Shipments of radioactive waste and spent fuel

This Commission staff working document accompanies the Commission’s third report on the implementation by the Member States of Council Directive 2006/117/Euratom on the supervision and control of shipments of radioactive waste and spent fuel.

The document is based on the latest national reports from Member States to the Commission on the implementation of the Directive due by December 2017.

It provides:

- various stakeholders with information on current radioactive waste and spent fuel shipments, and their supervision and control for the purpose of adequate protection of the population;

- an overview and specific information on authorisations for import, export and transit issued by Member States and summarises the feedback from the Member States in implementing the Directive.

Shipment findings 2015-2017

For the current reporting period, 19 Member States out of 28 reported on authorised shipments on their territory. The following nine Member States did not report any authorised shipment on their territory: Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta and Portugal. Among them, six Member States did not report any authorised shipments of radioactive waste on their territory since the beginning of reporting obligations under the present Directive (2009): Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Malta and Portugal.

Overall, 146 authorisations for different types of shipments (intra- and extra-Community shipments) have been reported by EU Member States for the period 2015-2017.

In comparison with the two previous reporting periods under the present Directive, this is the lowest number of authorisations since the beginning of the reporting obligations in 2009. For all 146 reported authorisations in 2015-2017, 203 consents have been issued by the receiving or transit Member States. Around 86% of the authorisations relate to shipments of radioactive waste (including other materials), 14% to the shipment of spent fuel. 

Inconsistencies in the reporting

The overall reporting quality has significantly improved over the three reporting periods. However, the following observations were made:

- a new version of the reporting template was presented and discussed. Several modifications were introduced in this template in order to achieve full alignment with the terminology used in the standard document. The main content from previous version of the reporting template was kept;

- it was also deemed necessary to enhance harmonisation and comparability of the information provided by all Member States in order to reduce room for interpretation and potential misunderstanding;

- different approaches and interpretations to fill the reporting template has been acknowledged by the Commission, with some Member States having difficulties to report the correct technical data;

- the revised reporting template also includes more detailed instructions on how to report on authorisations per multiple shipments and explanatory notes clearly defining the different relevance between authorisations and shipments, for reporting purposes;

- the adoption of a common criterion for reporting on consents given for transits is recommended.