Catrinel Turcanu

Media Reporting of Nuclear Emergencies: The Effects of Transparent Communication in a Minor Nuclear Event

IN 2008, a nuclear event occurred at Krsko nuclear power plant in Slovenia. Even though it was classified as level 0 on International Nuclear Event Scale, the transparency policy of the Slovenian nuclear safety authorities prompted it to notify the international community. This was the first time that the European Community Urgent Radiological Information Exchange (ECURIE) notification system was used outside the exercise framework. The event was reported in all major European. In this contribution, we report on a content analysis of media articles related to this event. The main research question was if a nuclear emergency generates significant media coverage, even in the case of a minor event and a transparent communication policy. The analysis included more than 200 articles from printed and spoken media in Slovenia and other countries. The analysis revealed a high‐intensity media coverage, emotional reactions and heated political discussion. The main media sources in countries with open political discussions on nuclear energy end up being the politicians, rather than resident experts.

Rethinking Vulnerability Analysis and Governance with Emphasis on a Participatory Approach

This article draws on vulnerability analysis as it emerged as a complement to classical risk analysis, and it aims at exploring its ability for nurturing risk and vulnerability governance actions. An analysis of the literature on vulnerability analysis allows us to formulate a three-fold critique: first, vulnerability analysis has been treated separately in the natural and the technological hazards fields. This separation prevents vulnerability from unleashing the full range of its potential, as it constrains appraisals into artificial categories and thus already closes down the outcomes of the analysis. Second, vulnerability analysis focused on assessment tools that are mainly quantitative, whereas qualitative appraisal is a key to assessing vulnerability in a comprehensive way and to informing policy making. Third, a systematic literature review of case studies reporting on participatory approaches to vulnerability analysis allows us to argue that participation has been important to address the above, but it remains too closed down in its approach and would benefit from embracing a more open, encompassing perspective. Therefore, we suggest rethinking vulnerability analysis as one part of a dynamic process between opening-up and closing-down strategies, in order to support a vulnerability governance framework.

Communication in nuclear emergency preparedness : a closer look at information reception

Preparedness of the general population plays a key role in the effective implementation of protective actions in case of a nuclear emergency (e.g., evacuation or intake of iodine tablets). In this context, a good communication of emergency management actors with the public along the entire cycle of preparedness-response-recovery is of paramount importance. This article aims at providing a better understanding of the way people process communicated messages and the factors that may influence how they do this. In particular, it investigates information reception as part of the information processing in precrisis communication. As a case study, the precrisis communication context was chosen, as it has been tackled to a lesser extent in the literature. The empirical data used for this study originated from a large-scale opinion survey in Belgium. One topic in this survey addressed the information campaign for the distribution of iodine tablets, in the context of preparedness for nuclear emergencies. The findings of this study demonstrate that systematic predictors have a stronger influence on information reception, as compared to heuristic predictors. The latter are only to a minor extent involved in the reception of emergency preparedness information. The hypothesized pattern--that more specific knowledge about the field relates to a higher reception of information--was confirmed for precrisis communication. Contrary to expectations, results showed that people with a high perception of radiation risks were less attentive to information about protective actions. People with little confidence in authorities were also more likely to have a low reception of information.

Insights into the reception and acceptance of risk messages: nuclear emergency communication

The objective of this paper is to test whether the effect of variables such as knowledge, attitudes, trust, risk perception, and psychometric risk characteristics changes in the different stages of risk-related information processing. To address this question, a distinction is made between two information-processing steps, reception (measured as a person’s ability to retain the information communicated) and acceptance (measured as a person’s level of agreement with the communicated information). An empirical study was conducted, using a radiological accident (2008) in Belgium as a communication case study. Face-to-face interviews were conducted on a large sample of Belgian population representative with respect to province, region, level of urbanization, gender, age, and professionally active status (N = 1031) and among the population living in vicinity of the accident (N = 104). All factors were measured on reliable scales (Cronbach’s α > .75). The reception–acceptance model was used to produce new insights into risk communication. The results demonstrate that knowledge was the driving factor only for the reception of risk messages, while heuristic predictors such as psychometric risk characteristics, attitudes, and trust were most influential for the acceptance of risk messages. It is discussed how the results will facilitate a more thorough understanding of information processing and how they could be used to design more focused risk communication strategies.

Public participation processes related to nuclear research installations: what are the driving factors behind participation intention?

