A multinational working group, whose members are nominated by the appropriate Government level organisations, established to study the feasibility of setting up a Development Organisation (ERDO) that would implement one or more shared geological repositories in Europe.
Posted August, 2019
The most recent Working Group meeting took place in Ljubljana on 1st - 2nd July 2019. The WG meeting was attended by representatives of current member countries, plus observers from Croatia. The principal objectives of the meeting were to plan future ERDO-WG activities, in particular the ’Steps to Sharing’ workshop on 25th and 26th September 2019 which will be held in Vienna, hosted by the IAEA.
A full list of past meetings can be found in our ERDO Meetings section.
Posted January, 2019
The latest WG meeting took place in Paris on December 10th 2018, to coincide with a meeting of the IFNEC workshop on ‘Approaches to Financing a Multinational Repository: Challenges and Alternate Approaches’, held at the OECD Headquarters on 11th December. The Working Group meeting was attended by representatives of current WG member countries, plus observers from the IAEA and the US Department of Energy.
The objectives of the meeting were to share developments in Member countries, discuss the status of the upcoming EC EURAD programme and the proposed ‘ROUTES’ work package, and to plan for future ERDO-WG activities, including the proposed ’Steps to Sharing’ workshop in 2019.
Posted July, 2018
The most recent WG meeting took place in Baden, Switzerland on July 10th 2018, hosted by Arius. It was attended by representatives of current WG member countries, plus observers from Croatia and Norway. The meeting included a visit to the Swiss national radioactive waste conditioning and storage facility, ZWILAG, and to Nagra's underground research laboratory in granite at Grimsel. The main objectives of the meeting were to share developments in Member countries, discuss the status of national submissions in connection with EC Directive 2011/70/Euratom and the upcoming EC European Joint Programming work package on networking, and to plan for future ERDO-WG activities. A major outcome was the decision to organise a European symposium, tentatively entitled ’Steps to Sharing’, for 2019.
The next WG meeting will take place in December 2018 in Paris, to coincide with an upcoming IFNEC meeting on ‘Costing and Financing Multinational Repositories’.
A full list of past meetings can be found in our ERDO Meetings section.
Posted April, 2018
Over recent years, interest in the feasibility of enhanced multinational cooperation at the back-end of the fuel cycle has continued to grow. Since the beginning of this year, Arius/ERDO has been an invited participant in dedicated meetings held in London and in Washington DC with a focus on international repositories. Brief reports on these two meetings are available.
Arius Participation in Work of the World Nuclear Association in London 
Posted December, 2017
A meeting of the WG meeting took place in Vienna in October 2017, hosted by the Austrian Bundesministerium für Land- und Forstwirtschaft, Umwelt und Wasserwirtschaft. It was attended by representatives of current WG member countries and involved a visit to the national waste management and storage facilities at Seibersdorf, outside Vienna. The main objectives of the meeting were to discuss inputs to the European Joint Programming work package on networking.
A full list of past meetings can be found in our ERDO Meetings section.
Posted June, 2017
Ten years ago, the European Commission (EC) provided substantial support for a consortium of Member States to carry out a comprehensive study assessing multinational cooperation options in radioactive waste management (the SAPIERR studies). This work led to the establishment in 2009 of the ERDO-Working Group, which has since initiated several further steps in working together to promote the safe management of national inventories of radioactive wastes.
In recent years, however, EC support in radioactive waste management has focussed almost exclusively on providing scientific support to Advanced Geological Disposal Programmes. Today, the consensus opinion of ERDO Working Group members is that more attention should be paid to addressing the immediate national and European strategic, safety and security challenges in waste management that are faced by the Less Advanced Programmes (LAPs). In particular, in ERDO's view there is an inadequate resource framework within, and insufficient interaction with, the European Commission to enable the dual track option (working on national solutions whilst, in parallel, seeking opportunities for shared solutions) to develop effectively.”
ERDO's view is that there is currently no EC mechanism or forum to fill this gap. While the EC has been very supportive of efforts to help fulfil the IGD-TP vision of operating geological repositories in the EU by 2025, the much wider aim of ensuring that all Member States have safe and secure radioactive waste management programmes, including credible paths to disposal, is equally important.
Accordingly, the ERDO-WG requested direct discussions on this topic with the Energy Directorate in Luxembourg (DG-ENER) and, after agreeing an agenda, the meeting took place in Luxembourg on 15th May 2017. Attendees from the ERDO-WG side were Ole Kastbjerg, the Danish ERDO-WG representative, together with Neil Chapman and Charles McCombie from the secretariat. From the EC side, participants were Ioanna Metaxapoulou, Borislava Batandjieva-Metcalf from DG-ENER, Manuel Martin-Ramos from the JRC and Christophe Davies (by video link from DG-RTD in Brussels).
After introductory presentations from both sides, including interesting and very topical information from the EC on the status of the reviews of national Waste Directive submissions, the intention was to focus on potential additional mechanisms for increasing support of cooperation amongst Member States, especially LAPs, including concepts for multinational/shared repositories. These potential mechanisms include:
The meeting was interesting. The EC placed heavy emphasis on how any initiative or “project” must come from the Member States directly and on explaining that DG-ENER has little or no resources for external project work, since almost all such funding is controlled by DG-RTD. Positive news from an ERDO-WG perspective was that:
The most positive development was that the Evaluation Report of the EC, which came out on the day of the meeting, included in its first “Conclusion” the following text :
"The Commission will continue supporting Member States in addressing the relevant challenges as follows:
− Discussion on options for radioactive waste and spent fuel disposal, including shared solutions and the role of public participation in the decision-making process. The Commission stands ready to support the Member States in assessing the economic, legal and social impacts of shared repositories, given that the sharing of facilities for spent fuel and radioactive waste management, including disposal facilities, may be a potentially beneficial, safe and cost-effective option."
The more disappointing result was that the discussions confirmed the conclusions that the ERDO-WG has drawn from previous interactions with EC officials in DG-ENER and DG-RTD. The lack of mechanisms in DG-ENER to provide support funding to LAPs that have more strategic needs than R&D requirements continues to be a problem. The support of DG-RTD continues to be strongly focussed on advanced R&D activities that are of most benefit to advanced national radioactive waste management programmes in the EU.
Posted May, 2017
The European Union and the IAEA took steps to strengthen their cooperation in a range of nuclear activities including nuclear science applications during the fifth annual Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) in Brussels on 15th February 2017. The talks provided a forum to exchange views on enhancing collaboration in nuclear safety, security, safeguards, sustainable development and nuclear energy research and innovation and nuclear science applications. In addition, mechanisms to strengthen regional cooperation were discussed.
The SOM acknowledged that nuclear safety is a key priority that will remain at the centre of cooperation between the EU and the IAEA. This is an important development with respect to ERDO activities because the EU emphasized that issues linked with the back end of the life cycle of nuclear facilities, such as decommissioning and radioactive waste management, should receive additional attention and benefit from increased stakeholder involvement with a focus on increasing transparency on funding and processes leading to national and/or shared repositories.
See the full press release.
Posted April, 2017
The last WG meeting took place in Denmark in December 2016, at the Risoe laboratories, hosted by Dansk Dekommissionering. It was attended by representatives of all current WG member countries, as well as observers from Croatia and the Taiwan.
The next WG meeting is scheduled to take place in Vlissingen, Netherlands, hosted by COVRA, in May 2017.
A full list of past meetings can be found in our ERDO Meetings section.