Assessing the social effects of repository siting

The identification and measurement of social impacts resulting from nuclear waste repository development represent some difficult problems since many social impacts are difficult to quantify and there have been no precedents to guide researchers on what the major effects or their relative importance will be. This chapter discusses different types of social impacts, describes and compares three types of social assessment methods (survey methods, community structure analyses, and participant observation analysis) which can be used to measure them, and presents a means of integrating the three into an holistic assessment approach. 1 table