The democratic durability of nuclear waste disposal: Narratives of local opposition in the United States and the Czech Republic

Deep geological repositories (DGRs) of nuclear waste are often debated as technical solutions that must secure public acceptance. This article instead argues that they require an honest political approach and long-term institutional mechanisms whose legitimacy can be destabilized when implementers alter project terms en route. Drawing on a transatlantic comparative case study of opposition to the expansion of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in the United States and to DGR siting in the Czech Republic, the paper asks how project-specific contexts shape local opposition to the implementer-initiated deviation from the initial DGR project setup. Based on the data collected from oppositional websites and regional or national news coverage from 2016 to April 2022, and employing qualitative analysis centered on the concept of narrative, differences are compared in terms of divergent democratic traditions, DGR project stage (hosting vs. siting), and waste disposal scale (‘large’ vs. ‘small’). The findings show that an analogical challenge of upholding democratic governance arises in both cases, but that the project stage and waste scale significantly condition which opposition concerns are raised. In the United States, opposition targets the redefinition of an operating repository through mission expansion, distributional injustice, and transport risks. In the Czech Republic, opposition focuses on the lack of credible institutional guarantees, the siting process is perceived as procedurally unfair, and consideration of alternatives beyond DGR is requested. The article contributes to interdisciplinary debates by shifting attention from one-off “acceptance” to the democratic durability of geological disposal, conceived of as complementary to technological durability.