with the associated illusion of overcapacity, led to an unlearning process from which the EPR and the ASTRID project (albeit to a lesser extent) suffered greatly. The inability of stakeholders (the State, the operators and the regulator) to fully acknowledge and then manage the intermittency of design and construction has contributed to the current pitfalls: projects with uncertain status, between innovation and renewal of old technologies, role conflicts between historical actors and disengagement of some. It exacerbated tensions between operators, designers and regulators, preventing them from defining clear objectives and standards, making trade-offs and evaluating performance, leading to a delegitimization of the nuclear sector.

These two regimes are clearly interdependent: acceleration and extension involve the same organizations and the same resources. All projects, be they design, construction or maintenance, are launched at the same time, which compels the nuclear industry to manage the cumulative dimension of these projects. The lack of longterm national strategic planning combined with short-termism (also denounced as an impediment for organizations to effectively address climate change issues) has deprived the nuclear system and more widely the electricity system, of its margins in terms of skills, personnel or technology, at the risk of making it more vulnerable to unforeseen events and snowballing effects. The succession of recent crises has shed light on systemic vulnerabilities. The COVID-19 crisis showed the difficulties in planning and organizing major maintenance operations on a very large scale, as well as the possible disastrous consequences of the absence of margins for nuclear safety but also security of supply in the future. The war in Ukraine highlighted the very tight coupling between nuclear plants' availability and safety and energy supply. This

8 The Acceleration law also provides for the development of small modular reactors (SMRs). While the EPR2 program is still organized centrally around EDF, both operator and architect, many SMR projects are led by start-ups. Private players are emerging alongside the major historical players (EDF, Orano, CEA). If SMR projects were to be developed, they would involve a more decentralized, or at least more distributed, organization, similar to those prevailing in the USA. This would be new in France and would necessarily involve changes in safety governance. As SMRs are still in the nascent stages of development, we will not discuss them in this article.

"era of disruption" (Bansal 2019) involves new risks, which emerge from and bring into play interdependencies that go beyond the scope of a given organization (i.e., between systems, organizations and institutions). Part of these interdependencies already existed but were previously invisible or simply overlooked.

These questions are of particular importance since the lack of anticipation forces the nuclear industry to operate increasingly following a logic of speed and results in increasing production pressures, which affect both regimes. All the chain of nuclear organizations is concerned, down to the contractor that employs welders, which is asked to train experienced welders in record time (3–4 years instead of 7 years). The safety literature has demonstrated the negative effect of precipitation and speed on safety performance (Blount et al. 2005). It underlines the complexity of articulating different requirements and associated (possibly contradictory) time frames, e.g., safety with climate or performance goals. While speed is often celebrated as "a synonym of good" in the face of the "sense of urgency", some organizations that have become famous for their rapid decision-making are now equally famous for their mistakes and disastrous consequences (e.g., NASA) (Vaughan 1997).

These movements raise very important and difficult questions about the prioritization and definition of safety in relation to other imperatives: is safety still the number one priority (as reflected in the "safety first" doctrine)? And what type of safety? Nuclear safety? The latter is one of the variables (crucial of course) in the equation to solve when deciding to invest in nuclear power and to choose the best technology. While the objective is of course to design and operate safe systems, the debate is about the level of safety that can be achieved in relation to other crucial requirements. Safety, like performance, is multi-dimensional. The example of French nuclear power shows perfectly how dealing with a nuclear safety problem may generate new risks because of the close coupling between the production means and the supply system. It includes the risk of a "blackout" and its major side effects, at the societal scale, on infrastructures, transports, health … and thus on human lives.

One major stake is to redefine nuclear safety in its articulation with all the other types of safety, such as security of supply, environmental or ecological safety or health and safety at work and more broadly with sustainability and other forms of performance. This also requires a tight articulation between the extension and articulation regimes. These regimes raise essential questions concerning the care to be given to the existing infrastructures and the logic of innovation that should prevail in the choice of future technologies, i.e., the *exploitation* of known and mastered technologies or the *exploration* of new and disruptive solutions, in the hope for increased performance. The first approach has two major advantages, especially in the context of urgency: (1) they can be rapidly deployed; (2) they present far fewer uncertainties (notably unknown unknowns) than exploratory projects. The extension of reactors' lifespan and the decisions to opt for a simplified design of the Flamanville EPR for EPR2 and to develop it in series, all point to a prevalence of the exploitation logic.

