Generic guidance on the withdrawal of sheltering, withdrawal of evacuation and evacuation of sheltered populations (displacement) has been developed based on previously unpublished work in the UK and France and on input from stakeholder panels in Germany, Belgium, France and the UK. The guidance is a living document that can be developed further in the future, both in its generic form and also as customised versions in some Member States. The guidance outlines the many factors which influence the withdrawal of emergency countermeasures: official confirmation that any release has stopped; adequacy of monitoring data; radiological criteria; radiological protection advice; availability of resources; social and psychological needs; stakeholder dialogue; and communication strategy. The relative importance placed by decision makers on each of these criteria would vary according to the nature and scale of the accident and also on socio-political, economic and cultural perspectives. In the event of a radiological incident, decision makers will need to be in a position to construct a strategy for managing the withdrawal of emergency countermeasures. For larger scale, longer duration releases involving several nuclides, a management strategy is likely to be complex. The guidance therefore includes a series of checklists which have been developed in conjunction with stakeholders to take into account the main criteria and factors which should be considered.

From the beginning of 2002, Troyes prefecture has initiated a study about the management of a nuclear crisis caused by an accident at the Nogent-sur-Seine nuclear power plant. Several working groups were created, notably the `Decontamination of soil and food chain' group. The first results of this group, which involves the District Agricultural and Forestry Department, the Farming Chamber, the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety and the Veterinary Division are presented here. The scenario that had been developed for the accident considers the release of 3 radionuclides (131I, 134Cs and 137Cs) in the environment. The scale of the crisis didn't require the evacuation and the sheltering of the population during the emergency phase. The consequences on the local agricultural products (cereal, sugar beet, vine, milk, cow meat ...) have been assessed up to 50 km and different strategies of agricultural countermeasures have been studied regarding to the local constraints (soil types, surfaces and quantities concerned) and to the consequences of their implementation (waste types and quantities, costs). Then, decision-making diagrams summed up the technical results and allowed to deepen the global thought. 


The involvement of local stakeholders in the decision-making process regarding health, safety and environmental issues is developing in many countries. As far as the management of effluent discharges from nuclear installations in France is concerned, members of Local Commission of Information, including elected people and NGOs, are playing an increasing role in that respect. To deepen the understanding of these risk governance processes, a working group of experts from different institutions was set up in 2000 by the Institute of Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN). Several case studies concerning the involvement of stakeholders were performed, among them: the dialogue process around the discharges of the COGEMA La Hague reprocessing plant, the role of the local liaison committees of the Fessenheim and Gravelines nuclear power plants. Four main elements, contributing to the social trust, emerge from this analysis: 1) the social dynamics of the consultation process, notably with the emergence of “new" stakeholders such as elected people and NGOs; 2) the readability of the plant follow-up from the point of view of local stakeholders and their involvement in the decision process (the relay role of these “new" stakeholders); 3) the contribution of the institutional and pluralist expertise to the social trust (broadening of the range of values taken into account); 4) the issue of the local justification of the plant in the prospect of the sustainable development (no risk being acceptable without counter-parts). This paper addresses these different issues on the basis of the case studies in the perspective of examining the radiological risk governance process.

This paper is intended to present the experience feedback of the IRSN's involvement in the reflection on the management of a nuclear crisis. It sums up some results of the French FARMING working group, corresponding to the mobilization of a wide range of Agricultural Technical Institutes and to the appraisal of a compendium of agricultural countermeasures for the rehabilitation of rural contaminated territories in post accidental situations. Indeed, in France, since a few years, this problem has been almost exclusively considered by radiation protection experts, with no involvement of the other concerned actors. But according to the weight of the agro industrial sector in this country and to the problems related to the management of contaminated food in post accidental situations, the cooperation between radiation protection experts and agro industrial stakeholders appeared more and more necessary. Indeed, above all, farmers and other local actors would take a significant part to the rehabilitation actions from the short term to long term of a nuclear crisis period and then share the responsibilities of the crisis management. The working group has therefore opened new debates at the national level and valuable results have been obtained from the meetings at technical and strategic levels.

According to the European Community Commission the present level of unemployment in Europe should not only last but worsen in the foreseeable future (see CCE 1984). By 1988 the overall unemployment rate in Europe should reach 11,4% if the « optimistic » assumptions retained for the labor supply are to be realized.

These are of course average figures but on the whole they correctly reflect the extraordinary convergence of European deflationary policies. Given structural differences, which remain very limited when one compares them to the other Western economies, the European governments seem to have settled for the same macroeconomic strategies. Of course, they have chosen different timings. France, for example, has grown more than its partners in 1981-1982 but is now experiencing a prolonged recession. Whereas West Germany is doing better as far as GNP is concerned but grew very little in the early 80 s. On the whole however a back of the envelope calculation of « sacrifice ratios » for the leading European economies would yield quite similar results. All over Europe disinflation has been achieved at a high output cost and it is not clear that any country has really done better than its partners.

L'adaptation des pays à l'instabilité monétaire internationale et à l'ample modification des prix relatifs, provoquée avant tout par la hausse du prix du pétrole, s'est avérée très différenciée suivant les pays. Cette différenciation amène une question cruciale : est-elle due à de « bonnes » ou « mauvaises » politiques monétaires, ou bien dépend-elle de conditions structurelles dont les paramètres et les modalités d'influence sur les ajustements macroéconomiques sont à identifier?