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Nuclear Transparency Watch

Prevent and anticipate through transparency and participation

Slovak Parliament approved a bill to ban future contracts for incineration of foreign radioactive waste. According to the Slovak NTW members, some concerns still remain.

Slovak Parliament approved a bill to ban future contracts for incineration of foreign radioactive waste. According to Slovak NTW members, some concerns still remain.

On 6 October 2021, the Slovak Parliament approved a bill aimed at banning future contracts for incineration of foreign radioactive waste (RW) on Slovak territory (further referred only as “the bill”). Both the Slovak members of NTW and the EURAD Civil Society Larger Group (CSLG), Michal Daniška and Peter Mihók, hereby share their objections to some formal aspects of the parliamentary procedure that led to the approval of this bill, as well as concerns regarding potential risks in implementing this bill, both due to significant changes made to the wording at an advanced stage of discussion in the Parliament. Yet Daniška and Mihók consider this legislative change to be a significant milestone with regard to the willingness and ability of Slovak politicians to take into account (also) the content of a petition of local citizens and requests of some municipalities affected by the RW treatment facilities (incl. outcomes of relevant EIA procedures, etc.).

The original wording of the bill was formally proposed by four MPs from all the four different political parties of the current Slovak government coalition on 28 May 2021. The MPs used their legal right to directly propose amendment of laws, in this case amendments of the Act no. 17/1992 Coll. on the Environment and the Act no. 87/2018 Coll. on Radiation Protection. The key part of the bill was, in its original wording, aimed at prohibition of import of RW and/or spent nuclear fuel that was not produced on Slovak territory as well as the prohibition of its storage, treatment, conditioning, disposal, manipulation and other ways of management in a way that could lead to an increase in the radiation exposure of the population or the environment.

In resolution no. 486 from 8 September 2021, the Government of the Slovak Republic formally, with some stipulations, endorsed the bill proposal of the four MPs. The stipulations targeted, apart from technical and stylistic modifications, mainly at reformulations of the transitory provisions in order to amend the laws without affecting the already signed contracts for foreign RW incineration. This exemption was a compromise between the different positions of the Ministries of Environment and Economy dating back to February 2021[1]. The core intention of the original proposal, i.e. the focus on prohibition of import of RW from abroad and its treatment, was not objected by the government.

This “governmental endorsement” probably confused the editor of the ‘World Nuclear News’ (WNN), which published on 9 September 2021 an article titled Slovakian Parliament bans foreign waste services[2]. According to this article, “processing radioactive waste or used fuel from other countries has been banned in Slovakia”, and this “move will force the closure of a business unit of JAVYS, potentially leading to job losses once ongoing work is completed”.

However, on 24 September 2021, two from the MPs[3] proposed a significant amendment of their own original wording of this bill proposal, which changed its tenor significantly. The original proposal (correctly summarised in the above referred WNN article) was, at an advanced stage of law approval procedure in the Parliament, amended only to prohibition of (future contracts to) “import RW that was not produced on Slovak territory for the purpose of incineration”, i.e. very significantly limited. Subsequently, on 6 October, the Slovak Parliament approved this significant change/limitation to the originally proposed bill. Right after this, the Parliament also approved the decision not to discuss the significantly amended/limited proposal (in the third, final reading of the draft law amendment), and right next, the MPs quickly approved the amended/limited bill.

The Slovak NTW and EURAD CSLG members have objections to the above outlined procedure of the Parliament, because the public (in the interdepartmental commenting procedure preceding the session/endorsement of/by the government) could only discuss a completely different law proposal wording than the wording in the end approved by the Parliament. It remains unclear why the two MPs changed their own proposal so significantly at an advanced stage of the law adoption process in the Parliament, i.e. why this significant change was not based on a transparent process that would explicitly deal (only) with the stipulations from the session of the Government on 8 September. Instead, the procedure in the Parliament seems to be characterised by “a sudden change of mind” of the two MPs without any reference to any communication with citizens, and, moreover, without giving citizens any chance to comment. Even moreover, this sudden change seems to not have been sufficiently discussed with the rest of the MPs (who might have also been confused with the approval of a completely different original wording of the bill after its first reading). While legal, the Slovak activists perceive such practice as unethical, because the MPs misled the public and foreign media that these Slovak politicians intended to ban import of foreign RAW and “activities related to radioactive waste and used nuclear fuel which does not originate in Slovakia” completely, i.e. that they did not aim just to exclude incineration from eligible ways of treatment of imported foreign RW.