### **8.4 "Working Things Out": Toward a Broader and Long-Term Approach**

A socio-temporal lens reveals two paradoxical consequences of the long-term trajectory of the French nuclear infrastructure: it has the peculiarity of being at the same time highly institutionalized and destabilized. The extended history of reactor operation has led to very high expectations from regulators, public authorities and civil society regarding safety, reliability and industrial and economic performance. However, the discontinuous trajectory of design and construction activities over the past decades, alternating highs and lows of activity, has led to a disintegration of skills and a weakened industrial base. New reactor projects, primarily ASTRID and the EPR, have felt within this ambiguous framework of undermined organizations subject to ever-increasing requirements.

The nuclear industry's ability to contribute positively to the fight against climate change will depend on its capacity to jointly govern different types of risk and on its degree of preparedness for emerging vulnerabilities induced by interdependencies between risks (or types of safety). This calls for a systemic approach, which is sensitive to aligning global and local scales as well as the short and long terms. It is far from simple. As put by Hecht et al. (2020), "our political systems are not at all designed to deal with these kinds of issues, especially with the election period. Everything is short-term". Developing nuclear infrastructures to meet climatic goals while ensuring their safety means first acknowledging such inter-temporal conflicts. One way to do so is probably to devote effort to long-term vision and planning. Planning can mean restricting degrees of freedom in the short term, against greater freedom and security in the medium and long term. This meets the current debate in France around "energy" or "ecological planning" and necessarily raises the question of the organizational and socio-material conditions for "effective" planning—in the pragmatist sense of a capacity to engage in relevant actions (Lorino 2018)—able to take into account the multiple requirements and to think about their articulation, notably safety/security and climate change. Neglected in the 1990s and 2000s, in a tacit agreement between the executive and the nuclear lobby, plans and scenarios are re-emerging as central tools in the face of the "energy wall" (Assemblée Nationale 2023). However, the impact of such tools depends on how they are designed, mobilized and governed and by whom. In the face of climate change, it is probably time to open them up to new players. If public debates do not appear to be the most appropriate vehicle (in view of the most recent debate on the EPR2), Parliament could play a more important role in the governance of nuclear issues, to foster interorganizational and inter-institutional discussions (as has been the case for nuclear waste since the 1991 Bataille law).

More importantly—and the energy sector is a striking example—safety governance arrangements have to rely on detailed knowledge and consideration of the interdependencies between the means of production (which, in the case of nuclear technologies, are high-risk organizations) and the entire energy production and supply system. Following this, it is no longer possible to think at the level of one organization or even one industry. The governance of risk involves the inter-institutional scale. This opens new debates about the role of the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) (and its TSO, IRSN), its decisions and prescriptions. They have been revived very recently by the government's (strongly contested) decision to have Parliament vote to merge the ASN and IRSN, thereby challenging the strict separation between expertise and decision-making. The effects of this reform on the safety regime will be interesting to analyze in the years to come. For example, the ASN (and its TSO) have been criticized for being too zealous, for following mostly a bureaucratic logic while remaining voluntarily ignorant of the industrial realities (Finon 2023). Furthermore, while the independence of the Nuclear Safety Authority is unquestionable, the risks of a primacy of the conformity requirement over the safety requirement or the concordance between safety requirements and socio-economic issues are worthwhile topics for debate.

As Perrow forcefully showed decades ago, safety—and this is all the more true with other imperatives—is also a matter of aligning divergent interests and organizing power relationships. This social alignment work is due at several levels: at a meso-level (how organizational actors integrate and articulate the imperatives in their work and daily actions and decisions) and at a macro-level (aligning policymakers, regulators and industry actors' interests). It also means going beyond binary oppositions. For example, what would it mean, theoretically and practically, to consider safety as a dimension of performance in its own right and to handle it jointly with the other dimensions of performance, such as costs and delays? If the alignment work is fundamental to meet the challenges of safety and climate change, the work of contextualizing is just as important: the generic principles and global lessons have to be adapted to the local technopolitical context. In the continuation of Engwall's famous phrase, "no project is an island", no technology or industry is an island either. Highrisk organizations—especially nuclear facilities—are not installed in a vacuum, but must fit into a system of interactions that brings into play numerous technical, political and social interdependencies, which goes far beyond the nuclear system alone and the present time. Meeting the challenges of safety and climate change is a matter of bridging scales.

