Modern 2020- "Engaging Local Stakeholders in Research and Development of Monitoring Systems for High-Level Radioactive Waste Repositories"

Modern2020 is an international, EU funded research project that runs from June 2015 until June 2019.
The project focuses on research, development and demonstration of monitoring strategies and
technologies for high-level radioactive waste repositories. The project starts from the premise that
monitoring inside these deep underground repositories has the potential to contribute to technical and
social needs related to the management and disposal of high-level radioactive waste and spent fuel.
This research project has the ambition to establish a common ground for monitoring activities within
the EU, by developing and implementing a repository operational monitoring programme, driven by
safety case needs and taking into account the requirements of specific national context, as well as
public stakeholder expectations. One of the main challenges of this project is to include public
stakeholders’ expectations as soon as possible in the program. In other words, citizen stakeholders
should be able to criticize, to ask questions and to comment on every phase of the research and
development monitoring programs. In this light, as part of WP5, a Local Stakeholders Workshop was
organised from September 12th to 14th in Antwerp.