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emmenegger_2026_safetyandparticipation
Journal article

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

DOKPE

  • 2026
Published in:
  • Safety Science. - Elsevier BV. - 2026, vol. 201, p. 107267
Safety
Risk
Hazard
Uncertainty
Nuclear waste governance
Participation
Deliberation
Science and democracy
Politics of expertise
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
  • English
Classification
Earth sciences
Other electronic version

Version en ligne

License
CC BY
Open access status
green
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/335379
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