### **References**

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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# **Chapter 9 Articulating Safety and Climate Change**

## **Challenges and Perspectives**

### **Corinne Bieder**

**Abstract** With the increasing number of climate-related events and the growing public awareness of climate change and its potential consequences, new challenges emerge including for high-risk industries and the way to manage their safety. Ignoring the interrelations between the two societal stakes that are climate change and safety might lead to critical situations. This chapter identifies the questions raised by addressing the interplay between safety and climate change at both conceptual and practical levels. It also suggests perspectives for safety science and scientists to have a more significant contribution in this unprecedented context.

**Keywords** Safety · Climate change · Risk · High-risk industries · Societal expectations · Safety science

### **9.1 Introduction**

Climate change and its increasing number of manifestations have become a critical concern to societies. Beyond the direct and immediate impacts of catastrophic events, some climate-related occurrences may affect the safety of high-risk industries. The concept of Natech events (Cruz and Suarez-Paba 2019) was introduced to characterize some of these events. Beyond these blatant cases, the interplay of climate change and safety turns out to raise multiple challenges, as illustrated by most authors in this volume. Ignoring the interrelations between the two might lead to critical situations, as illustrated by the Groningen case where a solution was chosen for climate-related reasons, initially overlooking safety issues and then governing safety in ways that would protect this solution in any case (Postmes et al. 2024). Conversely, focusing on safety with limited attention so far to the impact on climate change of high-risk industries leads some of these domains to be threatened in their very "raison d'être" today, like oil and gas or aviation. The evolution of societal expectations and

C. Bieder (B)

Head of Safety Management Research Program, ENAC—Ecole Nationale de l'Aviation Civile, University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
© The Author(s) 2024

C. Bieder et al. (eds.), *Climate Change and Safety in High-Risk Industries*, SpringerBriefs in Safety Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56995-1\_9

political priorities might lead to open dilemmas regarding these high-risk activities. For oil and gas, for example, despite the impact on climate change, pursuing the current activities makes it possible to fund transitions toward other activities (see the Stavanger case developed by Engen and Morsut 2024). As for nuclear power, the potential safety impacts become secondary to the limited impact on climate change of this industry (see the nuclear power case developed by Tillement 2024).

At more conceptual and methodological levels, new questions emerge when it comes to addressing the interrelations between climate change and safety. Indeed, climate change leads to considering a broader scale, at planet level, that was not part of the systems, scopes and scales considered by safety science. What does safety and safety management mean in a context where existential risks such as those induced by climate change are becoming more likely? Are new approaches, methods or tools needed?

This chapter aims at structuring the different insights on the interplay of safety and climate change coming out of the NeTWork workshop on this topic gathering scholars from different disciplines, countries and working on different high-risk industries.

The first part addresses research and practical challenges raised by the articulation of safety and climate change.

The second part suggests perspectives to reach beyond current safety science limitations in fully embracing the climate change context.

### **9.2 Research and Practical Challenges**

Climate change-related catastrophic events may seem to have a lot in common with industrial accidents. In both cases, one can refer to risks, safety and catastrophic consequences. Yet, articulating safety and climate change requires to reach beyond words and explore the mutual impacts in theory and practice. This section starts by exploring the concepts, methods and scopes used in both domains. Then, considering the new context created by the climate change urgency, it identifies new dilemas and challenges related to the interplay of safety and climate change.

### *9.2.1 Redefining the Boundaries of "Safety" and High-Risk Industries?*

### **<IP_ADDRESS> Extending the Spectrum and Scale of Consequences**

Historically, in the early twentieth century, industrial safety emerged to cope with worker compensation laws that forced employers to provide compensation to their employees for harm related to work (Blake 1963). With time, the scope of safety of high-risk industries evolved to embrace other types of accidents beyond occupational ones, especially harm to people including non-workers and to goods and property. As an example, the International Civil Aviation Organization defines an accident as: "An occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft (…) in which:

Interestingly, some systems engineering manuals define safety as also encompassing the ability not to harm the environment (Desroches et al. 2003).1 However, these definitions implicitly mean by the "environment" the vicinity of the industrial facility, thereby considering consequences such as toxic fluid leaks or radioactive releases. Otherwise, the simple fact of operating could not be considered safe for industries having a significant impact on the environment and climate change, and a number of industries or activities not considered as high-risk ones today would become so (e.g., agriculture, high-tech).

From a climate change perspective though, considering the consequences of activities on the environment not only locally, but also at the scale of the planet, would make sense. However, reasoning at this global scale, as deemed necessary by Le Coze (2024) and Etienne (2024), has never been part of safety science so far. Existing concepts and methods are not well adapted for it, as claimed by the two authors.

