Environmental protection in the management of closed uranium mining sites in France: A pluralistic expertise approach for assessing short, medium and long term options

Full text: Evolving public concern and regulations call for a growing stakeholder involvement in the protection of the public and the environment. When it comes to technically complex issues prone to diverging perceptions of risks, decision making processes can be usefully advised by the pluralistic examination of the issues by a group of institutional and non-institutional experts. Raising controversies over the remediation status of French closed uranium mining sites lead the French ministers for the environment, health, and industry to create such a pluralistic expert group (GEP) in the end of 2005, with a focus on central Limousin region. This group brings together more than 40 experts with various skills and backgrounds from public institutions, industry, local and national environmental organisations, as well as independent and foreign experts. The group is committed to three main tasks to: (a) contribute the critical analysis of the status of the sites, based on extensive technical assessments provided by the operator AREVA NC (formerly COGEMA) and by the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN); (b) provide the authorities and the operator with recommendations on long-term management and monitoring options for the facilities, with the aim of reducing the health and environmental impacts; (c) report to local stakeholders and to inform the general public. Work has been developed in three complementary areas: - improving the assessment of releases to the natural environment, - developing a more thorough assessment of health and environmental impacts; and - strengthening the principles of management and monitoring of the potential impacts on the longer term, in the light of the applying regulatory framework and the conventional wisdom on long term scenarios. The GEP, which is due to conclude its work in the end of 2009, therefore aims at demonstrating the usefulness of pluralistic expertise to develop a more comprehensive assessment of technical issues usually dealt with, and to extend the scope of analysis to more society oriented concerns, therefore providing better guidance to decision making for the minimization of long term impacts on the public and the environment. (author)