X881/4/B54

Six photographs of Councillor Andy Blowers. a) May 1985 at an election count b) - e) At the reconstruction of Prebend Bridge - now the County Bridge, Bedford f) November 1997 election count g) undated portrait when a councillor

1985-1997

From: 1985 To: 1997

Biography derived from NWAA | Nuclear Waste Advisory Associates. After an initial career in management, Andy Blowers taught at Newcastle Polytechnic (now Northumbria University) and Kingston University before joining the Open University where he taught for thirty five years until retiring in 2005 holding a Chair in Social Sciences from 1984. He is now (2018) Visiting Research Professor at the OU. Among his books are The International Politics of Nuclear Waste (co-authored with David Lowry and Barry Solomon) and several chapters and pages on the social and political aspects of radioactive waste management. For nearly thirty years Andrew Blowers was a leading Labour county councillor in Bedfordshire. During that time he led the county’s campaign against the Nirex proposal for a shallow repository at Elstow eventually lining with the County Councils Coalition that helped to defeat the proposal. From that time he specialised in the social and political aspects of radioactive waste, researching policies in many countries and publishing his findings. In 1991 he was appointed to the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee (RWMAC) and, over a period of twelve years, ensured the committee incorporated social science as well as science into its work. He led working groups which helped to lay the foundations for the government’s MRWS process. In 2003 he was appointed to CoRWM and took the lead in developing its guiding principles and the social, political and ethical context for policy on long term management. He was also responsible for the proposals for implementation and organised a series of workshops on deliberative democracy, ethics and implementation. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and has an Hon.D.Litt from De Montfort University. In 2000 he was awarded the OBE for services to environmental protection.

item

Blowers, Andy,
Open University

councillors, photography, Nirex, BEDFORD, Bedford County Bridge