### **<IP_ADDRESS> Extending the Nature and Likelihood of Hazards**

A climate-related phenomenon and its local consequences can jeopardize an industrial facility's safety management strategies in place. In the example presented by Le Coze (2024), a drop in water level can lead to losing the cooling of a plant. In risk management terms, climate change can induce new types of hazards or significantly increase the likelihood of already considered hazards. A more indirect impact of climate change on the safety of a high-risk facility or activity might be the more likely unavailability of critical infrastructures on which these facilities/activities rely to operate safely, notwithstanding other possible catastrophic consequences of the unavailability of critical infrastructures on people, property and the environment.

Managing safety in a climate change context therefore requires extending the range of hazards considered, not only to new environmental hazards but also to other types of hazards possibly appearing as a result of climate change-related phenomena. It also entails keeping these conditions in mind when analyzing possible risk reduction or safety management measures. This would be a kind of extension of the concept

1 « La sécurité (…) est la caractéristique d'un système exprimée par l'aptitude ou la probabilité que le système accomplisse sa mission en l'absence de circonstances susceptibles d'occasionner des nuisances aux personnes, aux biens et à l'environnement » (Desroches et al. 2003, p. 36), i.e., Safety (…) is the characteristic of a system expressed by the ability or probability that the system will accomplish its mission in the absence of circumstances likely to cause harm to people, property and the environment.

of common mode failures, except that the failures would affect other facilities and services beyond the high-risk system considered.

Although safety science has already started looking into the reliability of critical infrastructures for the severe consequences they can have in case of unavailability, articulating safety and climate change makes it even more necessary to bring the two together. It is worth noting that they are already connected not only through concepts and methods, but also from a societal expectations viewpoint.

### **<IP_ADDRESS> Safety of Humanity Beyond Safety of High-Risk Systems or Industries**

Articulating climate change and safety leads to considering events that can be very different in nature but have similar consequences, especially harm to people, property and the environment. However, when it comes to managing the associated risks or learning to live with the associated uncertainties, it is worth getting into more details to characterize them respectively.

Climate change can induce existential risks as stated by Le Coze (2024), that is risks which concern humanity as a whole, without coming directly from an industrial facility or a given man-made system, but rather from more natural events (in turn possibly resulting from long-lasting dispersed human activities) with a wider reach than industrial risks in terms of their consequences. Although safety and climate change are often seen from a risk perspective, climate change-related risks, conversely to safety risks, cannot be associated with the (dys)functioning of an identifiable system (be it an organization, more or less fragmented, a plant, an industry …). In that sense, it escapes the existing concepts and methods related to risk management that start with the identification of the system under study.

Along the same line, existential risks like the ones possibly induced by climate change escape the very "raison d'être" of risk management approaches, that is the controllability or illusion of controllability of risks. Although the most common governance regime of high-risk industries relies on the demonstration that risks are reduced and maintained at an acceptable level by the "certified" organization, no one pretends or can pretend that climate change-related risks can be controlled by one or a group of humans.

The prism of impacts could seem more appropriate than that of risks to articulate safety and climate change. The concept of safety as the ability not to harm people, property and the environment might seem suitable. However, in safety science, whatever the theoretical approach (e.g., systems safety, HRO, resilience engineering), safety is also defined as a property of a socio-technical system that can be identified. Addressing climate change and the associated existential risks assumes a slightly different meaning of risk and safety than the ones used in safety science. It challenges one of the premises of most of the existing safety management approaches, which is the identification of the socio-technical system causing these hazardous situations.

In that respect, safety could be considered closer to the concept of sustainability, since the latter can be applied to socio-ecological systems.

### **<IP_ADDRESS> Considering New Time Frames**

Another question becomes more obvious when considering climate change: that of time. While the time frame considered is rarely made explicit in safety management approaches, safety management concepts, methods and theories commonly focus on short term. However, within the traditional scope of safety management, issues related to time have already been highlighted. The management of long-lived hazards and the institutional constancy it requires was already underlined by La Porte and Keller at the end of the twentieth century in relation to nuclear waste safe management (La Porte and Keller 1996). The disconnect between "political time" with short mandates and "nuclear time" is illustrated by Tillement (2024) as well as the extent to which it decreases the ability to anticipate plausible futures and generates tensions, more uncertainty and ambiguity.

