Social science and nuclear waste management: building confidence, legitimizing decisions or increasing comprehension?

The societal evaluation of the risks associated with nuclear technology has now continued for over fifty years. Different actors, such as anti-nuclear movements and the nuclear industry, have tried to establish a dominant position in the debate. However, despite the vast amount of research done in technical and natural sciences, debate over the issue continues, and there is not consensus in sight. For the opponents of nuclear technology, the risks are much too high to accept, and for the proponents the risks are controllable and thus at an acceptable level. For a sociologist, it is a challenging task to study this kind of a controversy where each party claims they are absolutely right and that they are the only ones who hold the truth about an issue. What does the disagreement indicate? Why have not the parties found a solution, or a reasonable compromise? Which of them holds the truth? Is there a truth in this issue? By focusing on these kinds of questions, the presentations discuss the role of social science in Finnish nuclear waste management system? It will give a short overview of the way social science was integrated to the process of developing and planning waste management and describe the issues, which have studied in public sector's research programme. It will be argued that in building confidence an important task is to increase overall comprehension of the parties through applied social science research but also through profound theoretical research. (author)