Nuclear power: technology assessment and ethics of technology in interaction

While technology assessment (TA) and ethics developed in different directions and at different paces, they have often shared certain goals and approaches. In this chapter, we review this connection in decision-making with respect to the desirability of nuclear energy production as well as nuclear waste management. On the one hand, ethics could have a welcome normative addition to TA studies by spelling out the normative dimensions of complex decisions, for instance by taking into account the variety of (sometimes converging or conflicting) values that are at stake in the social and political debate. On the other hand, the perspective and democratic practice of TA has already broadened the scope of applied ethics in various ways. For example, constructive TA has played an important role in discussions on Value Sensitive Design. For the future of decision-making, TA and ethics could be most helpful if they are to be considered as complementary.