The Slovak NTW and CSLG members are also concerned because, in contrast to the original wording of the bill, the adopted wording does not explicitly deal with potential ways of bypassing the ban to incinerate materials with radioactivity imported to Slovakia from abroad. This might, for example, concern incineration of secondary RW that would result from ‘a non‑incineration’ treatment of foreign RW imported into Slovakia in line with the bill. The Slovak activists are concerned about this also because they have, for many years, observed various legal tricks by Slovak politicians in which they attempted to bypass, resp. bypassed the application of the first pillar of the Aarhus Convention in particular with regard to commercial nuclear sector information[4].

As mentioned earlier, the already signed contracts for foreign RAW incineration will not be affected by the bill. This concerns 617 m3 and 865 tons of RW from Italy and 21.7 t from Germany, i.e. amounts that significantly exceed the volumes of incinerated domestic RW (about 60 – 85 tons annually during the period 2016-2020). Daniška estimates that the volume of contracted but not yet incinerated foreign RW might reach more than 1000 t at the moment[5]. The limits of RW incineration at the Jaslovské Bohunice treatment centre are proposed to be increased from 240 to 480 t annually. Even if the proposed increase of treatment limits is approved, one might expect that, in order to complete the contracts, while taking into account also the volume of the domestic RW that is to be incinerated (see above), tens or hundreds of tons of foreign RW will still be incinerated in Slovakia annually for the next few years after the bill comes into force on 1 January 2022.

The legislative change dealt with in this text is directly related to the project of increase of the treatment limits of the originally national‑level-only RW treatment facility in Jaslovské Bohunice, its expansion (including construction of a second incineration plant), as well as to the ongoing foreign RW treatment at this facility. Foreign low-level and very low-level RW has been treated in Jaslovské Bohunice since 2013, mainly by means of RW incineration. The share of incinerated RW coming from abroad on the total incinerated volume varied between approx. 35-45% during 2015-2019, and exceeded 50% for the first time in 2020. Despite its importance, the information about incineration of foreign RW was not given substantial attention in the mainstream media until 2018-2019.

As mentioned above, Daniška and Mihók still consider the bill dealt with in this text to be, under the specific historical and cultural context of Slovakia, a significant milestone. This is because, for the first time, they noted that national level politicians paid respect to results of active participation of local citizens and municipalities affected by the nuclear industry in several processes related, directly or indirectly, to this bill. They would like to emphasize that a significant credit for adoption of the bill belongs to the unprecedented public pressure of thousands of citizens and several municipalities from the region around Jaslovské Bohunice, as well as to the work of the Ministry of Environment, including intensive personal initiative of Mr. Ján Budaj, the current Minister of Environment (in a position after the general elections and subsequent change of the government in Slovakia in March 2020).

[1] See (in the Slovak language): https://www.enviroportal.sk/clanok/mzp-spalovanie-zahranicneho-radioaktivneho-odpadu-by-sa-mohlo-v-sr-zakazat (last accessed 2021-10-07).

[2] Available at: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Slovakian-parliament-bans-foreign-waste-services (last accessed 2021-10-07).

[3] Note: it was originally the three MPs, but the name of one of the MPs has been blacked out using a marker, see: https://www.nrsr.sk/web/Dynamic/DocumentPreview.aspx?DocID=500713 (last accessed 2021-10-07).

[4] See: the UNECE procedure at: https://unece.org/env/pp/cc/decision-vi8i-concerning-slovakia and the NTW overview of the Slovak activists’ submissions addressing lack of public access to nuclear sector information in Slovakia at the NTW website at: https://www.nuclear-transparency-watch.eu/category/activities/transparency-and-public-participation.

