Assimilation of public opinions in nuclear decision-making using risk perception

A method of assimilating public opinions in the decision-making process has been devel- oped in this study. The proposed method will resolve the major shortcomings of existing decision-making models, which are de®cient in, or missing public participation during the process. In the nuclear-related decision-making process, a particular concern of the public is nuclear safety, which is numerically characterized by risk. In reality, it is the risk that each individual perceives that is very important. Hence, the public perception of risk has been employed as a key decision-making element in representing public opinions. To quantify the public perception of risk, the psychometric model is used. Psychological risk dimensions are ®rst assessed using factor analysis and a set of factors is identi®ed for optimized computation. Expert opinions formulated by a group of selected professionals and experts are then aggre- gated with the public opinions. To gather public and expert opinions, separate polls were conducted in this study. In the aggregation, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and multi- attribute utility analysis (MAUA) were employed, and for uncertainty analysis, a fuzzy set based approach was adopted. This method has been applied to analyze six options for spent fuel management in Korea for a case study. As expected, the results of the case study show that public risk perception is an important element in nuclear-related decision-making pro- cesses