Efforts to Risk Communication at Mizunami Underground Research Laboratory

Osawa, Hideaki  ; Matsui, Hideki

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency had offered visitor's tour to the underground and surface facilities of the Mizunami Underground Research Laboratory (URL) at the Tono Geoscience Center in order to promote the understanding of the R&D of geological disposal technology and geological disposal for the public. We analyzed questionnaires distributed after visiting these facilities from FY2010 to FY2019, except for FY2016, in the hopes of using risk communication for geological disposal. Results suggest that visiting these facilities is a valuable experience to understand geological disposal because some people, knew even just a little bit about it, have positively evaluated appropriateness of geological disposal by a tour of the Mizunami URL. While some people who have negatively evaluated safety of geological disposal are highly interested in issues of nuclear power and site selection, some people who have positively evaluated safety of geological disposal are highly interested in public understanding of geological disposal. Furthermore, both these groups believe that long-term safety is a technical issue.