Safety and participation: citizens challenging the socio-technical divide in nuclear waste governance in Switzerland

Emmenegger, Rony

doi:10.1016/j.ssci.2026.107267

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Journal article

Safety and participation: citizens challenging the socio-technical divide in nuclear waste governance in Switzerland

DOKPE

Emmenegger, Rony ORCID University of Fribourg

2026

Published in:

Safety Science. - Elsevier BV. - 2026, vol. 201, p. 107267

English Since the 1990s, governments have increasingly promoted participatory nuclear waste governance that involve affected communities and encourage collaboration between experts and laypeople also in the evaluation of long-term safety and risk. However, research shows that a deep socio-technical divide persists, as expert authority continues to dominate problem framing and decision-making. As a result, citizens are often marginalized despite formal commitments to participation in radioactive-waste governance. Against this backdrop, this paper scrutinizes how the lay Safety Panel in the region of Zurich North-East (ZNO) has navigated its involvement in the techno-scientific evaluation of safety during the nuclear-waste governance process. Based on document analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, this paper traces how lay panelists have immersed themselves in the techno-scientific domain of safety and how they have come to advocate a broader consideration of safety as a socio-technical process. Strategically articulated in the course of the participatory process, this enabled the Safety Panel to challenge the institutional power relations in which safety is defined, assessed and evaluated, and to negotiate its own role in deliberating safety at the science-society interface. On this basis, this paper contributes to an inherently political understanding of safety governance, or the ways in which safety discourses can either consolidate or contest the socio-technical divide between experts and citizens in nuclear waste governance processes.

Faculty

Faculté des sciences et de médecine

Department

Département de Géosciences

Language