Chapter 6: OECD/NEA Stakeholder Engagement

Radioactive waste management requires not only technical safety but also procedures through which the basis for decisions can be explained and examined. Stakeholder engagement is the set of activities that enables residents and other interested parties to understand the characteristics of the waste, the way a facility is managed and the long-term responsibilities involved, and to bring their concerns into the decision-making process. The WIA-ENE-026 principles of transparency, traceability, scientific basis and intergenerational responsibility provide the informational foundation for these activities.

The OECD/NEA Forum on Stakeholder Confidence (FSC) is an international forum for sharing experience on the societal aspects of radioactive waste management and for exploring effective dialogue with the public to strengthen confidence in decision-making processes. This chapter treats that international discussion and the data requirements of WIA-ENE-026 v1.0 separately. The first part (6.1 to 6.3) covers the purpose of engagement, siting procedures and risk communication; the second part (6.4 to 6.8) explains how the data, API and reporting requirements of WIA-ENE-026 v1.0 support them. The engagement procedures and the methods for recording comments are presented as examples of operational design that an organization may adopt.

6.1 The Purpose of Engagement and the Meaning of Confidence

Questions about a radioactive waste project are not limited to radiation measurements. Residents also ask on what basis the safety of a facility was judged, how alternatives were compared, what burdens fall on the host community, how the operator will respond if operating conditions change, and what responsibilities are passed on to future generations. Engagement procedures are designed to link these questions to technical review and decision-making, and to make visible the issues that have not yet been answered.

Confidence and consensus are different concepts. People can trust an organization that discloses information conscientiously and still oppose a particular site or project proposal. The fact that engagement took place is only a record of engagement; support or consensus is a separate outcome that must be established on its own terms.

Confidence

A judgement that an organization will explain information accurately, honour its commitments and responsibilities, and respond appropriately when problems arise.

Consensus

A conclusion jointly accepted by the parties on a specific issue or decision. The subject and scope of the consensus, and any remaining disagreement, should be stated together.

Satisfaction

An assessment of a particular experience, such as a briefing session, the provision of information or a consultation process. It should be clear what the satisfaction survey actually measured.

Approval rate

The proportion of respondents or voters who express support for a specific proposal. It can be interpreted only when the question wording, the surveyed population, the timing and the denominator are known.

These indicators cannot substitute for one another. Reading satisfaction with a briefing session as an approval rate for hosting a facility, or converting the number of engagement events into a level of confidence, changes their meaning. When approval figures from different regions are compared, differences in the question, the population, the nature of the project and the survey method make it difficult to isolate the effect of the procedure. Any discussion of how an engagement procedure influenced outcomes requires comparative data for the same question and the same population, together with an analysis of other contributing factors.

6.2 Siting and the Handling of Comments

6.2.1 Scope of the Decision and Participation Rights

An engagement plan for siting first distinguishes what is being decided at the current stage. Taking part in a candidate site investigation, reviewing its results and supporting the hosting of a facility are each different expressions of will. Explaining the scope and effect of participation in the investigation in advance prevents that participation from being read as consent to every subsequent decision.

PHASE-2 §10.3 (implementation roadmap) of WIA-ENE-026 v1.0 places candidate site identification, the launch of stakeholder engagement and, as a deliverable, a public engagement plan together in the geological repository planning stage (months 13 to 15). In other words, engagement is set to begin at the same time as site investigation. The procedural description that follows is an example of operational design that can be used in preparing this plan; it is separate from any official FSC classification or the statutory procedures of a particular country. The plan specifies the alternatives under consideration, the conditions already fixed, the matters that can be changed through comments, and the final decision-maker. It also separates the role of conducting the safety review from the role of gathering local views, because judgements of technical suitability and expressions of local will rest on different kinds of evidence.

Who should take part is determined by who is affected by the decision. Concerns about the living environment around a facility may differ from concerns about waste transport, and the views of representatives must be ascertained separately from the positions of individual residents. Defining which issues are addressed through consultation with representatives and which through individual submissions makes it easier to identify where comments may be lost.

6.2.2 Purposes and Limits of Engagement Methods

The engagement method is chosen according to the outcome required. A forum for open questions and answers, a process in which participants review sufficient material and then draft recommendations, and a procedure to ascertain views on a specific proposal each serve different functions. The table below illustrates these differences; organizations select and combine methods to suit the nature of the decision.

