EURAD - D9.16 Implementation of the ROUTES ICS action plan first phase

The work of Task 7 on interaction with civil society (ICS) during year 2 has been mainly focused on investigations in relation to the ROUTES Task 6 on “Shared solutions for European countries”. This topic obtained a lot of attention from the larger civil society (CS) group. In this deliverable D9.16 “Implementation of ROUTES action plan first phase (Good transparency, ethics, public concerns and case studies)”, the results of the investigations are provided, including comments, suggestions, questions, and other observations collected in interaction with EURAD participants and the CS larger group during the related workshop held in year 2 of EURAD.
This report starts with an overview of the ICS action plan with the main issues for investigation of Task 7 in the following years and the focus of the present deliverable. In addition, some general issues of good transparency that direct the overall activities in Task 7 are summarised. In section 2, some key ethical and legal principles for managing radioactive waste are discussed, that have a general value for all different radioactive waste management situations (predisposal and disposal), including for shared solutions of radioactive waste management (RWM). Section 3 deals with the main topic of the year 2 investigation and discusses public concerns related to shared solutions and underscores the importance of a common safety culture and a level playing field, and how both could be achieved in the context of a proper legal framework. The report describes the outcomes from interactions with the CS larger group and presents results of answers to a questionnaire on such issues.
Section 4 presents cases of radioactive waste (RW) shared solutions in different contexts, describing the issues at stake from a CS perspective in the context of related international conventions (Aarhus and Espoo Conventions, but also adopted EU/EURATOM directives). For two more complex cases, longer versions are provided as appendixes. Based on the descriptions and analyses, conclusions with general recommendations from the case studies and interaction with civil society that could more generally apply for RW shared solutions are provided in section 5.
The ongoing interactions and progress of activities in relation to Tasks 2-5 in ROUTES that have taken place during year 2 are reported in section 6. Finally, some ideas of what the next investigations will be for the focus during year 3 are reported in section 7.