Public opinion is often considered to be a key aspect for ensuring the long-term success of dealing with nuclear waste. Thus, it is of high relevance to collect robust empirical knowledge on how ordinary citizens perceive the current challenges of high-level radioactive waste, decommissioning of nuclear infrastructure as well as interim and long-term storage. In addition, regulators and operators must know what citizens expect from them and which role citizens want to play themselves in decision-making processes around nuclear waste management. Given the fragmentation of society, it is also important to answer these questions not only for the population as a whole but also separately for different strata. This also sets the foundation to provide explanations for current public opinion rather than just describing it.

This session aims to bring together public opinion research on nuclear waste management from all around the globe to learn from different perspectives and approaches. Submissions may address but are not limited to the following key areas and research questions:
• Knowledge and beliefs: What is the current level of knowledge in the population or specific groups on how nuclear waste is handled? Do citizens are aware who is responsible for dealing with the waste and were it is stored? What are beliefs in society on the risks around nuclear waste?
• Attitudes: Which strategies for dealing with radioactive waste do citizens support or oppose? How does the population judge the current work of regulators and operators? Which are the key dimensions citizens use to judge success and failure in dealing with nuclear waste?
• Needs: Which information needs around nuclear waste do citizens articulate? How much and in which ways does the population want to be actively involved in decision-making processes concerned with nuclear waste management?
• Antecedents: Which variables explain inter-individual differences in citizens’ attitudes, emotions, knowledge beliefs and/or needs around nuclear waste management? How can changes in these variables contribute to normatively desirable levels of knowledge in the population?
• Consequences: What consequences do have certain attitudes, knowledge and needs for potential actions of citizens towards nuclear waste? How do these individual level actions affect other individuals and/or society as a whole?
• Institutional reactions: Which conclusions can be drawn from public opinion data on how regulators and operators of nuclear waste management should adapt their policies? Which implications derive for their communicative and participatory practices?
• Conceptual: How does the relatively low issue salience of the topic in society affect the measurement of public opinion on nuclear waste on the individual level? Which degree of volatility in public opinion should be assumed? Which implications do both may have for conclusions drawn from public opinion data?
• Methodological challenges: How can be ensured that survey data remains representative for the population in times of decreasing response rates? Which actions can be taken to increase the validity of measurements of public opinion in society? How can computational methods contribute to better understand public opinion derived from digital trace data? Which new pathways exists to increase the comparability of studies across contexts, regions, and countries?
• Desiderata: What are the most important blind spots in recent public opinion research on nuclear waste? Which topics are overlooked that may are relevant to better understand public opinion on the topic, its antecedents or consequences?

Contributions are welcome that employ quantitative methods of the social sciences such as:
• Surveys
• Lab, survey, or field experiments
• Quantitative text analyses
• Network analyses
• Observational studies