This article addresses organised public participation processes related to installations for nuclear research. The aim was to determine predictors that could provide an empirical insight into the motivations underlying people’s intended level of involvement. The results highlight attitude towards participation and moral norm as the strongest predictors for participation intention. Other significant predictors were time constraints, attitude towards nuclear energy, subjective and descriptive norms, and knowledge. An opposing relationship is noted between participation intention and attitude towards nuclear energy. At the same time, people who are more knowledgeable about the nuclear domain seem more willing to get involved. The analysis also revealed that financial benefits do not influence people’s intended involvement in participation processes related to nuclear research installations. The results reported here are based on empirical data from a large-scale public opinion survey (N = 1020) carried out in Belgium during May–June 2011.

“How are you vulnerable?”: Using participation for vulnerability analysis in emergency planning

Scientists in many fields of research have developed models, theories, and concepts attempting to grasp and manage dangers that are often difficult to imagine. Among the different perspectives, the science and technology studies (STS) vulnerability approach seems very promising. Relying on a constructivist paradigm, it is based on an inductive collection and analysis of a wide range of factors, with a particular focus on cultural factors and actual day-to-day practices. In this paper, we present the roots of this approach and we display findings based on three case studies exploring emergency planning in three different contexts (a city near a SEVESO plant, a school near a nuclear plant, and a city confronted to multiple catastrophic scenarios). The cases studies were realized by conducting three Focus Groups with different types of stakeholders (citizens, teachers, firemen, decision-makers, etc.). After presenting the results of the case studies, we discuss how stakeholders’ participation can inform such type of vulnerability analysis in the context of emergency planning. We argue that participation fosters a deep understanding of actual safety governance practices which allows innovative results to emerge as well as it initiates a learning process among the participants. It contributes to questioning the relations between decision-makers, experts, and citizens. It has the potential of bypassing the positivist and quantitative rationale of safety, and thus, of redefining the vulnerability governance. As a conclusion, we question the role of such STS vulnerability approach within the actual vulnerability governance.

On the Constructive Role of Multi-Criteria Analysis in Nuclear Emergency Management

In this chapter we argue that multi-criteria analysis, as an iterative process, can be a useful instrument for improving decision-making in complex societal problems. As a possible application, we focus on the management of contaminated milk following an accidental radioactive release to the environment. We describe a stakeholder process for the development of a multi-criteria decision aid model and we show that the related problem structuring has led to the exploration of some new research topics, in order to gain more insight in the factors that can contribute to a successful countermeasure strategy. Such results have on the one hand a clarifying role in a comprehensive multi-criteria analysis and, on the other hand, they highlight practical implications for decision-making, including communication on potential countermeasure strategies both between various stakeholders and with the general public.

Multi-criteria analysis: a tool for going beyond monetization?

Multicriteria analysis (MCA) has emerged from the field of operational research and management science as an appraisal tool able to handle complex multifactorial decision problems that affect several stakeholders and where an equitable, inclusive and transparent decision process is sought. According to the International MultiCriteria Decision Society (IMCDM 2013), multicriteria analysis dates back to the 1950s when analysts started to consider multiple objectives for optimality conditions in nonlinear programming – socalled ‘Goal Programming’. Since then, a multitude of MCA methods have been developed (some of which will be discussed below) and their use has gone far beyond the realm of operational and business research, as we will demonstrate later in the chapter. To assess the worth of different policy options, MCA aggregates the results on multiple evaluation criteria into indicators of the overall performance of options without enforcing the transformation of criteria and their results to a common – what is in many other tools a monetary – scale. In its role as a decision aiding, rather than a decision making tool, MCA seeks to render the evaluation of policy options transparent to the decision maker and other stakeholders, instead of ‘replacing the decision maker with a mathematical model’ (Roy and Vincke 1981, p. 208). MCA thereby seeks to promote ‘good decision making’ (Keeney and Raiffa 1972, p. 65) by offering a clearer illustration of the different inputs that typically go into a policy formulation process, and by dealing in a structured way with multiple, conflicting objectives and value systems. In particular, the problemstructuring phase of the policy formulation process – during which the goals of policy, the options to be evaluated and the criteria according to which this is to be done are defined – is recognized as a useful learning opportunity to which MCA can contribute (Marttunen and Hämäläinen 1995). In this phase, MCA stimulates discussion between the various stakeholders (French et al. 1993) and helps decision makers to

Risk communication in nuclear emergency management: an experiment with media news

Communication plays a prevailing role in nuclear emergency management, and media becomes the principal information tool and bridge between the general public and the emergency management teams. In this paper we investigate the influence of communication in a hypothetical nuclear event causing radiological contamination in the food chain. For research purposes, we use TV news to measure the communication effect on the public acceptance of food legal norms and of management options for the food chain. The results show that, although newsworthy, one instance of news will be mostly interpreted as support of already existing opinions and can only influence opinions that are not directly connected to personal life. An association is found between the influence of the communicated news and some socio-demographic variables: region and habitat. Risk perception also proves influential: a higher risk perception is associated with a lower occurrence of change in response after the communication.