Brussels, 08/07/2004 (Agence Europe) - The Council's recent adoption of conclusions on nuclear safety and the management of irradiated fuel and radioactive waste seems to have sounded the death knell (temporarily at least) to any advance at EU level on nuclear safety. The Council's conclusions make no bones about it, stating that national responsibility for the safety of nuclear plants is the basic principle on which the international community bases itself when developing regulations on nuclear safety and the safe management of nuclear waste. It mentions the rules and methods used by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which form a recognised framework at international level to benchmark national safety requirements and which Member States have been greatly involved in improving. Without denying the need to continue improving safety, particularly on big international bodies, the Council skims over the Commission's proposal to establish common safety standards, simply scrapping them in fact, with the decision to return to the issue of nuclear safety and the safe management of irradiated and radioactive waste 'at the appropriate moment'. Austria, Italy and Luxembourg have expressed concern at this rejection of the Commission's proposals.
In the run-up to enlargement, based on a ruling by the European Court of Justice confirming the EU's legal powers to set safety standards for nuclear plants, the Commission unveiled two draft directives on 30 January 2003 to provide the EU with a Community approach to the safety of nuclear plants and the treatment of radioactive waste (see EUROPE of 31 January 2003). The proposal establishing basic obligations and general practices for the safety of nuclear power stations foresees the setting of common safety standards and verification mechanisms to ensure the application of common nuclear safety methods and criteria throughout the entire (enlarged) EU. These rules would be based on the IAEA rules, but additional rules could also be set. The proposal foresees that every Member State would have to have a fully independent nuclear safety authority and sets EU rules for the establishment, management and use of funds for closing nuclear plants, which would have a separate legal existence from the operators of the site. The second proposal recommends storing highly active waste in geological structures and aims to force Member States to establish programmes, according to a pre-established schedule, for storing radioactive waste, including the storage of highly radioactive waste at great depths.
For most Member States, the question of nuclear safety belongs in their own backyard. Hence the unfruitful examination of the two proposals by COREPER in May and the adoption by the EU25 of conclusions which simply ask the Commission and Member States to take account of possibilities provided by meetings under the Nuclear Safety Convention and the Common Convention on the Safety of Spent Waste and the Safe Management of Radioactive Waste to be held in 2005 and 2006 respectively; to assess the results achieved in the framework of these Conventions; to draw up a balance sheet of results of work by national nuclear safety authorities in multinational bodies; and, based on this, to launch a vast consultation process to facilitate the choice of one or more instruments, under the Euratom Treaty, which can most effectively help ensure nuclear safety and the safe management of spent rule and radioactive waste, without ruling out any instrument and adhering to the principle of improving legislation.
Although they were involved in the drafting of these conclusions, Austria, Italy and Luxembourg believe work should continue at EU level on these important issues, sticking to a strict timetable and ensuring a clear breakdown of responsibility. The three Member States urge the Commission to relaunch its initiative to establish common safety standards, believing that in order to really encourage efforts to reach a high level of nuclear safety that is uniform across the entire EU, and to create value added with regard to existing international instruments, the EU system must be legally binding, foresee appropriate measures for settling disputes and cover all types of nuclear plants, in order words end-of-life plants and full combustion plants, in order to ensure the highest possible degree of projection of health and the environment.