safe^ND 2023 - Program and keynote speakers

Source: BASE

The Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE) will host the second Interdisciplinary Research Symposium on the Safety of Nuclear Disposal Practices (safe^ND) on 13 - 15 September 2023. The conference will give scientists from a wide range of disciplines the opportunity to present their research with regard to the safe handling and disposal of radioactive waste, and to discuss their findings in an intra- and interdisciplinary environment.

Registration

The registration period ended on 21.8.2023.

Program

Download the preliminary detailed program here:

Program safeND (PDF, 661 KB, File does not meet accessibility standards.)

The safe^ND program is updated regularly. The latest version can be found here.

Keynote speakers

State secretary Stefan Tidow (Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection) will open the conference with a speech.
We are also pleased to announce that the symposium will include keynote addresses from three world-class experts. In particular, they will present their perspectives on this year's focus topic "Research for Resilient Safety: Gaps, Progress and Priorities".

Prof. Allison M. Macfarlane directs the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and is an international expert in the field of nuclear waste management. From 2010 to 2012, she was a member of the White House Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future and, from 2012 to 2014, she chaired the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Markus Weißkopf is an international expert in the field of science communication. Among other activities, he built up the House of Science in Brunswick from 2007, was Managing Director of the organization "Wissenschaft im Dialog" (Science in Dialog) from 2012 to 2022 and served as president of the European Science Events Association (since renamed the European Science Engagement Association) from 2016 to 2020.

Dr. Nadezhda Gotcheva from the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland is an international expert in the field of safety in complex socio-technical systems, focusing on management, leadership and culture for safety. In particular, she was one of the lead researchers of the VTT's SafePhase project on safety culture challenges in regulators and utilities.

Focus Topic of safe^ND 2023

Research for resilient safety: Gaps, Progress and Priorities
Safety in nuclear waste management means considering all conceivable scenarios, making relevant provisions and establishing viable communication processes. In the recent past, however, we have observed how scenarios and crisis situations that previously hadn’t been sufficiently considered suddenly became a reality: We are experiencing a pandemic that temporarily brought public life to a standstill, we are witnessing warlike attacks on nuclear facilities, attacks on critical infrastructure and, last but not least, global climate changes that also affect nuclear safety.

With regard to safety in nuclear waste management, which is associated with extremely long time horizons, we thus need extraordinarily resilient systems – at technical, institutional and social level. Where are we today, and what knowledge gaps are we aware of? What knowledge have we gained in recent years? And what priorities are at the top of the agenda for the international research landscape in the years to come?

Additional Information

The symposium will take place at Café Moscow in Berlin. safe^ND will start on September 13, 2023 at 9 a.m. and end on September 15, 2023 in the afternoon. An icebreaker is planned for the evening of September 12, 2023.
The publication of the full program for the symposium is planned for early July 2023.
Further information on safeND can be found here.

Contact

If you have any questions regarding content or organisation, please contact symposium@base.bund.de.