ABSTRACT
In this chapter will be discussed the problems of setting, meeting and legitimating goals of environmental regulation. In Chapter 6 it was argued that the way in which the state pursues industrial-strategic goals in the nuclear-fuel cycle has set the deeper institutional conditions within which radioactive wastes have been controlled, practically and notionally. The balancing of these goals sets the ground rules for how decisions on boundaries of control were made. Clearly this only describes the problem from one side. Goals may be fickle things: they may change or fail to be met; and, as we have stressed, they are the result of political settlements which are made in the real world. The real world is composed not only of industrial interests, but also of broader societal interests.