The legal effect, scope of application and conditions for using each method are to be confirmed in the relevant legislation and procedural documents. Matters such as the size of committees, the number of candidate sites, the duration of investigations, voting requirements and the number of engagement rounds at each stage fall within the domain of national legislation and project plans; the role of WIA-ENE-026 v1.0 is to provide the format of the technical data needed for those decisions.

6.2.3 Linking Comments to Decisions

The comment-handling record links the issue raised, the material used in reviewing it, the person responsible for the response, the review outcome and any follow-up action. If a comment led to a change in the design or management plan, the record explains what changed. If it was not adopted, the reason and the basis for that judgement are recorded; if a decision was deferred for lack of data, its unresolved status is made explicit.

Even when comments are grouped by common theme, differing conditions and reasons for opposition are preserved as they were expressed. Comments tied to later operating conditions, such as groundwater monitoring, the scope of waste accepted and long-term management responsibility, in particular, must remain available for re-examination when the relevant conditions change. The record format and work procedures for this are set by each organization in its own design documents.

6.3 Risk Communication and Information Disclosure

6.3.1 Explaining What a Measurement Means

Risk communication explains not only a number but also what that number represents. As the WIA-ENE-026 v1.0 glossary defines, the becquerel (Bq) is the unit of activity, and 1 Bq corresponds to one disintegration per second (1 s⁻¹). Dose rate is dose per unit time and is distinct from cumulative dose. The total activity of a waste package, the dose rate at a container surface and the dose rate measured in the surrounding environment differ in what is measured and under what conditions, so each is presented separately with its meaning stated.

Comparing an instantaneous or interval dose rate with an annual effective dose requires information on time, location, exposure pathways and calculation assumptions. Expressing a container-surface measurement as residents' annual exposure, or extending a measurement at a single point to the state of the whole area, goes beyond what the data can explain. Published material should state the measurement location, period, units and scope of application.

The time reference of the data must also be distinguished. In the package structure, radiologicalData.totalActivity.referenceDate is the reference date of the activity value. The time of an individual measurement is found in the measurement record, not in the package timestamp. The IoT monitoring structure of WIA-ENE-026 v1.0 (Standard §7.2) gives each entry in measurements under sensors its own timestamp. When values with different reference dates are compared, changes over time and whether the data have been updated should be checked.

6.3.2 Uncertainty and the Limits of the Data

Measurement uncertainty is information needed to interpret a measurement result. In the package data structure, radiologicalData.uncertainties holds activityUncertainty and doseRateUncertainty as percentages, expressing the uncertainty of activity and dose rate. When environmental monitoring data are published, where the uncertainty information for those data is recorded should be confirmed separately.

Published documents distinguish measured data, calculated results and long-term predictions. Measured data need their observation conditions, calculated results need their input values and calculation methods, and long-term predictions need their assumptions and scope of application. In explanations of post-closure safety in particular, current observations are shown separately from predictions about future conditions.

A gap in measurements does not mean that the measured value is low or zero. Before it is explained, the cause should be established: no measurement was taken, data transmission failed, or the data were omitted during publication. Filling a gap in published data with an arbitrary value erases the boundary between actual observation and estimation, so wherever an estimate is used, that fact and the method of derivation are stated.

6.3.3 Structure of Published Material

Explanatory material for residents combines a summary from which the main results can be understood with information that allows the underlying data to be traced. Linking the data source, the facility and period covered, units, missing intervals and revision history makes it possible to answer later questions on the same evidential basis. Even when explanations are written in plain language, the scope and uncertainty of the original data are preserved.

PHASE-3 §9 (regulatory reporting) of WIA-ENE-026 v1.0 sets out the structure of the annual radiological environmental report: summary, facility description and operations, description of the monitoring programme, tables and graphs of results, dose assessment, quality assurance summary and conclusions. Results are presented as means and ranges by location, comparisons with background levels and regulatory limits, and the statistical significance of differences. The distribution channels for automated reporting (PHASE-3 §9.4) include electronic submission to the regulator together with posting on a public website and notification of stakeholders. Public material for residents can take this structure as its starting point, while the specific scope and frequency of disclosure are set according to the obligations applicable to the facility and its operating policy. Data used for national reporting and material disclosed to the public differ in purpose and scope, so each is reviewed separately.

