2010 Worldwide Developments

Arius is currently active in three regions of the world, as well as maintaining close working links with international organisations such as the IAEA.

  • We are working with various European countries to establish a European Repository Development Organisation (ERDO) that will develop shared geological disposal solutions for smaller EU nuclear power programmes.

  • We are just beginning an evaluation programme to consider whether similar, regional shared solutions would be appropriate for and of interest to emerging nuclear power programmes in the Arabian Gulf region and SE Asia.

These two initiatives are described below, along with our work on development of global multinational approaches to the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle.
 
 

EUROPE: The ERDO Working Group

The ERDO (European Repository Development Organisation) Working Group that emerged from the SAPIERR projects financed by the European Commission is now up and running. The progress is being recorded on a dedicated website http://www.erdo-wg.eu. A brief summary of the development and status of the ERDO-WG is given below.

 
 

ERDO – how it happened

The proposal that resulted from SAPIERR was a staged, adaptive implementation strategy for a European Repository Development Organisation (ERDO). The first step in the strategy was the establishment of a Working Group (ERDO-WG) of interested countries to carry out pre-cursor work to enable a consensus model to be agreed for a ERDO, using the SAPIERR findings as a starting point. This model will then be presented to potentially interested countries in about two years’ time, so that they can decide whether and when to set up the ERDO and whether they wish to be part of it. The ERDO-WG started work at the beginning of 2009. Arius provides the WG secretariat and the administration is provided by COVRA, the Netherlands radioactive waste management agency.

The principal objective of the group’s work is to provide a forum for potential participating countries in Europe to discuss and agree the basis upon which an ERDO could be formed. At that stage, the participant countries will decide whether to go ahead and establish the ERDO and, if so, with what national membership. The ERDO will likely be established around 2011-12, providing that a sufficient number of partner nations agree to the final proposals; it will operate as a sister organization to waste agencies that have opted for a purely national repository program (e.g. France, Sweden, Finland, Germany).

By combining their resources in this way, the ERDO partners demonstrate to other regions of the world the feasibility of enhancing safety and security while increasing the economic attractiveness of nuclear power, even for small countries.

Over a period of about 2 years, the ERDO-WG will examine a range of issues and attempt to reach agreement on major issues such as:

  • the most appropriate organisational form for the ERDO, based on the SAPIERR recommendations
  • the initial rules of interaction between the ERDO and the ERDO member countries
  • the domicile of the ERDO
  • the first 3-year programme of work for the ERDO
  • the initial staffing, infrastructure and budget requirements
 
 

ERDO-WG Progress to date

Positive progress has been. Four meetings have been held and the next is planned:

  • Brussels January 2009 (EC support; related to SAPIERR)
  • Prague September 2009 (hosted by RAWRA)
  • Vlissingen January 2010 (hosted by COVRA)
  • Bratislava May 2010 (hosted by Decom)
  • Vienna October 2010 (to be hosted by the Austrian Authorities)

Discussion documents worked on in 2009 and 2010 were devoted to the following topics:

  • Siting strategies for repositories
  • Size and form of Waste Management Organisations (WMO)
  • Outreach activities
  • ERDO Operating Guidelines
  • ERDO Model Constitution
 
 

An ERDO model for the Arabian Gulf and SE Asian regions?

In July 2010, Arius received grants from two charitable foundations in the USA to enable the Association to extend the concept of regional, multinational cooperation to other parts of the world. Beginning with a European initiative was the simplest approach, since an overarching organizational structure (the EU) already exists. Arius has explored the feasibility of adapting and applying the ERDO model to other global regions and concluded that, of various possible areas worldwide, the regions that may show the most immediate promise and potentialinterest are the Arabian Gulf region and South-East Asia.

This assessment is based principally on the advanced state of development of new nuclear infrastructure, the presence of active national nuclear power development programs and the geographical potential for sharing waste management solutions. The overall aim of this scoping project will be to assess the interest within this region of working towards Regional Repository Development Organizations (RDOs) similar to the European ERDO.

Arius is now making contacts in the two regions to inform them about the RDO model and make a better assessment of levels of interest and likely regional scope. The countries within the two target regions are:

  • Arabian Gulf Region: UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan
  • SE Asia Region: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam

Funding to explore these regional waste management possibilities has kindly been granted by:

  • The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Menlo Park, USA
  • The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, New York, USA

We will be implementing this project over the second half of 2010 and the early part of 2011 and will be working in collaboration with the IAEA in establishing contacts and discussions.

Other possible regional groupings that Arius may consider exploring in the future could include Central and South America, and Africa.
 
 

Interactions with International Organisations

Constructive discussions have been held with the current Chair of EDRAM (the group of major geological disposal programmes, including the USA). Currently, we are preparing a joint consensus document that stresses the complementarity of national and multinational programmes, rather than having national and multinational programmes presented as competitors.

Contacts have been continued with the IAEA. This has led to a small contract being awarded for the preparation of a short document for small and new nuclear programmes advising the Agency on the specific issues associated with HLW and spent fuel disposal and emphasising multinational approaches.

Arius has also been directly in US based studies on the Future of Nuclear Power – with a main focus of our contribution being to remind the nuclear community of the importance of considering the back-end of the fuel cycle right from the start of any nuclear planning.