The issue of the time frame considered and the focus on relatively short-term impacts/views of safety management become even more blatant when it comes to climate change and sustainability. Scientific studies have shown how today's climate change situation and manifestations result from a (relatively) long history of human industrial activities, illustrating the sometimes very long period between decisions and possible impact on climate. Furthermore, in his review of the principles and definitions of sustainability, Ruggerio (2021) states that any conceptual model intending to define sustainability should "account for intergenerational and intragenerational equity" (p. 9), which naturally involves time frames beyond the short term.

### *9.2.2 New Dilemas and Challenges*

### **<IP_ADDRESS> Societal Expectations and Governance Challenges**

Despite these conceptual and methodological challenges to articulating climate change and safety in high-risk industries (and beyond, as identified earlier), both aspects naturally come together from a societal expectations perspective. Harm to people, property or the environment, whether due to climate change, industrial operations or a combination of both is still perceived as "unacceptable" by civil society.

Nevertheless, current governance structures tend to split the various stakes (e.g., safety and environment) as well as the various industries, even though the dilemmas and societal expectations reach beyond these boundaries. Tensions are common between stakes, for example, nuclear safety and energy security as illustrated by Tillement (2024). Engen and Morsut (2024) illustrate maybe more than a tension between climate change and economy in the case of oil and gas in Norway, since it raises existential questions as to this activity. Although currently recognized as impactful on climate change, it remains essential to sustain the economy and make it possible to support the transition of the region toward more sustainable activities.

With climate change-related events becoming more frequent and more impactful, risk acceptability thresholds as defined in high-risk industries regulatory requirements (e.g., aircraft certification) could be challenged as well. Indeed, these thresholds have historically been defined in comparison with other accepted risks and the risk of "natural" death. Should this latter evolve especially with climate change, acceptable levels of risks due to high-risk industries could be revisited.

### **<IP_ADDRESS> More Obvious Tensions in Need of Articulation**

As described in the previous sections, bringing together climate change and safety in high-risk industries highlights a number of tensions. It also poses theoretical challenges, notably that of articulating the different stakes, scopes, scales or time frames.

As discussed during the NeTWork workshop underlying this work, actions at the individual level may have an impact on global warming. Conversely, understanding what is going on in a specific plant and why requires understanding elements that go far beyond the plant itself (e.g., regulation from different countries if the plant has an international activity; energy supply; and all the other activities to which that of the plant is connected). Although this is not new and was already identified as an articulation challenge within the safety science community, what might be new is that the macro-level would today need to go up to the Earth itself with phenomena that reach beyond the disciplines involved so far in safety science. More generally, the climate change landscape exacerbates the entanglement of stakes and actors, the multiplicity of scales and time frames, the diversity of scopes and interests. As such, it expands the question of bringing together all the elements of a picture that is more blatantly than ever a complex one.

### **9.3 Perspectives for Safety Science and Scientists**

The situation induced by climate change can be seen in different ways, not exclusive from one another and possibly partly interrelated: as a simple extension of already identified safety science challenges; as a deep reconsideration of today's fundamental assumptions underlying safety science challenging its foundations, concepts and methods; as a new area where safety science could help with some of its concepts, methods and theories; and as an occasion to question the role of scientists in a context where there seems to be a discrepancy between the urgency described by scientific results and the pace of evolution of policies and societies. This section will explore each of these options.

### *9.3.1 Extending Current Safety and Risk Management Approaches*

From a risk management perspective, considering climate change in safety management requires taking into account new hazards, not only environmental ones but also hazards of other natures possibly induced by environmental catastrophes, as well as combinations of events of very different natures resulting from such catastrophes limiting risk mitigation options. Methodologically, it can be seen as an extension of methods such as global risk analysis (Desroches et al. 2016) and of concepts such as common mode failures to the identification of risk reduction measures, whereas it is currently limited to risk analysis.

To extend the safety scope to global scales including existential risks and to conceptualize the interrelations between the historical scale at which industrial risks were addressed (i.e., socio-technical systems) and climate change phenomena (i.e., planet earth), Le Coze (2024) suggests the framework of Post Normal Accidents.

Other articulations are needed as shown in the previous section, especially between stakes due to the entanglement of safety, climate change, economic, political … aspects or between time frames. Field studies (e.g., anthropological or organizational studies) or the HRO theory helps to highlight and understand the interrelations between stakes or time frames. However, they remain to a large extent descriptive approaches and are not predominant or even widely spread in the world of safety science. They are even less present in the world of safety practitioners driven by regulatory frameworks which neither require nor foster these qualitative analyses (Bieder 2022).

Although some conceptual and methodological work is still needed, another issue is that of translating these concepts and methods into practices.

