Context
Radioactive waste is generated not only within European countries that use nuclear power to produce electricity, but also for many other activities: medicine, research, industry and agriculture. Radioactive waste may also arise after the decommissioning of nuclear installations. Radiation sources radioactive waste is potentially hazardous to the environment and subsequently, public health. A safe and long-term management of radioactive waste is therefore a challenge for all countries, regardless of their energy policy.
While low and medium-level nuclear waste such as from medical equipment is increasingly being taken care of, there is not yet a single final repository for intermediate-level and high-level radioactive waste, such as spent fuel from nuclear power plants. In all likelihood, the first deposit of this type in Finland (Onkalo) should receive an operating license end of 2024. Currently, 16 European countries currently hold spent nuclear fuel inventories, which can take millions of years to decay.
Radioactive Waste Management (RWM) Working Group (WG)
Since NTW was established at the end of 2013, one of the activities developed has been RWM though a dedicated WG led by Johan Swahn, Director of the Swedish NGO, MKG and member of the Management Board of NTW at the time. This working group was an opportunity to create a high-level network of civil society representatives and independent experts that work on RWM issues. This RWM WG has been interacting both on a European, national, regional and local levels.
The BEPPER Project (2015)
One of the first projects developed within the NTW RWM WG was a project on improving transparency – public information and participation – named the BEPPER project. The acronym stands for “Broad framework for Effective Public Participation in Environmental decision-making in Radioactive waste management”. The aim of the project was to describe, from the perspectives of environmental NGOs, an effective Transparency and Public Participation (T&PP) regimes in the area of spent fuel and RWM. The long-term aim of the BEPPER project was to facilitate the engagement of well-resourced and enduring local, national, and international environmental NGOs in transparent (public information and participation) processes. In fact, such engagement could achieve higher-quality decision-making and increased nuclear safety in RWM.
In autumn 2014, a consortium under the auspices of Nuclear Transparency Watch (NTW) successfully competed for a tender from the European Commission to write a report on transparency and public information and participation (PIP) in the field of RWM. The consortium aimed to use the results of the NTW BEPPER project in the report. The NTW BEPPER project was a collaboration of a wide European network of national and local NGOs and other national experts with experience of public information and participation in the nuclear field.
Finally, in the BEPPER project was developed the “NTW BEPPER framework” describing the levels of transparency that can provide an evolving measuring instrument to evaluate national transparency practices. These are described in a report published in 2015: