Euradwaste '08 - EU Bookshop - Europa

One important element in the communication process has been identified in the "generation of
trust". To this aim all should contribute: policy makers through transparency about the need to
solve an issue of national interest, regulators with adequate criteria & guidance and transparent review
process, industry with good projects developed on sound scientific basis.
The chairman suggested the panellists to address the following questions:
Please provide your own definition of what is safety and then address the questions:
o Does the public have a different vision of safety than the technical specialist? Which
do you think it is?
o If the different visions are not well understood and/or if the differences are not
smoothed or eliminated, can risk or safety be effectively communicated?
Do people have equal interest in safety and risk? And in uncertainty and confidence?
Is it only the implementer that has to communicate safety or risk? Is there a role for other
institutional actors?
To what extent credibility of the message is linked to the credibility of the messenger and of
the system?
To what extent are people concerned with the very long-term (thousands of years) versus the
short and medium term (tens to hundreds of years). Are we addressing the two time scales?
How do the above observations on your communication strategy.
The panellist then presented their contribution to the discussion and the debate included not only
issues listed in the questions but ranged more widely.
In the following, the main points made by the panellists and the audience are summarized:
1. The increase of effort on the issue of communication by regulators, implementers and international
organizations has been generally recognized. The increase of tools for communication
(media, web sites…) and consequently increase of information should not distract from
the real issue and confuse the non-specialist. Communication sometimes is not so much a
question of amount of information but rather of quality of information;
2. Communication on such a complex issue like radioactive waste disposal is strongly dependent
on the level of familiarity that the stakeholders have with nuclear. In this respect, an interesting
contribution was given by the representative of a Swedish Municipality (Oskarshamn)
where local population has been familiar with nuclear installations for many years.
Local population living in the area of a possible geological repository is asking information
about the impact of the repository not in a very long-term scale, but rather on their lives and
following generations;
3. Experience from many different projects involving the communication of safety is that terms
like uncertainty and risk assessment are very difficult to understand by the general public:
sometimes it is better to use terms like performance;
Safety functions, such as concentrate and contains, seems to be a good starting point: it is
easier to explain in a few words things like the availability of the waste form, or the impermeability
of a barrier, rather than dose or risk curves. The latter also have the disadvantage
of being related to release rather than containment;
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