[5] By early October 2020 103 tons from one of the Italian contracts had already been imported and preconditioned, of which 79 tons were incinerated and exported back to Italy as well (see the statement of the spokeswoman of JAVYS, i.e. the operator of the RW treatment facility in Jaslovské Bohunice, in the news article (in the Slovak language)  https://e.dennikn.sk/2078275/spalovat-cudzi-radioaktivny-odpad-kollar-a-sulik-su-za-zvysok-koalicie-proti/ dated 08.10.2020 (last accessed 2021-10-12). According to the data presented by JAVYS to the mayors of the affected municipalities, additional 98 tons of foreign RW were incinerated between October 2020 and August 2021.

Bratislava, Slovakia. View of the Bratislava castle at the sunset.

Open letter on how and when public participation will take place in the European Taxonomy.

“In order to meet the EU’s climate and energy targets for 2030 and reach the objectives of the European green deal, it is vital that EU directs investments towards sustainable projects and activities. This is achieved by the action plan on financing sustainable growth called for the creation of a common classification system for sustainable economic activities, or an “EU taxonomy”. The Taxonomy Regulation, published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 22 June 2020, establishes the basis for the EU taxonomy by setting out 4 overarching conditions that an economic activity has to meet in order to qualify as environmentally sustainable.

Under the Taxonomy Regulation, the European Commission had to come up with the actual list of environmentally sustainable activities by defining technical screening criteria for each environmental objective through delegated acts. A first delegated act on sustainable activities for climate change adaptation and mitigation objectives was adopted on 4 June 2021. Already in 2020 the EC launched in-depth work to assess whether or not to include nuclear energy in the EU taxonomy of environmentally sustainable activities. As the first step, the Joint Research Centre drafted a technical report on the ‘do no significant harm’ aspects of nuclear energy. This report has been reviewed by two sets of experts, the Group of Experts on radiation protection and waste management under Article 31 of the Euratom Treaty, as well as the Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks on environmental impacts. It is planned to publish a second delegated act for the remaining objectives soon.

It is in this context that NTW has written this open letter to the Commission to ask when and how citizens will be consulted on whether or not to include nuclear energy in the European Taxonomy.”

REPLAY AVAILABLE : EP-NTW online seminar on Nuclear Energy and the EU Sustainable Finance Taxonomy

>> REPLAY <<

 

The seminar on Nuclear energy and the EU sustainable finance taxonomy took place on April 14th 2021. It was co-organized by the European Parliament and Nuclear Transparency Watch.

Nuclear energy is pushed forward from several sides as one of the technologies to be included in efforts to combat the climate emergency. It is argued that in order to help overcome its difficult market position, nuclear energy should be included in the EU Sustainability Finance Taxonomy. The Technical Expert Group for the preparation of the EU Sustainable Finance Taxonomy excluded nuclear energy on the basis of the Do No Significant Harm (DNSH) principle. This seminar wants to share viewpoints on the position of nuclear energy vis-à-vis the Taxonomy, and to explore ways in which transparency of a decision for or against inclusion can be increased.

Moderator: Patrizia Heidegger, European Environmental Bureau

Speakers:

– Patricia Lorenz, FoE Europe

– Claude Turmes, Minister of Energy of Luxembourg

– Wendel Trio, CAN Europe

– Ben Wealer, University of Berlin

Other EP-NTW organized seminars are planned to be held in autumn, on topics such as the costs of nuclear energy, hydrogen, and the Energiewende.

A community will only be able to give its consent in a meaningful way, if it is an “Educated Community”

From Colin Wales, NTW member.

Any community that volunteers to accept a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) is taking the risk (however small) that such a facility will be capable of protecting the environment and the communities which inhabit the location near to where the GDF is sited for many thousands of years. Current thinking is that once all the waste has been emplaced into a GDF it will be sealed for all time and no further human intrusion is planned. – It’s called “Passive Safety” Let us suppose that our Waste Management Organisation RWM Ltd identifies a good volume of geology and produces a “Safety Case” i.e. It can demonstrate to the Regulator the design of the GDF within the chosen geology and the waste packages it contains will be safe for 1 million years and pose no threat to communities or the surrounding environment. This matters, because ideally and logically future human intrusion could have a negative impact on the integrity of the facility. – Seems a reasonable and sensible argument. – Or is it?
Yes, but what if at some point in the future it leaked and how would we know it had leaked? We could take the view that would be for future generations to sort out, after all it will take between 100-150 years before a decision to close the GDF needs to be taken. So, we are talking about a problem that may occur well after this generation.

