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One of the exigent issues moving towards the development and implementation of acceptable and enduring nuclear waste management solutions is ensuring that the attendant social, economic, and political factors are given due consideration as part of the process of evaluating and eventually selecting a preferred alternative. To date, the relevant literature on the subject of social and political aspects of nuclear waste management has, by and large, presented social scientists' perspectives, and only rarely represented the perspective of the physical scientists that have been involved in addressing the technical aspects of nuclear waste management. We present the perspective of a small subset of repository scientists that individually and collectively have many years of experience in geologic repository programs. We offer our view on how repository scientists and social scientists can work together constructively. As observed by both repository scientists and social scientists, issues related to social and political concerns have been a major contributor to the lack of progress in implementing an acceptable solution to the disposal of nuclear wastes. Therefore, it is critically important that repository scientists and social scientists work together towards finding solutions that can be demonstrated to provide the requisite level of safety and be socially and politically acceptable. Current U.S. circumstances influencing the management of nuclear wastes will likely result in a new or revised national policy. We assume that some kind of geologic disposal of nuclear wastes will be needed independent of what new options may be implemented for the nuclear fuel cycle. Implementation of a new or revised policy will present ample opportunities for repository scientists and social scientists to collaborate towards the common goal of finding technically and socially responsible solutions. This paper presents some suggestions using a fairly narrow set of circumstances as a means for starting the dialog on how to forge a workable relationship between the two groups.

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