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Spotlight on Dr Phil Johnstone

Research Fellow in Science Policy Research Unit

Previous Research

I was always interested in issues of inequality and democracy. 
I did a masters in Environmental Governance and studied indigenous communities in Central and South America; bioprospecting and biopiracy.

I didn't really have much interest in nuclear at that time but I was very inspired by EriK Swyngedouw who is a Belgian geographical theorist. I thought maybe I'll do a PhD. We were brainstorming topics and he said he’d noticed they are bringing nuclear back. I thought; this is an interesting story, you had this technology that in the 1980s that had really been shown to be too expensive and arguably too dangerous and suddenly because it's low carbon it really had come back in the context of energy security and climate change.

My PhD focused on the Hinkley nuclear development.
I found funding in Exeter for the PhD, continuing researching issues around public engagement and democracy in relation to the UK government’s attempts to develop new nuclear power.

I sat in consultations in 2009, 2010, 2011 with very experienced members of the public and NGOs raising concerns about the exact things that have gone wrong with regards to current UK nuclear policy and at the time,these concerns were dismissed by government. The plans were unclear, they had not thought through any of the wider issues of nuclear technology beyond narrow assessments solely focussed around economics and C02 emissions.

Current Research

After my PhD I saw the DiscGo project (Governance of discontinuity in technological systems) advertised, the overall framing of the project seemed very interesting.  In science technology studies and innovation theory academics usually look at new technologies and how you support those, to promote those to grow, to flourish.

The DISGCO project started from a very different point; the overall framing is looking at how policy makers phase out dominant technology in our case nuclear.

We’ve been looking in depth at how a government reaches a point where it's conceivable to disengage with something. It’s a controversial thing to say to an industry ‘sorry guys we're phasing you out’ but this is likely to become increasingly necessary in terms of sustainable energy policy

We identify the UK is being uniquely committed to nuclear power and uniquely uncommitted to renewables in the European context.
In Germany they're phasing nuclear out. But the industry there was economically performing much better, they sold lots of reactors worldwide, they had more nuclear in the electricity generation mix.  You would think, from the perspective of traditional ‘innovation theory’ that the UK would want to leave nuclear because it had a much worse industry and much better renewables resource; it's got 40% of the wind potential in Europe.

The UK has not developed renewables in the same way as Germany and the continuation of nuclear power in the UK is perhaps a factor in why support for renewables hasn't developed to the same extent as Germany.  Government figures showed that some renewables are cost competitive if not cheaper than nuclear so there is limited justification for the UK to pursue new nuclear, so there's something very political going on it seems.

But there is one key thing that the UK has, that Germany doesn't, and that is it is highly committed to nuclear power in terms of other nuclear-related activities. In particular the independent construction of nuclear propelled submarines in order to have an at sea nuclear weapons system.

In terms of the UK, we have not fully bottomed out all of the potential linkages, but what I can tell you is that there is no country in the world that has nuclear weapons and nuclear submarines that does not have civilian nuclear power. It would be unprecedented for the UK to have no civilian nuclear power but have nuclear weapons; that would be a very strangesituation for governing the overall non-proliferation treaty. The only other country with this status is North Korea.

Engagement

There's no point in just writing for academics. Public engagement is what excites me, engaging with politicians, industry and NGOs.
It’s all very well and good to be writing in an academic language in a journal article but for me the exciting thing is hopefully talking about it in a way people can understand and actually really engaging with these issues.  I like to get the research out of the University; so the research has made an impact; we've had emails from NGOs in Germany and France saying ‘we appreciate your research’. I've been interviewed by Singapore radio,and ITV NEws on nuclear power and I’ve written in the Guardian.

Myself and Professor Gordon MacKerron were in Westminster in front of a panel of politicians giving evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee on their inquiry into the future of nuclear power in Wales. I've never done that before. You're sitting there and the MPs are in a horseshoe formation, staring at you asking questions, that’s the kind of thing that really excites me.

I also led a SPRU response to a consultation on nuclear waste to the Department of Energy and Climate Change. 
Some High Level Nuclear waste can remain dangerous for around 100,000 years, so what do you do with it? Deep geological disposal is the preferred route, so it's a political problem like no other as the UK currently has no site to construct this facility yet plans to build new reactors. There is no clear solution in sight. The government took some things that we said into account and I've had more engagement with them through the ESRC seminar series on nuclear waste that I co-organise.

The Future

The proud moments are funny little things.
At Christmas time I went to my pigeonhole and there was an A3 size brown envelope. It was a cartoon that had been drawn by a German environmental activist of a nuclear power station with Mr Burns from The Simpsons, a submarine in the sea and various other things. It was a funny cartoon and it meant a lot to me that she’d drawn it and sent it to me in part because of the research I’ve done.

We've just scratched the surface with a lot of these issues.
UK energy is potentially facing several challenges, not least in terms of its unique nuclear power commitments. I’d like to continue working with the great colleagues at SPRU. There is a few of us that are looking to get some funding that will continue this line of work.

I'm a bit of a live in the day person really.
An aspiration after this job is to really influence and make a difference to government policy or NGOs, to continue that very practical side of things.

Collaborations

I have been working with Andy Stirling and Emily Cox on this research, as well as with Ana Paula Camelo who has been looking at the links between nuclear submarine construction and civilian nuclear in the Brazilian context.

I also co-organise a ESRC seminar series on nuclear waste with colleagues from Exeter and the University of East Anglia.