Supporting people building their own response to the consequences of a nuclear accident: complexity management, trust and the Aarhus Convention

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PREPARE work package on “Information and participation of the public” has investigated the conditions and means for pertinent, reliable and trustworthy information to be made available to the public in due time and according to its needs in the course of nuclear emergency and post-emergency contexts. These works addressed three different issues: experts-to-expert interactions in an emergency and post-emergency situation, information and participation of local populations affected by a post-accident situation, and communication with traditional and social media in nuclear or radiological emergencies. These three directions of work shared common perspectives and hypotheses. The first one was the specific perspective on information and participation of the public of the Aarhus Convention (1998), according to which information and participation of he public is required in order for affected people to take action in order “to take measures to prevent or mitigate harm arising from the threat”. The second common conceptual basis is the acknowledgement of the complexity of a post-accident situation and the non-linear character of the system of information and action in such situations, which integrated a wide diversity of actors and of information providers. Finally, following Niklas Luhman's works, trust is addressed as a tool to address complexity.