International conventions also require information to be made available. In Articles 6 and 13, the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management (hereafter the Joint Convention) requires each Contracting Party to establish procedures for making information on the safety of proposed spent fuel management facilities and radioactive waste management facilities available to members of the public. Managing facility data in a standardized format helps keep the basis for providing such information consistent.

6.4 Data and APIs Supporting Engagement

6.4.1 Retrieval Functions Defined by the Standard

WIA-ENE-026 v1.0 defines the data structures and APIs for handling waste packages, storage facilities and monitoring data (Standard §4, §10). The full list of APIs is covered in Section 2.8; here only the retrieval paths used in explanations to stakeholders are summarized. These functions can be used to find the evidence needed to answer residents' questions. Data retrieval functions are tools that supply evidence; the adequacy of an engagement procedure and the consent of residents are judged through separate procedures.

The following are hypothetical request examples using the paths and query parameters of WIA-ENE-026 v1.0 §10.1.2. The sensor identifier and dates are example values and do not represent measurement results from an actual facility or the operation of a live service.

GET /monitoring/readings?sensorId=SENS-GAMMA-001&startTime=2025-12-25T00:00:00Z&endTime=2025-12-25T23:59:59Z
GET /monitoring/alerts?severity=alarm&status=resolved

The first request illustrates retrieving data for a specified sensor and period. If the results are processed into a public graph, the original query conditions and aggregation method are managed alongside it. The second request retrieves alerts whose severity is alarm and whose status is resolved. Because resolved indicates the management status of an alert, the safety of the facility as a whole, or whether residents' concerns have been addressed, must be explained on separate grounds.

WIA-ENE-026 v1.0 §10.3 defines the webhook events package.created, package.moved, monitoring.alarm, dose.exceeded, inspection.due and safeguards.report. An organization can select from these the events that residents need to be informed of and design a procedure linking internal notifications to public notices. Recording the time of the event, the related data and the person responsible for follow-up explanation makes it possible to answer later questions on the same basis.

6.4.2 Linking Engagement Records to Technical Data

WIA-ENE-026 v1.0 does not define a dedicated data schema, enumerations or API for stakeholder engagement records. An organization that needs functions such as evaluating engagement plans, indexing differences in risk perception or grading engagement maturity prepares the definition of those functions and the basis for their validation in its own documents.

An organization designing its own engagement records can, where relevant, link them to technical data through packageId or facilityId. This linking method, together with the fields, versioning and access rights of the engagement records, is specified in the organization's separate design documents. A package's traceability.chainOfCustody is a structure that records the chain of custody (hand-over and acceptance records) of the waste by time, event, location and responsible person; residents' comments or signatures are managed as separate engagement records.

Organization-specific extensions are described separately from the data defined in the standard. Before engagement records are exchanged with other organizations or used in international reporting, the parties must first agree on what is exchanged, what the fields mean and the conversion rules. Only then can the same record be read with the same meaning.

6.5 Community Support and Ongoing Consultation

Discussions of community support and compensation explain the relationship between the burdens imposed by a facility and the support offered, and distinguish what was promised from what has actually been delivered. The scale of support and the basis for the facility's safety are separate matters, and acceptance of a support package and consent to every operating condition must each be confirmed. The types of compensation, amounts paid and procedures for operating funds are determined by national legislation and project plans.

An organization's operational design can record, in linked form, the source of funds, the recipients, the conditions of payment, the decision-making authority and the record of disbursement. For commitments that must be honoured over long periods, changes in conditions and the succession of responsibility are also made verifiable. Such records are needed to explain when and on what basis a support commitment changed; they do not replace the statutory support scheme of any particular country.

Ongoing consultation continues to address environmental measurement results, changes in facility operating conditions and the handling status of previously raised questions. Meeting records note the version of the material used in explanations and the basis for decisions. If an answer has been revised, the earlier answer and the reason for the change are presented together to keep the record continuous.

