Springer Decision Making for Complex Socio-Technical Systems: Robustness from Lessons Learned in Long-Term Radioactive Waste Governance: 42 (Environment & Policy, 42)

Product Description The long-term governance of radioactive waste continues to be a major complex and unresolved socio-technical issue. Previous technocratic approaches have so far failed. This empirically based study provides a novel approach to complementing technical expertise and economic/political power with stakeholder involvement. Inclusive participation is shown to be an asset that strengthens the processes, enhances robustness and facilitates sustainable decision making, thus adding value for all involved. Review From the reviews: "Flüeler provides one of the most extensive bibliographies, which he conveniently organizes into a number of useful categories for those who are conducting research in this area. His extensive experience with how this issue was dealt with in Switzerland over a 50-y period along with examples from a variety of other countries is well documented. … This text would be valuable for those specialists who are directly involved in dealing with the issue of radioactive waste … ." (Stewart, Health Physics, Vol. 93 (2), 2007) From the Back Cover The long-term governance of radioactive waste continues to be a major complex and contentious socio-technical issue worldwide. Traditionally, it has been considered as mainly a challenge to scientists and engineers to develop technical "solutions" to specific problems. But increasingly these narrow solutions have been enlarged by wider societal considerations such as ethics, public involvement, control and retrievability – needs that have in the meanwhile been recognised by the nuclear community, at least in a general way. In this book, we analyse motives for a broad discourse as well as suggest prerequisites to launch it. The author attempts to give a novel, empirically based and technically sound treatment of fundamental issues in long-term management and governance. Written to be accessible to a wide selection of the interested public, the study proposes a combination of technical design issues, analysis methods and institutional backup in a dynamic procedure, and with involvement at all levels of political, commercial and social life.