Accepted Environmental Ethics tell us that current generations should not impose a burden on future generations. After all we are the future generations of past generations who saw no environmental threat in burning fossil fuels. At the start of the Industrial Revolution (1750’s) Environmentalism wasn’t exactly high on the agenda, back then atmospheric and oceanic chemistry wasn’t even known about, understood and let alone taught. It wasn’t until the 1970’s science and technology had progressed to the point where we had the tools to understand what effect the burning fossil fuels had on our planet and if left unchecked to cause global warming and potentially as we now know catastrophic climate change and all that might mean for humankind and our planets ecosystems. All that has happened in less than 300 years. Our generation are currently engaged with fixing this! – So, we learn from history, don’t we?

Scientists concerned with nuclear waste containment in a GDF environment will confirm that when a repository is closed it will enter into its most active phase. There are a number of processes that will occur. I won’t detail them all here but for High Activity Wastes such as Spent Nuclear Fuel and Vitrified High-Level Waste they will generate heat. A Safety Case will demand that the integrity of GDF in not compromised by the heat generated. Could this heat and the pressure it might generate be enough to cause the integrity of the engineered barriers and surrounding geology to fracture and fail? Well, NO Colin it won’t and here is all the numerical and other modeling which should tell anyone it won’t. OK then can you give me an absolute guarantee that it won’t? Well, no one can do that, no one can give a “Risk Zero” Scenario. – OK I get that.

So, then it is proposed that after the GDF is sealed, there is an element of risk (however small) which a community located in the vicinity will have to accept. There will be no “Institutional oversight” once the GDF is sealed and enters its passive safety phase. I have a problem with this. We all know that nuclear accidents are rare but when they do happen there are consequences for both surrounding populations and they are very expensive to clean up. In the case of Fukushima, the estimates are up to $ 500 billions which will depress the growth of Japanese economy for the next 35 years. So not only an intergenerational environmental burden but an economic one also.

My view is that as safe as a GDF can be demonstrated to be there nevertheless needs to be a system of radiological monitoring in place both during the operational phase when waste is being emplaced and for a long time after. – Perhaps as much as 1000 years by which time many of the more “active” phases of the “Evolution” of the GDF will no longer be of concern. So, I reason that a local community needs to do a number of things.

1) Carry out radiological monitoring. Currently this is done by aerial monitoring using unmanned drones equipped with Radioisotope Identification devices to monitor overall radiological activity and any “hot spots”. It can also be done by citizens carrying inexpensive dosimeters connected to a mobile phone and relaying measurements to a database which can be displayed on a map and web published in real time. – The French are doing this currently with a “citizen science” project led by IRSN. I am involved in that. For those of you who are interested please take a look at https://www.openradiation.org/en You can even build your own sensor.

2) Maintaining records, possibly for as long as 40-50 generations after closure. – How will this be resourced?

3) On going activities at all educational levels which engage students studying all the science and environmental subjects.

4) Think about the need for a potentially “planned” intrusion in the event that at some future point in time it becomes necessary to carry out any remediation due to an unplanned leakage. – This has implications for the GDF design, so before spending billions of pounds shouldn’t we think about the potential need (however small) for retrievability?

5) Any community which volunteers to have a GDF must have a guarantee in law which commits any future government to carry out remedial works if they should prove necessary.

“Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe – Ten Years Later” – Online Event on March 12, 2021

Event organised by Gabriele Mraz, member of NTW, and Patricia Lorenz on behalf of the CNFE.

The Cities for a Nuclear Free Europe (CNFE) held an online event on March 12th on the situation in Fukushima 10 years after the nuclear catastrophe and the impact of the accident on the city and on the region.

The agenda, the presentations and a report can be downloaded here.

A video will follow later in April.

ACN Round Table on RWM 2021

AARHUS CONVENTION AND NUCLEAR (ACN) ROUND TABLE ON RADIOACTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT (RWM)

13-15 January 2021

Online

The European Commission (DG ENER) and Nuclear Transparency Watch (NTW) organized an “Aarhus Convention and Nuclear” Roundtable that was held from January 13th to January 15th 2021. The objective was to gather concerned stakeholders by Radioactive Waste Management (operators, regulators and institutional representatives, experts and researchers, NGOs, civil society representatives) in order to discuss concrete implementation of the Aarhus Convention principles (public information and participation). More than 170 persons registered, from 24 countries and with very various backgrounds.

