The aim of this report is to analyse representations of time in a particular social setting: how the nuclear waste issue is presented in the PowerPoint slides that the Swedish Nuclear Waste Management Company (SKB) show at its information and consultation meetings. We have chosen to see ‘time’ and ‘expressions of time dimensions’ as a way of framing the nuclear waste issue. The way in which nuclear waste is discussed in relation to time both enable and limit discussions about possible futures. In this study we ask the following research questions: how is time represented in the PowerPoint slides? In what way is time presented in relation to risk and safety? In what way is time presented in relation to environmental impact?
Our empirical material consists of all PowerPoint slides shown at SKB’s information and consultation meetings. We use the material that is available at SKB’s website between 2003 and 2008. The material consists of around 1500 slides. In addition we have conducted participant observations at ten of these meetings between 2005 and 2008.
We conclude that time is visualised in different forms depending on what it is that is shown: safety, risk or environmental impact. We could identify a variety of visualisations, for example time lines, and tables with dates in connection to figures of pollution levels. Taken together they represent different stories about the future as well as about the past. SKB use certain time perspectives to motivate that their suggested method for a nuclear waste disposal is reasonable and possible to implement while other time perspectives are shown in relation to the potential development of society’s capacity to manage the waste and the future development of transports and the impact related to this, for example.