ABSTRACT
The management of nuclear emergencies involves complex decisions dealing with high stakes and potential far-reaching consequences. Since the hazard is due to radioactivity, the decisions taken aim firstly at reducing the radiological health risks to people and impact on the environment. In practice, there may be important drawbacks associated with potential countermeasures: additional health risks, high economic and environmental costs, anxiety or social disruption. Since the Chernobyl accident, the importance of non-radiological aspects received increasing attention in international research projects on off-site emergency management (French et al. 1992; French et al. 1993; Hämäläinen et al. 1998; Hämäläinen et al. 2000) and, more recently, in the European Commission project STRATEGY for site restoration (Howard et al. 2005) and the FARMING project for extending the stakeholders’ involvement for countermeasures in the food chain (Nisbet et al. 2005).