The membership and meeting frequency of a consultative body are set by the organization and the community according to the scope of engagement and operating circumstances. The number of meetings and of attendees are indicators of the scale of activity; representativeness, the adequacy of explanations and the resolution of disagreements are confirmed separately through the content of the meetings and the outcomes of follow-up.

6.6 Security, Personal Information and Long-Term Records

6.6.1 Access Rights and Scope of Disclosure

Security requirements such as transport security, encryption, authentication methods (including digital signatures) and audit log retention are summarized in Section 4.8.1. This section addresses points to note when those requirements are applied to public information for residents and to engagement records.

When these requirements are applied to public information for residents, internal access rights are distinguished from disclosure rights. For example, the detailed package retrieval in Standard §10.1.1 is intended for authenticated users. In preparing public material, rather than exporting entire internal objects as they are, a separate processing step is established to review what is needed for the purpose of disclosure and what information must be protected.

Engagement comments may include personally identifiable information such as names, contact details and signatures. The operational design separates the substance of a comment from the information needed to make contact, and sets the purpose of use, the scope of access and the retention period for each. The published version is reviewed so that the substance of the comment is preserved while unnecessary identifying information is not exposed.

6.6.2 Distinguishing Technical Protection from Accountability

Encryption protects the confidentiality of information, and digital signatures help verify whether signed information has been altered and who signed it. The truthfulness of a comment, the voluntariness of a signature and the lawfulness of personal information processing are confirmed separately, through procedures and management accountability. Compliance with the Personal Information Protection Act, a statute of the Republic of Korea, is judged against the processing as a whole, including the purpose of collection, consent, retention period and access control, so technical safeguards are treated as one element of that judgement. Where a system is operated in another country, the personal data legislation of that jurisdiction applies.

The ten-year retention requirement for audit logs applies to audit logs. Audit logs, records of technical decisions and personally identifiable information serve different purposes, so their retention scopes are distinguished. The design separates the evidence that must be kept over the long term from the information to be handled under the processing policy once it is no longer needed.

6.6.3 Records the Next Generation Can Read

Reflecting intergenerational responsibility in records management requires preserving meaning as well as files. Keeping the alternatives considered at the time, the units and reference dates of the data, the terminology used, the reasons for decisions and unresolved issues together allows later staff to re-examine the judgements made. When an organization or information system changes, it should be confirmed that the relationship between originals and revisions, together with identifiers and explanatory documents, is handed over.

Whether past consent or consultation can be applied unchanged to new conditions must also be examined. If what is stored or the facility's operating conditions have changed, the scope covered by the earlier discussion is compared with the scope of the current decision. The purpose of records is not merely to repeat past conclusions but to explain the conditions under which those conclusions held.

6.7 National Reporting and International Peer Review

WIA-ENE-026 v1.0 §9.3 (international treaties and conventions) lists, together with the London Convention and London Protocol and the Basel Convention, the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, and describes it as “submission of a national report every three years” and peer review. Turning to the text of the Convention, the Joint Convention was adopted on 5 September 1997 by a diplomatic conference convened by the IAEA; Article 30 provides that the interval between review meetings shall not exceed three years, and Article 32 requires each Contracting Party to submit, for each review meeting, a national report on the measures taken to implement each of the obligations of the Convention. National reports are therefore submitted for review meetings held at intervals of not more than three years, and the actual timing of submission follows the schedule of the review meetings. This is a reporting and review system at the national level.

Facility operating records can serve as material supporting national reporting, but they are not the same document as a national report. National reporting, regulatory reporting by a facility and disclosure to residents differ in who submits, who the intended readers are and what they cover. The national reporting obligation under the Joint Convention is an obligation of the Contracting Parties; the disclosure obligations of individual operators are to be confirmed in domestic legislation and licence conditions.

When facility data are reflected in a national report, the facilities covered, the reporting period, the reference dates of the data and their review status must be aligned. The same figure can yield different results if the scope of aggregation differs, so the conversion from raw data to the tables and explanations of the report is made traceable. If explanations relating to engagement are included, the format and meaning of those records are stated within the report.

