Toward Bridging a Gap Between Experts and Local Community Through Repetitive Dialogue Forum

Establishment of mutual trust between experts and public is an issue of critical importance for better nuclear policy design in Japan. A research project named Facilitation of Risk-based Decision-Making on Technical Systems (FRIDMATS) bas been launched in 2002 to meet the need. In the first phase of the project, efforts have been focused on developing a risk perception model of public to be employed as a reference for improved risk communication. A series of dialogue forums have been held in municipalities where nuclear facilities are sited to obtain guidelines for the model development. Current status of the forum and summary of the acquired information are described in this paper