>> See the videos here <<

Agenda
Presentations
Introduction
Session 1 – Implementation of the information and public participation provisions of the Radioactive Waste Directive (2011/70/Euratom)
  • Implementation of the Radioactive Waste Directive in the EU: findings and recommendations of the second EC report to the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, Mr Gianfranco Brunetti, Deputy Head of Unit DG ENER D.2
  • Civil Society Joint Project: report on the implementation of the Waste Directive (as a third-party review), updated on the basis of the outcomes of the 2nd report of the Commission adopted on December 17th, 2019, Ms Gabriele Mraz, NTW and Ms Patricia Lorenz, Friends of the Earth
  • View of a representative of the Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), Mr Robert Harbers
  • View of a representative of the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science, Mr Kristoffer Brix Bertelsen 
  • The BEPPER Report on Transparency in Radioactive Waste Management: Improving national RWM transparency in the EU by effective implementation of the Aarhus Convention in the context of Article 10 on Transparency in the Nuclear Waste Directive, Mr Johan Swahn, NTW/MKG
Session 2 – National feedbacks on recent public engagement processes along RWM

Germany Roundtable – update on RWM public engagement in Germany

United Kingdom Roundtable – overview of recent developments on RWM siting procedures

France Roundtable – 2019 public debate on the RWM national plan

Czech Roundtable

Sweden Roundtable

Session 3 – Recent developments in civil society access to expertise and research

>> see the summary of discussion for Session 3 <<

Final Round Table – Improving existing arrangements on information and public participation in the field of RWM in Europe: the way forward

>> see the summary of discussion for the Final Round Table <<

Conclusion

Overview of activists’ submissions addressing lack of public access to nuclear sector information in Slovakia

From Peter Mihok, member of NTW.

As the NTW informed on 12 May 2020 via Twitter and a new website item [1], both linking to the original factsheet prepared by its Slovak member [2] (note: the current updated factsheet is here [3]): for more than a decade, there exist crucial concerns with regard to public access to nuclear sector related information in Slovakia. This is due to an interplay between many controversial amendments of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Act, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Atomic Act and other related acts, adopted since 2009. In the cumulative effect of all these amendments, the Slovak Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) was provided with a new legal right to consider the complete content of nuclear sector documents as confidential, since 1 May 2010.

The above referred Slovak law amendments became subject of UNECE Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee (ACCC) scrutiny [4]. Originally, this was due to a dispossession of NGOs of their formal legal standing status in EIA procedures (appealed at the ACCC by the Austrian NGO GLOBAL 2000 / Friends of the Earth Austria on 28 July 2009 [5]).

Peter Mihók, the Slovak NTW member, explained in the two academic journal papers [6] that the introduction of a flat‑rate non‑transparency concerned particularly and only nuclear sector related information. Furthermore, he explained that the introduction of this flat-rate non‑transparency was a direct response of the Slovakian authorities to the outcomes of EU infringement procedure regarding non‑compliance of the Slovak EIA Act with the EU AIA Acquis (i.e. a very similar non‑compliance as the ACCC submission/case from 2009 referred in the paragraph above).

Some/relevant of the above referred laws have been “softened” here and then in 2011 – 2018, in order to “soften” the clauses that allowed flat-rate classification of documents/information related to nuclear sector as secret/confidential/classified. This was a consequence of the below referred findings about relevant Slovakia’s laws’ and legal documents’ non compliance with the Aarhus Convention in particular with regard to lacking public access to nuclear sector related information/documents. Due to a combination of a rather high number plus a rather lengthy and complicated nature of these ‘softening law amendments’, it was not possible for the Slovak and/or other relevant NTW member(s) to dealt with this topic, i.e. to a lack of capacities to deal with such a ‘legally expert topic’. The bottom line here is that Slovakia was unable to transpose the Aarhus Convention into its national legislation on public access to nuclear sector related information/documents for more than a decade.

