Fostering a Durable Relationship between a Radioactive Waste Management Facility and its Host Community. Adding Value through Design and Process. 2015 Edition

In the field of long-term radioactive waste management, repository projects last from decades to centuries. Such projects will inevitably have an effect on the host community from the planning stage to the end of construction and beyond. The key to a long-lasting and positive relationship between a facility and its host community is ensuring that solutions are reached together throughout the entire process. The sustainability of radioactive waste management solutions can potentially be achieved through design and implementation of a facility that provides added cultural and amenity value, as well as economic opportunities, to the local community. This edition of Fostering a Durable Relationship between a Waste Management Facility and its Host Community: Adding Value through Design and Process highlights new innovations in siting processes and in facility design - functional, cultural and physical - from different countries, which could be of added value to host communities and their sites in the short to long term. These new features are examined from the perspective of sustainability, with a focus on increasing the likelihood that people will both understand the facility and its functions, and remember over very long timescales what is located at the site. This 2015 update by the NEA Forum on Stakeholder Confidence will be beneficial in designing paths forward for local or regional communities, as well as for national radioactive waste management programmes. Section 2 of this report summarises the value of developing a sustainable relationship between a community and a radioactive waste management facility through added cultural and amenity value. In Section 3, the report identifies design considerations - functional, cultural and physical - that may help facilities to fit into the community in a sustainable manner. Each design feature is illustrated with examples. Section 4 discusses the benefits that may be gained from the very process of planning radioactive waste management projects which target sustainability and quality of life. These benefits - capacity building and local image refinement - should be understood as cultural added value in and of themselves. Tables are drawn from FSC publications as recent as 2014 (as well as other NEA publications), a literature review, specific interviews and stakeholder responses to a questionnaire. Numerous members of the FSC and other stakeholders, including local communities, provided input to the 2007 study. They showed that stakeholders can identify long-term cultural and amenity value which could be added by a radioactive waste management facility, as well as the economic opportunities to be seized in their contexts. Annex 1 acknowledges the continued contribution of the many stakeholders who gave detailed input to the 2007 version of this study; Annex 2 comprises a glossary of terms and identifies publicly accessible references. (authors)