Ensuring the safety and security of radioactive waste management in the EU: is the EC providing the necessary support to less advanced Member States?
EC support of R&D on deep geological disposal is necessary – but not sufficient.
The EC devotes large resources to supporting a wide portfolio of advanced R&D efforts aimed specifically at early implementation of geological disposal projects in the leading EU Member States. This is an important strategic goal, since the existence of a few, successful operating deep geological repositories will send an important signal in the EU and world-wide. However, for many Member States with much less advanced radioactive waste management programmes, long-term R&D on geological disposal solutions is a considerably less immediate need than the necessity for real-time strategic advice and help.
The EC support to advanced countries for advanced geological disposal research must be paralleled by support to other Member States with less advanced programmes seeking practical solutions today for the real issues of European nuclear safety and security associated with existing radioactive wastes.
The overarching aim of the EC is to ensure that all Member States in the EU have a credible radioactive waste management policy, strategy and programme that will ensure safety at all present and future times. The Waste Directive of 2011, which was designed to achieve this aim, places many requirements on EU Member States. Only one of the requirements relates to the need to establish a national R&D programme, but the guidance and support offered by the EC have focused almost entirely upon research programme requirements. However, for programmes with few or no nuclear power plants, it is today more urgent to support cooperation at the strategic level and to help Member States with the practical requirements of dealing with current radioactive waste inventories that have to be managed safely on a day today basis. The wide reporting requirements of the Waste Directive cover not only the R&D requirements in Article 12, which increases the urgency of identifying mechanisms and funding to support less advanced Member States.
The Need for Strategic and Technical Support of Member States with Less Advanced Programmes
The near term challenge that affects Member States with both advanced and less advanced waste management programmes is meeting the requirements of the EC Waste Directive of 2011. The Member States with advanced programmes can meet these requirements on their own, but Member States with slower-paced or less-advanced waste management and disposal programmes may have difficulties in doing so. The key challenges facing them include strategic planning of waste management, (including allocation of responsibilities and establishment of regulatory structures) as well as coordination of technical, economic and societal issues.
Following a meeting jointly organised in Luxembourg in December 2013 by the EC of the ENEF Waste Group and the ERDO-WG, it was decided to submit a Horizon 2020 proposal intended to ensure that all States, regardless of the state of advancement of their radioactive waste management and disposal programmes, can meet their Waste Directive requirements and can develop credible national waste management programmes. Ultimately, organisations from 9 Member States agreed to participate in the COMS-WD proposal. The initiative was not aimed at coordinating research; this is the function of the IGD-TP. It was intended to provide a forum allowing exchanges on strategic and institutional issues of importance to the less developed radioactive waste management programmes. Subsequently, the proposal was judged to be “out of scope” of the Horizon 2020 call under which it was submitted, based presumably on interpretation of the Horizon 2020 scope, namely “to develop synergies and increase coordination of national research programmes in the field of management of spent fuel and radioactive waste”.
A fundamental difficulty here is the exclusive focus of EC support on national R&D programmes and the lack of mechanisms helping less advanced Member States to fulfil all of the other demanding requirements of the Waste Directive. The goal must now be to identify routes by which this situation can be improved. The COMS-WD Participants agreed that one approach would be to seek EC support through DG ENER. Representatives of the proposal already proposed such support to the Parliamentary Working party on Atomic Questions in June 2014. At the December 2014 meeting organised by DG ENER on National Programmes for the Management of Spent Fuel and Radioactive Waste in EU Member States, the need for strategic support was recognised. One of the conclusions the meeting was that “More cooperation between smaller Member States to explore common solutions would be welcomed; EC support should be considered; a specific initiative may be required (small members club perhaps); lack of resources is an issue.”
The conclusions drawn are that there is a need for more cooperation in radioactive waste management between the less advanced Member States, that this cooperation should not be restricted to advanced R&D and that the EC could do more to support such coordination. A Europe in which all radioactive wastes are managed safely and securely is a more urgent goal than an EU in which every Member State has an active R&D programme on far-future issues primarily affecting geological disposal of high-level wastes and spent fuel.