Moreover, as explained in the updated NTW factsheet [7], the Slovak parliament approved another controversial FOIA amendment in 2019. This provided for yet more reasons to classify information/documents falling under the Slovak Atomic Act as confidential. This amendment extended possibilities to justify non‑transparency by banking secrecy, telecommunications secrecy, and/or postal secrecy. This became a subject of further UNECE ACCC scrutiny, under the procedure which concerned the decision VI/8i adopted by the Meeting of Parties to the Aarhus Convention at its sixth session [8], and which formally (re‑)started on 14 September 2017 [9].

Following more than a decade of disrespect to the Aarhus convention, several Slovakian activists joined their forces, and prepared the three different submissions to the Slovak authorities in  August – October 2020, all of them focused on Slovakia’s non‑compliance with the Convention with regard to nuclear sector related information/documents and/or project permit procedures.

Following the official information about plans of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to amend FOIA [10] (in order to transpose the EU Directive 2019/1024 from 20 June 2019 [11]), the Slovak NTW member Mr. Peter Mihók, together with the Slovak activist in radioactive wastes related issues Mr. Michal Daniška, submitted an official impetus to the MoJ [12] under the Slovak legal framework to influence preparation of laws/law amendments on 3 August 2020. In this impetus, they reminded the MoJ about the item 11 on p. 109 of the (pre‑)election program document of the Slovak Government current leading political party ‘OĽaNO’ [13] about ‘bringing an era of a flat rate non transparency of commercial nuclear sector information to an end’. In a justification of a relevancy of their impetus, they referred also to the Second ACCC progress review from September 2019 [14], by means of which the ACCC confirmed that it considered Slovakia not yet fulfilling the requirements of the above referred (and linked) Decision VI/8i.

In parallel to the activity referred in the paragraph above, the two Slovak lawyers – Ms. Dana Mareková (as a citizen of Slovakia, affiliated with the Austrian NGOs Global 2000 a Wiener Plattform Atomkraftfrei), and Mr. Peter Wilfling (NGO Via Iuris), prepared a detailed legal analysis of Slovakia’s non‑compliance with the Aarhus Convention with regard to nuclear sector related information/documents and permit procedures. In a form of a letter to the State secretary of the Ministry of Environment (MoE) Mr. Smatana [15] (CC: Minister of Justice Ms. Kolíková, and State secretary of the Ministry of Economy Mr. Galek), this legal analyses was sent to all the three relevant Slovak Ministries on 22 September 2020. This submission also requested to remove legislative and application barriers in the application of the Aarhus Convention in relation to a nuclear sector in Slovakia. This submission was also signed by the Slovak NGOs CEPTA and Via Iuris, the Slovak office of Greenpeace CEE, the Slovak Civic Initiative We want a healthy country, and also by Mr. Peter Mihók (the Slovak member of the NTW).

Without any relation to the above referred letter, on the same day, the Environment Minister Mr. Budaj informed at a press conference that also the monitoring committee of the Council of the European Union has approached Slovakia in relation to a potential non‑compliance with the Aarhus Convention specifically with regard to the nuclear sector information (see for ex. the TASR press release [16]).

On 1 October 2020, the Slovak members of the EURAD Civil Society Larger Group (Mr. Mihók and Mr. Daniška) submitted an official proposal to the MoJ[17]. In this submission, they requested the MoJ to amend the FOIA in a way revoking all the relevant FOIA amendments from 2010 – 2019 by means if which a flat-rate non‑transparency of commercial nuclear sector information has been introduced/expanded in the relevant Slovak laws. This proposal was supported (also signed) by the 32 members of the informal Slovak association of environmentalists [18].

Also on 1 October 2020, Mr. Mihók and Mr. Daniška sent an email/information to the UNECE Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee [19], in which they informed the ACCC members about all the three above referred citizen submissions to the Slovak authorities.

[1] https://www.nuclear-transparency-watch.eu/activities/transparency-and-public-participation/towards-an-end-of-flat-rate-non-transparency-in-the-slovak-nuclear-sector.html

[2] https://www.nuclear-transparency-watch.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/20200512__Mihok__Slovakia_transparency_update-_-NTW_factsheet.pdf

[3] 20201116__Mihok__Slovakia_transparency_update-_-NTW_factsheet

[4] https://www.unece.org/env/pp/compliance/Compliancecommittee/41TableSlovakia.html

[5] https://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/env/pp/compliance/C2009-41/Communication/Aarhus090701.doc

[6] https://doi.org/10.1057/kmrp.2011.22 and https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnucene.2019.103192.

