Space Nuclear Power Public and Stakeholder Risk Communication
The 1986 Challenger accident coupled with the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident increased public concern about the safety of spacecraft using nuclear technology. While three nuclear powered spacecraft had been launched before 1986 with little public interest, future nuclear powered missions would see significantly more public concern and require NASA to increase its efforts to communicate mission risks to the public. In 1987 a separate risk communication area within the Launch Approval Planning Group of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was created to address public concern about the health, environmental, and safety risks of NASA missions. The lessons learned from the risk communication strategies developed for the nuclear powered Galileo, Ulysses, and Cassini missions are reviewed in this paper and recommendations are given as to how these lessons can be applied to future NASA missions that may use nuclear power systems and other potentially controversial NASA missions.