In international comparison, the Swedish nuclear waste management is considered a good example of how community acceptance is developed concerning high risk industrial projects. (Flynn et al 2005) From a communication perspective, this development of community acceptance has been a rhetorical project to a large extent. Throughout the history of the case, there are many examples of rhetorical situations – where government authorities and the nuclear industry have had the responsibility, and opportunity, to explain the waste management project to residents in a number of locations where repository site investigations have taken place. Conflicts between the industry and local populations occurred during the 1980’ies, related to drillings in order to test bedrock quality. These conflicts can be seen as situations in which the nuclear industry realized that previously functional rhetorical practices of risk communication failed and new practices had to be developed. They faced rhetorical crisis. In accordance with theories on crisis development, these situations were also occasions of opportunity for actors to meet in dialogue.
The way of describing a problem of communication in terms of rhetorical crisis was introduced in 1981 by Thomas B. Farrell and Thomas Goodnight. It has shown to be a possible term to describe the historical situation of nuclear waste management in Sweden. (Mral et al 2011) The rhetorical dimension of risk communication and reason for crisis is related to the aspect of intellectio –a speaker’s preparation for a rhetorical situation. The presentation will focus on a part of a PhD project concerning the background of rhetorical failures in the waste management program of the 1980ies. The material of study is archival documents regarding the government authority (PRAV) that initialized therepository site investigations in the 1970ies, combined with biographies and interviews with people involved in two locations of conflict, Kynnefjäll and Almunge in the first half of the 1980ies.