[7] 20201001__Mihok__Slovakia_transparency_update-_-NTW_factsheet

[8] http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/env/pp/compliance/MoP6decisions/Compliance_by_Slovakia_VI-8i.pdf

[9] http://www.unece.org/environmental-policy/conventions/public-participation/aarhus-convention/tfwg/envppcc/implementation-of-decisions-of-the-meeting-of-the-parties-on-compliance-by-individual-parties/sixth-meeting-of-the-parties-2017/decision-vi8i-concerning-slovakia.html

[10] https://www.slov-lex.sk/legislativne-procesy/SK/PI/2020/146

[11] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2019.172.01.0056.01.ENG

[12] 20200803__Slovakia__copy_of_Impetus_to_MoJustice

[13] https://www.obycajniludia.sk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/OLANO_program_2020_FINAL_online.pdf.

[14] http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/env/pp/compliance/MoP6decisions/VI.8i_Slovakia/Correspondence_with_Party/Second_progress_report/Second_progress_review_on_VI.8i_Slovakia_adopted.pdf

[15] 20200922__Slovakia__copy_of_Letter_to_3_Ministries

[16] https://www.tasr.sk/tasr-clanok/TASR:20200922TBB00140

[17] 20201001__Slovakia__copy_of_Proposal_to_MoJustice

[18] www.ochranari.sk

[19] 20201001__Slovakia__copy_of_email_to_the_ACCP

Belgian nuclear waste programme SEA – public participation – too little, too biased

Jan Haverkamp, WISE, Amsterdam

9 June 2020

NIRAS/ONDRAF, the Belgian nuclear waste management organisation wrote a draft plan for long term management of high-level radioactive and/or long-lived nuclear waste. In a public consultation, people and (Belgian) authorities can react on this plan and a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) until 13 June 2020. NTW member WISE has written an extensive reaction (in Dutch).

WISE’s general conclusion is that this SEA shows that NIRAS has a too limited view on which environmental effects and risks can in this stage already be estimated, and should have been estimated and described. NIRAS furthermore shows some strong biases on the necessity of production of this waste and in favour of the choice of one technological pathway. All considerations around prevention of waste were explicitly excluded from the SEA paper, and the justification given for the choice of deep geological disposal in Boom or Iperian clay were not covered by the documentation. This bias also caused a certain tunnel vision in the analysis of possible alternatives. This is remarkable, because a similar limitation of view already led to rejection of an earlier programme for deep geological disposal in the Boom clay in 2015 by nuclear regulator FANC. 

NIRAS wrote a methodologically defensive SEA report. Normally spoken, one would expect an inventory of important aspects and an as good as possible qualitative overview of impacts, as well as where possible a quantitative analysis. NIRAS, however, excluded everything that had any form of uncertainty. This created an oversimplified picture. Where it, for instance, devoted a lot of space to calculate the expected amount of lorries per day for transport in different phases over the coming 100 years, there was no analysis of any risks due to severe accidents during the filling of a repository, or later due to human interference. 

More specifically: 

  1. The programme should pay more attention to the fact that the current default solution for high level wastes is temporary storage. This means that, that also the environmental impacts of this interim storage are an integral part of every final disposal option. NIRAS only mentions temporary storage as the zero-option, but fails to take up the existing environmental impacts of temporary storage into its plans for final deposition;
  2. The programme, in this stage, should include a broader field of environmental impacts should; Incidents and accidents should not be excluded in this stage;
  3. The programme does not take alternatives sufficiently seriously;
  4. There lacks sufficient transboundary analysis;
  5. NIRAS concentrates too much on quantitative analysis of small and often marginal details and turns its back actively to all factors that could have substantial environmental effects (incl. incidents and accidents, and human interference). Instead of giving a good qualitative overview, NIRAS only offered a limited amount of detail facts of those few factors it could in this stage fully oversee, and excluded all other factors.
  6. The complexity of environmental impacts of different options for final deposition should be more clearly acknowledged and described in a comparison between different alternatives, and in comparison with prevention of production of different types of radioactive waste.

