Remediation of TENORM residues: risk communication in practice

Despite several decades of studies on the risk assessment and risk perception of ionising radiation, risk management of radioactive materials remains a challenging issue. This is also true for wastes containing technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials. The present work focuses on the underlying reasons for communication problems between experts and affected members of the public. Exploring the case of a German remediation site with residual radioactive contamination in a residential area, the experts’ as well as the residents’ perspectives were studied by conducting qualitative interviews. Our results indicate a variety of reasons for communication problems on different levels of risk management and risk communication: the regulatory, the communicative and the moral levels. In the observed case, four salient causes for problems in risk communication and risk management emerged: the mismatch in understanding the residents’ values, the issue of risk communication in an unforeseen situation, the problem of the regulatory gap between radiation protection and soil protection in regard to legacies with naturally occurring radioactive material in Germany, and the challenge of communicating a highly complex scientific issue to non-scientists. Moreover, one (at least partial) solution could be seen: the introduction of an external mediator. The results indicate that coordination of different health and environment protection disciplines—in this case radiation protection relating to soil protection—is possible and urgently needed. The opportunity to put, at least natural, radioactive material in line with other conventional industrial materials should be taken.