The NIMBY syndrome: its significance in the history of the nuclear debate in Britain

The labelling of public opposition to nuclear developments in Britain as a ‘not in my back yard’ (NIMBY) response gained widespread credibility in the 1980s. In particular the term gained wide usage to describe the public's response to the search for suitable nuclear waste disposal sites. This paper will briefly consider the events leading up to the emergence of the term NIMBY assessing key avenues through which it found its way into the realm of public discourse. The significance of various models of the public understanding of science, subsumed within official thinking on NIMBY, will be explored. Within the context of the nuclear debate it will be argued that these existing models do not adequately deal with a number of issues. These include the significance of dominant symbolic representations of nuclear science and also the relationship between opposition and locality.