WISE concluded that this SEA from NIRAS does not fulfil the criteria that can be expected of a good SEA for a plan for management of long lived and high-radioactive waste. For that reason it requests it to be rejected.

How the Czech government is speeding up work on state aid to a new nuclear unit

June 9th 2020

The ongoing debate whether or not to build new nuclear capacities in Czechia has become much more tangible following a new law and contracts with the energy company CEZ introduced by the Czech Government in the last few weeks. These actions are, however, very untransparent and avoiding any wider public discussion.

The Czech government, together with the majority state owned utility CEZ, for years have been keen to build a new nuclear unit. In 2019, CEZ got a positive decision on the Environmental Impact Assessment for two new 1200 MW units at the existing nuclear power plant Dukovany. The current plan is to start the construction of one unit in 2029 and have the plant operating from 2037. The biggest obstacle so far have been the costs and lack of clarity of how the state would financially support such a huge investment. The government is hoping to overcome this Gordian knot within the next weeks and months in a surprising initiative during the coronavirus crisis. 

In a nutshell, the Minister of Trade and Industry, Karel Havlíček and Prime Minister, Andrej Babiš, introduced two concrete forms of state support which complement each other: firstly,  the state will be purchasing electricity from the new unit for 30 years or more for a guaranteed price. Secondly, the state would grant a loan for CEZ for the construction, to ensure a much lower interest rate than a commercial loan. However, no quantification of the burden for the state budget and the consumers was published for either of the two support schemes.

On the guaranteed price, in May 2020 the state introduced a draft law which sets a scheme of financial support to nuclear power. Called “The law on measures for the Czech Republic’s transition to low-carbon energy”, it only deals with nuclear power, which in a NewSpeak twist is defined to equal low-carbon energy. It basically establishes a scheme, where the state is purchasing electricity from nuclear sources for a  guaranteed price negotiated with the state. The agreed price should cover all the costs and insure an adequate profit to the investor. However the price is not set in law, it will be negotiated in due time with the Ministry of Industry and approved by the government. Also, the law suggests that the finances needed to pay for the extra guaranteed price will come from surcharges on distribution and transmission fees, paid for by consumers.

The original adoption plan presented by the Ministry was that the law should be passed by the Parliament in a so-called “accelerated proceeding” in first reading without any possibilities of amendments. However, after some criticism, the law will undergo regular process including Parliamentary committees handling it. The impact assessment does not contain any economic analyses suggesting how much the guaranteed price would be, although some figures were mentioned in public interviews. The investment is believed to be 160 billions of Czech Crowns (6 bln EUR) and  including a state loan for the project, the electricity from the new reactor would cost only 50-60 euro/MWh. Therefore the guaranteed price that would cover the difference to the power market price is supposed to be negligible. However, this is extremely optimistic as all other nuclear projects in Europe have shown much higher costs, and Czech electricity prices already count as among the higher ones in the region.

As for the state loan, there were no more details available and it is not clear where the state money for the loan would come from. There are only statements of politicians saying that the state can organize finances with significantly lower interest rates.

Next to the new law, in April the Czech Government approved two draft contracts with the energy company CEZ , with the plan to finalize and sign the contracts by June 2020. The contracts are not public and according to the Ministry of Trade and Industry, these contracts deal with zoning issues, with tender procedures and also under which conditions the state would buy off the project from CEZ (in case of big delay, higher costs etc). Later in May, the Czech media reported that the government has also approved another document, classified as “secret”, setting rules for a nuclear tender, to minimize state security risks connected with foreign investors, especially Russia and China (1).

While Mr. Havlíček tweeted that negotiations with the European Commission about the approval of such state aid have already started, the public has no access to many of the documents and no idea of how much this project would cost the public budget nor their own pockets. The legislative process on the proposed law is an opportunity for non-governmental organizations and hopefully some opposition parties to push for more transparency and more concrete and realistic numbers on the table and extend the debate to alternatives to new nuclear power, which might in fact be much affordable. 

Jiří Jeřábek, energy campaigner at Greenpeace Czech Republic

Edvard Sequens, CALLA

(1) https://ct24.ceskatelevize.cz/domaci/3098960-vlada-schvalila-bezpecnostni-pravidla-dostavby-dukovan-mohou-vyradit-rusko-a-cinu

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