Social and ethical issues in environmental remediation projects

The contamination of environments with radionuclides can give rise to consequences that encompass far more than health risks from exposure to radiation. As experience from Chernobyl demonstrated, both the accident and remediation measures can have serious social and economic consequences. This paper presents a review of some of these issues, including their ethical relevance, and presents a check-list of socio-ethical aspects of remediation measures. The paper concludes with an overview of social remediation measures, encompassing actions that are directed towards benefits other than dose reduction (e.g., local food monitoring stations or medical check-up), or measures that require social rather than technical implementation (e.g. information centres, stakeholder dialogue).

► The social and economic consequences of nuclear accidents are often shadowed by the focus on dose.
► Remediation can be improved by paying more attention to ethical and social issues.
► Examples include countermeasures designed specifically to address social consequences.