The objective of this thesis has been to write a detailed historical account of the policy and practice of radioactive waste management in Britain. Sweden and West Germany, and to draw out implications for theory and public policy. The research was motivated by the perception that many of the technical and socio-political problems of dealing with radioactive wastes had not been resolved. and that these had a critical bearing on the political viability of civil nuclear programmes. By comparing the evolution of the policy process in three countries it has been possible to develop a better understanding of the particular operational. regulatory and political factors determining policy in each case. In addition. fundamental issues in the regulation of radwastes - the setting of standards and criteria for management and disposal, the institutional structure for oversight and policy-making, research policy and its relation to storage. treatment. disposal and siting policy. and the validation of disposal techniques according to performance goals amid great long-term uncertainty - have been clarified through their analysis in a comparative framework. The main conclusions are three-fold. First. the presence or absence of commitments to the reprocessing of spent fuel for a wide range of strategic, industrial and legal reasons have been critical to the success in finding an acceptable radwaste management and disposal policy (or strategy). Politically it is not possible to make a clear distinction between radwaste management and policy for the rest of the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle. Analytically It is also not possible to separate the two. Second, because of this complex but intimate relationship to reprocessing policy, the dynamism and consistency of radwaste policies are highly dependent on the industrial and political contexts of the drive to reprocessing. Traditionally a view on reprocessing has been virtually synonomous with a faith or scepticism in the future of nuclear power. Experience in the three countries covered in this research shows that there may be a basic conflict between integrated and viable radwaste policies and strong nuclear policies. In this sense radioactive waste could turn out to be the achilles heel of the nuclear industry. Third, the policy process, and indeed its goals, was rather unique to national circumstances (the legal and institutional framework, industrial and political structures). This demonstrates one of the principle arguments of the thesis which is that the innovation process for radwaste management and disposal technologies cannot be seen merely as a technical process, but has to be seen as a process of political and institutional negotiations. There are no perfect' solutions'. Questions of procedure and the context of policy have to be considered as central to the innovation process. Generalizing the patterns which emerge is however difficult, and conclusions must be applied with care under conditions of continuing change and uncertainty.

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Waste prevention is the prioritized waste management option within EU waste policy. There is however a scarcity of research on and policy measures for waste prevention. Improved resource productivity in consumption practices may prevent waste. Literature suggests that Product Service Systems (PSS, ‘a marketable set of products and services capable of jointly fulfilling a user’s needs’ (Goedkoop et al. 1999)) have potential for increased resource productivity compared with self-servicing (households owning material artefacts and using them to perform household tasks themselves), and therefore potential for waste prevention. However, the potential of PSS is uncertain due to a lack of well-reported quantitative assessments. Moreover, the potential is predicated on particular behaviours of self-servicing households and PSS providers concerning their choice and management of material artefacts. This research, therefore, aims to assess the utility of the PSS concept for achieving household waste prevention in the UK with a view to informing policy-makers. Three objectives address the aim, namely to: identify attitudes towards PSS adoption and behaviours concerning choice and management of material artefacts which influence the waste prevention and wider environmental performance of PSS; the waste prevention potential of experimental PSS; identify the environmental potential of experimental PSS. An exploratory mixed-methods research design was used to address the objectives, comprising focus groups, interviews, a survey, document studies, development of a model for waste prevention assessment and a simplified life cycle approach using life cycle indicators. The context was a national property development firm and households on new housing developments built by the firm. Experimental PSS, for potential provision by the property development firm were developed for four household tasks to enable the assessments, namely garden maintenance, home improvement, house cleaning and laundry. The households, the property development firm and its supply chain expressed reluctance towards adopting PSS. Reported behaviours concerning choice and management of material artefacts partly confirmed and partly diverged from the propositions in the PSS literature. For almost all propositions, there were diverging behaviours. PSS for all household tasks except house cleaning had some although modest waste prevention potential. PSS led to increases in some types of emissions in most of the assessed scenarios. Increased emissions mainly arose from the transport for the delivery of PSS. Due to the increase in some emissions, it is uncertain whether PSS qualifies as waste prevention according to the legal definition. The waste prevention and environmental potential depend on the organisation of PSS. Moreover, the behaviours of service providers in particular are uncertain. Despite the modest potential for household waste prevention PSS could have a role as one in a suite of waste prevention measures. However, due to the uncertainty of the potential it might be inappropriate for policy-makers to promote adoption of PSS currently. Adoption of household services provided by local service providers may however increase. Policy-makers should consider promoting the environmental sustainability of both self-servicing households and of commercial household services. Policy-measures are proposed. The PSS concept is critiqued and the term PSS rejected. It is suggested PSS are services.

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