Decommissioning as a Step Forward for Risk Governance

Decommissioning represents a new problem for risk governance as it implies two contradictory strategies. First, the disassembly, transport and destruction of contaminated machines and buildings imply foreseeable risks. For them, we use anticipation strategy (Wildavsky, 1985). But at the same time facilities are not in fully determinate states: unexpected events are to be expected (IAEA, 2016). For these events, we need resilience strategy (Wildavsky, 1985). However, literature cannot currently tell how risk governance can articulate anticipation and resilience. To do so, I study the case of the "technical dialog" (proposed as an ideal type of anticipation) contributing to the nuclear risk governance in France. I study heavy handling activities, which are very common in decommissioning operations (proposed as an ideal type of resilience). I then compare these two fields to find out how anticipation and resilience are articulated. The results show that anticipation and resilience can be articulated by risk governance when it extands the demonstration or the assessment, and when it arranges imprecisions in these documents. Such actions produce a convergence of doubts initiating inquiries in risk governance and high-risk operations.