### *9.3.2 Reconsidering Some of the Fundamentals of Safety Science and Proposing New Approaches*

For a huge community of scholars and practitioners, safety is synonymous with good risk management (even though risk management only addresses the domains of the known and knowable, leaving the unknowable apart (Desroches et al. 2003)). One of the premises of risk management and risk science is that risks can be controlled and governed. As illustrated by Postmes et al. (2024), the definition and assessment of risks can be strong instruments of power. For systemic and existential risks, more global in their consequences, but also more diffuse in their origins in the sense that they cannot be associated with a particular system or an identified governance body, the fundamental assumption of risk controllability and governance is challenged. Indeed, they entail all sorts of uncertainties beyond the stochastic one considered in risk management.

Besides conceptual reworking, it would be critical as suggested by Etienne (2024) to challenge safety science's lenses and focus to put risk management in a wider context that includes many implicit assumptions regarding the overall context. Unveiling all the aspects that safety scientists and practitioners take for granted from an economic, social, political and other standpoints and exploring whether they might be challenged by climate change-induced new conditions would be needed. For example, would insurers still be able to insure for natural events; would rescue services still be able to intervene on a high-risk site after a Natech event …?

From a methodological point of view, Bleicher (2024) suggests exploring other approaches than risk management and traditional governance, such as collective experimentation. According to the author, such approaches allow for more inclusion and openness to surprise. As such, they could be a way to reach beyond the illusion of control.

### *9.3.3 Climate Change Challenges: An Area Where Safety Science Could Help*

Uncertainties, complexities, controversies and crises develop with global warming and its growing number of manifestations worldwide. These phenomena have been studied and addressed by safety science for decades, notably through the development of theories such as HRO, normal accidents and crisis management. Systems thinking, coupling, disaster studies, resilience, governance and management of uncertainty are domains where significant knowledge has been produced by safety science (Perrow 1999; Boin 2008; Dekker 2019; Grote 2009). Concepts, theories, methods and tools and case studies would be worth reviewing through climate change lenses to appreciate what is valid, what is actionable as such, what needs adaptation, and what would better be dropped.

Among the contributions in this volume, Weyer (2024) explores the added value for policymakers of a simulation tool which could "anticipate" the impact of certain decisions, considering distinct behaviors for different social groups and integrating possible nonlinearities in collective reactions.

### *9.3.4 Questioning the Role of Science and Scientists*

Despite the urgency of curbing the greenhouse gas emissions pointed out by scientists since the 1970s (see Meadows et al. 1972), the pace of change in practices is still far from what would be needed to meet the challenge. As such, climate change is an obvious illustration that science may not be the best place from which to change society. Inconvenient truths can remain ignored on purpose when there is no easy way to deal with them.

This observation is a reminder of an issue also clearly identified in safety science, where the long-lasting recognition of the limitations of some safety management approaches or safety governance regimes has not led to any evolution outside of academia. The dilemma for safety scientists working in the social or political sciences is still vivid. Should this community become more prescriptive (as engineering disciplines often are), thereby partly contradicting some of its findings to make things happen?

More inclusive approaches such as that suggested by Bleicher (2024) could be a way for researchers to be more influential or at least engage in a discussion with public decision-makers and representatives of civil society.

### **9.4 Conclusion**

The discussions held during the workshop as well as the previous chapters of this book allowed for identifying mutual impacts of climate change and safety both in theory and practice. Concepts such as uncertainty, risk, accident or disaster are used in both domains, but a closer look at what they encompass leads to highlighting nuances that do not seem to be commonly acknowledged or addressed. Some existing theories and methods could be adapted to address safety in a climate change era, and new lenses might be needed to revisit basic assumptions taken for granted as to the context in which safety is and will be managed. At the same time, the significant research work done in safety management on complexity, uncertainty, disasters and resilience can be a useful base to support reflections on how to live with climate change.

At a more societal level, the interplay of safety and climate change induces new dilemmas in terms of expectations and acceptability. The current governance regimes working in silos and involving distinct actors are challenged. How the dilemmas are currently addressed at different managerial and institutional levels needs further investigation. Some promising approaches suggesting new modes of governance are being experimented, but are still at the stage of research initiatives today.

Finally, this new climate change landscape and the urgency for action poses again with even greater urgency the question of the role of scientists and their influence on society, a question that safety management researchers, especially those coming from the social sciences, have been struggling with for decades.

Articulating safety and climate change raises a wide range of issues in many areas. Although very few are new taken individually, what might be more unprecedented is the obvious entanglement between them.

### **References**

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