| Summary/Abstract |
Radioactive waste management is a demanding problem that is raising tensions and misunderstanding amongst the general public, experts, and policy makers in a number of countries. An investigation into the public opinion, legal framework, policy, and expert involvement on the matter of radioactive waste management has been performed in Croatia. The analysis is based on the 2016 national public opinion survey on nuclear energy and radioactive waste, and intensive examination of the changes made in Croatian legislation on radioactive waste management in the last few years. The results of the analysis indicate that hasty political decisions accompanied by a poor information sharing process and an initial low level of public knowledge on radioactive waste in general, leads to strong tensions among stakeholders. It was also shown that the role of experts and the scientific community is not clearly defined resulting in a contradictory public position towards experts and scientists, declaring them as the most trustworthy on one hand, but ignoring their expertise on the other hand. The findings of the conducted research, although specific for Croatia, could be applied in other countries to avoid similar mistakes.
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