Implementation

Develop, maintain and consolidate the scientific and technical basis of radioactive waste management

The research, development and demonstration (RD&D) carried out in support of safe radioactive waste management (RWM), including disposal, is considered a key requirement of each national programme. Given the long timescales and socio-political dimension, RD&D provides primarily the scientific basis for implementing safe and robust RWM solutions, whilst also contributing to building stakeholder trust, public acceptance, and training and education for the next generations of the workforce. EURAD-2 implements in a collaborative way those aspects of RD&D activities where synergy from Programming at European level has been identified. 

 Address important & complex issues and enable expert networking

Complementary to RD&D and in support to the implementation of the Member States’ national programmes, EURAD-2 shall, based on the lessons learned from EURAD(-1), further give the opportunity to participants and expert contributors to network on methodological and strategic issues and challenges that are common to various national programmes and in direct links with scientific and technical issues:

• Share knowledge and discuss common methodological/strategical challenging issues (strategic studies) that are in close link with scientific, technical and societal aspects on RWM and that are common to various national programmes;

• Identify the contribution of past/on-going RD&D projects to the resolution of these issues;

• Identify any emerging topics for collaboration that could be addressed within a European Programme;

• Take into account emerging science and technology as well as research priorities originating from other programmes (e.g. results from Horizon Europe projects, H2020 projects or IAEA outputs).

Enhance knowledge management and transfer between organisations, Member States and generations

It is essential to implement an efficient and integrated Knowledge Management programme at the EU level in order to establish, capitalize and transfer the state of scientific and technical knowledge, competences and capabilities in the field of RWM. Objectives are to:

• Knowledge capture

Develop an approach to ensure preservation and accessibility of knowledge generated over the past, ongoing and future RD&D activities. 

• Knowledge application and know-how development

Make sure that Member‐States with national programmes at an early‐stage of implementation can take advantage of existing knowledge and know‐how from the Member‐States with advanced national programmes, primarily to access state-of-the-art, and second to ease access to knowledge developed during previous national-level and EC supported RD&D projects.

• Competence building

In view of the long lead‐times and operational timespans for RWM, provide support to ensuring that the necessary expertise, skills and infrastructures are maintained and upgraded through generations of experts for ongoing and future projects. 

• Dissemination of knowledge 

Disseminate and demonstrate progress, results and added value of the European Joint Programme to a wider audience. 

Engage with Civil Society

The successful implementation of RWM national programmes relies on both scientific and technical aspects for a sound safety strategy and scientific and engineering excellence and societal (social, legal, ethical, political) aspects. 

Interacting with Civil Society is important in this perspective and therefore one further highlighted objective of EURAD-2, as in EURAD(-1), is to allow interactions between WMOs, TSOs, REs and Civil Society Organisations. These interactions will facilitate the translation of scientific/technical results and create the conditions for CSOs to express their expectations and views. Such interactions shall improve the mutual understanding on RD&D performed to support the development of safe solutions of processing and disposal of radioactive waste. It shall also contribute to developing ideas, propositions and methodologies on how to interact with Civil Society on scientific and technical results uncertainties (inherently linked to the long timeframes and numerous processes considered for geological disposal), and on how to interact with Civil Society stakeholders in order to promote mutual benefit of the available knowledge, based on cooperation and sharing.