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Every society organizes itself to reduce the complexity of living together in order to ensure relative peace of mind for its members. Major technological accidents such as the Chernobyl or Fukushima nuclear accidents are violent disruptions that affect the quality of life of tens of thousands of people and generate increased distrust and anxiety among them as well as the questioning of the state system’s ability to restore some peace of mind. Past experience has shown that the measurement of radiation and the development of local projects with the support of professionals and experts prove to be effective levers for those affected to regain the ability to make decisions for their protection and to assess the protective actions implemented collectively. It also showed that restoring confidence and restoring the dignity of these people, seriously impaired by the accident, takes time.

The story of radioprotection all along the XXth century has carried out the progressive building of a protection regime that, very early, incorporated a precautionary attitude in relation with possible risks for health that were still highly uncertain on a scientific ground. Years after such attitude took the form of several complementary principles: justification of any exposure, limitation of doses exposure below thresholds fixed on the basis of knowledge of proven damage for health, be they deterministic or stochastic, and ALARA in order to take account of potential risks resulting from very small doses.To manage the latter, it has been necessary to go out of the strictlty sanitarian domain and integrate economic and socio-political factors. Efforts to reach formal optimisation with the help of cost-benefit analysis, in which strong hopes had been placed at times, did not allow to achieve the expected progress in decision-making and safety and had to be supplemented by pragmatic approaches aimed at involving concerned workers and employees as much as possible in order to reach the lower level of exposure, taking account of economic and social factors. This ALARA approach (procedures and culture) to-day raises an open-ended question about social procedures and economic conditions of sharing a commitment to an accepted exposure to a residual stochastic risk, since zero risk is acknowledged not to exist., L'histoire longue de la radioprotection durant le XX° siècle a porté la construction progressive d'un régime de protection qui a très tôt intégré une attitude de précaution pour tenir compte des risques possibles sur lesquels l'incertitude scientifique demeurait. Cette attitude s'est par la suite cristallisée sous la forme de plusieurs principes complémentaires: justification de toute exposition, limitation des doses en-dessous de seuils déterminés en fonction de la connaissance de dommages avérés pour la santé humaine, déterministes ou stochastiques, et ALARA pour prendre en compte les risques potentiels associés aux faibles doses.Pour gérer ces risques potentiels, il a fallu sortir du champ strictement sanitaire pour prendre en compte les aspects économiques et socio-politiques. Les efforts de rationalisation formelle à l'aide du calcul économique dans lesquels de grands espoirs ont été mis à une certaine période n'ont pas permis de réaliser les avancées espérées et ont été complétés par des approches pragmatiques visant à associer au maximum l'ensemble des personnels concernés de façon à obtenir effectivement le plus bas niveau d'exposition raisonnablement possible en tenant compte des aspects économiques et sociaux. Cette démarche débouche sur une question ouverte quant aux conditions procédurales et économiques de partage de la responsabilité dans l'engagement dans un certain niveau de risque stochastique résiduel, puisque l'inexistence du risque zéro est désormais reconnue.