From perception to reality

The intent of presentation paper was to demonstrate the importance of perceived risks in predicting potential socioeconomic impacts from a nuclear-related accident and to demonstrate that the social channels, political institutions, and economic mechanisms through which socioeconomic impacts are distributed are of profound importance to the control and containment of potential nuclear-related socioeconomic impacts in the U.S. The lessons to be learned from the Goiania event apply to both low- and high-level radioactive waste siting decisions, to reactor siting decisions, to radioactive materials transport, to medical and technical uses of radioactive substances, and, in fact, to accidents involving any number of other materials which can injure or kill through what, to the public, are mysterious processes