The intersection of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) storage and community trust: analyzing radiological risk perceptions.

The continuously increasing demand for electricity urges one of the base loads in the United States Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) to run and produce spent nuclear fuels (SNFs). The nuclear power industry in the U.S. is managing the SNFs in dry casks at the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations (ISFISI).

North Carolina State University, a member of the Department of Energy's consortia, is partnering with nonprofit organizations Native Nuclear and Mothers for Nuclear to gather information through workshops. The Collaboration-Based Siting project has been collecting information on the community's interest or disagreement about the radiological risk of ISFISIs. The Wilcoxon Signed Rank (WSR) test determined the p-value and estimated the hypotheses. Participants in the workshop completed two surveys at the beginning and after the workshop.

In the Oklahoma City and San Diego cases, the consortia members conducted two case analyses, and several intriguing findings were collected from the research. The team found that the community is interested in the permanence of storage, the cost of interim storage, concerns about the government and corporate overreach, and considering nuclear energy as a clean energy source compared to other renewable sources. The investigation will discuss community engagement and decision-making for radiological risk, assessing the p-value from the WSR analysis.