Separately from the review meetings of the Joint Convention, the IAEA operates peer review services. The Integrated Regulatory Review Service (IRRS) assesses a country's regulatory framework against IAEA safety standards, and the Operational Safety Review Team (OSART) compares safety practices in the commissioning and operational phases of nuclear power plants with IAEA safety standards. ARTEMIS (Integrated Review Service for Radioactive Waste and Spent Fuel Management, Decommissioning and Remediation) is an integrated expert peer review service for radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel management, decommissioning and remediation programmes. The scope and findings of an individual review are to be confirmed in the relevant review documents; having undergone a review, conforming to WIA data requirements and reaching agreement with residents are separate matters.

6.8 Application Example and Verification

6.8.1 Example: Linking a Resident's Question to Technical Data

The following is a hypothetical example that assumes residents have asked for an explanation of a data gap in a published environmental dose rate graph. It does not represent an actual event at any specific facility or any record of handling. Its purpose is to show the path from a question to technical data and on to follow-up explanation.

1. Identify what the question is about. Identify the measurement location and period of the graph and the sensor that supplied the data, and determine whether residents are asking about the cause of the gap or about environmental conditions during the gap.
2. Check the underlying data. Compare the results of a query to GET /monitoring/readings using sensorId, startTime and endTime with the data used in the public graph. Check the sensor's calibration record in the calibration item of the monitoring structure (lastCalibration, nextCalibration), and look up other inspection records separately in the relevant documents.
3. Explain the facts established and the remaining uncertainty. Distinguish whether the raw data exist but were dropped during processing for publication, or whether the raw data themselves are missing. Until the cause is confirmed, explain only what has been established, and label conjectures such as a communications failure or sensor fault as conjectures.
4. Record corrections and follow-up explanations. If the published material was corrected, record what was changed and why; for questions that need further checking, assign a responsible person and a date for follow-up explanation. These work records are maintained under the organization's own engagement management procedures.

This process goes beyond a record that a resident's question was merely received: it shows on what basis, and how far, the question was answered. Not concealing that the data are insufficient, and leaving the matter open for further checking, is also part of accountability for explanations.

6.8.2 Implemented Functions and the Scope of Verification

Implementation verification examines separately the handling of API requests and responses, the conversion between raw data and published material, and the comment-handling procedure. For example, it can check that data excluded by a query filter are not mistaken in the published version for missing data, and that units and reference dates are preserved through processing. Such checks are a way of reviewing the quality of data processing; the quality of the engagement procedure itself is examined separately against the criteria in the next paragraph.

A review of engagement quality examines whether the basis for answers can be traced, whether unresolved questions remain, and whether the matters reflected in decisions, and the reasons others were not reflected, are explained. Managing these items as a checklist makes it possible to identify gaps in explanation and points for improvement without converting them into a separate score. Engagement records help present and future generations verify the basis and responsibilities of safety management, and they must preserve technical safety review and the expressed will of the parties each in its own meaning.

Chapter Summary

• Confidence, consensus, satisfaction and approval rate are distinct concepts; each indicator is interpreted on its own, with its question, population and timing stated.
• Participation in site investigation is distinguished from consent to host a facility, and both how comments were reflected in decisions and why others were not are kept traceable. The PHASE-2 roadmap starts stakeholder engagement at the same stage as repository site investigation.
• Risk communication explains the measured object, units, location, reference date and uncertainty together; data gaps are shown as gaps, and estimates are disclosed together with their method of derivation.
• The package, facility and monitoring APIs and webhook events of WIA-ENE-026 v1.0 provide the evidential basis for explanations, while the format of engagement records is set by each organization in its design documents.
• The PHASE-3 structure for the annual radiological environmental report and its channels for public website posting and stakeholder notification are a starting point for public material for residents. The resolved status of an alert is managed separately from the progress of handling objections.
• Encryption, digital signatures and audit logs support the protection of records, while the lawfulness of personal information processing is judged against the processing as a whole.
• The Joint Convention provides for review meetings at intervals of not more than three years and for national reports by Contracting Parties, and requires that safety information on proposed facilities be made available to the public. IRRS, ARTEMIS and OSART are IAEA peer review services.
• Implementation verification checks the traceability of data processing; a review of engagement quality checks the links between questions, answers and follow-up actions.

References

WIA Standards — WIA-ENE-026 — Chapter 6. Hongik Ingan (弘益人間) — Benefit All Humanity.