Arenas for risk governance in nuclear waste management - The European Union ARGONA Project

There is a large knowledge base about governance issues but how to implement the new processes of transparency and participation is not self-evident. In other words there is a common demand for bridging the gap between research and implementation for the governance of nuclear waste management. There are legal, organizational, historical and cultural factors that set conditions which have to be understood for effective implementation. We must also understand how deliberative methods and the transparency approach relate to each other, and to formal decision-making in representative democracy. Therefore, the ARGONA project intends to demonstrate how participation and transparency link to the political and legal systems and how new approaches can be implemented in nuclear waste management programmes. For this purpose, the project includes: Studies of the context within which processes of participation and transparency take place, in order to understand how the processes can be used in the waste management programs. Studies of theory - in order to build participation and transparency on a firm ground; Case studies - to understand how different processes work; Implementation - to make a difference, learn and demonstrate. The project now approaches its finalization and it is foreseen that the reporting, in addition to 25 deliverables to the European Commission, will include a full final report, a summary final report and recommendations with proposed guidelines that can be considered by national actors of nuclear waste programmes as well as the European Commission