An Integrated Approach to Nuclear Risk Governance in Decommissioning with a Major Focus on Stakeholder Risk Philosophies

This paper addresses how nuclear risk governance can ensure long-term safety, societal trust and ethical responsibility in managing nuclear waste under conditions of uncertainty. This challenge is shaped by increasing policy demands for transparency, sustainability and meaningful public engagement following major nuclear incidents. Existing approaches to risk governance draw on a range of theoretical perspectives, spanning technical, social and ethical domains. However, these are often applied in isolation, resulting in fragmented governance models that fail to capture the full socio-technical complexity of nuclear risk. To address this gap, the study critically synthesises key perspectives, including technical risk-based approaches, social and cultural theories of risk perception, decision and economic models and ethical frameworks concerned with justice and responsibility. The findings show that while each perspective offers valuable insights, none is sufficient on its own to achieve comprehensive governance, understood as an integrated approach that accounts for technical, social, ethical, institutional and uncertainty-related dimensions of risk. In response, the paper develops a pluralistic approach that brings these perspectives together into a coherent framework. This enables more adaptive, inclusive and context-sensitive risk governance. The study contributes a conceptual stakeholder-oriented framework to support policymakers in designing governance systems that are not only technically robust but also socially legitimate and ethically grounded in the context of nuclear waste management and decommissioning.