Public attitudes towards geological disposal: Results from the 2021 SCK CEN Barometer

This report describes the results from a study on lay public perception of geological disposal of radioactive waste in Belgium. Data underlying the study originate from the SCK CEN Barometer, a large-scale public opinion survey among the Belgian public. Data were collected between 07/12/2020 and 18/01/2021 using mail-to-web data collection and the fieldwork was carried out by KANTAR-Belgium. Respondents (N=1060) were identified from households which have been randomly selected from the central reference address files in Flanders (CRAB), Brussels (Urbis) and Wallonia (ICAR). The sample of respondents is representative for the (18+) Belgian population with respect to gender, age, level of urbanisation of the living habitat and province. A weighting procedure was applied to correct for differences in gender, age, education and province between the survey sample and the general population in Belgium. The invitation letters and informed consent forms were sent to participants, explaining the purpose of the survey and requesting the participation of the persons who had last celebrated their birthday person in the household. Ethical approval for the study was received from the Ethical committee of University of Antwerp, while scientific and methodological advice was received from the Barometer steering committee. A pilot study with 20 respondents was carried out as a pre-test of the survey in the period of June-July, 2020.