Decision Making For Complex Socio-technical Systems

The long-term governance of radioactive waste continues to be a major complex and unresolved socio-technical issue. Previous technocratic approaches have so far failed. This empirically based study provides a novel approach to complementing technical expertise and economic/political power with stakeholder involvement. Inclusive participation is shown to be an asset that strengthens the processes, enhances robustness and facilitates sustainable decision making, thus adding value for all involved.

The long-term governance of radioactive waste continues to be a major complex and contentious socio-technical issue worldwide. Traditionally, it has been considered as mainly a challenge to scientists and engineers to develop technical "solutions" to specific problems. But increasingly these narrow solutions have been enlarged by wider societal considerations such as ethics, public involvement, control and retrievability – needs that have in the meanwhile been recognised by the nuclear community, at least in a general way. In this book, we analyse motives for a broad discourse as well as suggest prerequisites to launch it. The author attempts to give a novel, empirically based and technically sound treatment of fundamental issues in long-term management and governance. Written to be accessible to a wide selection of the interested public, the study proposes a combination of technical design issues, analysis methods and institutional backup in a dynamic procedure, and with involvement at all levels of political, commercial and social life.