Prevent and anticipate through transparency and participation
NTW member, Peter Mihók, and Katarína Liptáková have released a new paper where they examine official documents, legal norms, and academic literature to address gaps in understanding radon spa regulation in six Central European countries: Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia.
Article -> https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00411-026-01203-0
Full Paper -> Legal regulatory frameworks of radon spas in central Europe
Last month, on 20th January 2026 the DG ENER invited a representative of a dozen of NGOs interested by the topic of nuclear liabilities after a letter sent out by some of them in early 2025: Letter to EU Commissioners.
The meeting was introduced by some presentations from the DG ENER to show the work done on this topic by the EU Commission:
Then, some of the NGOs co-signatories of the letter also gave some presentations:
After the introduction of participants, Jan Panek (DG ENER) started the meeting by stating “Lliability is an important part of nuclear safety”. In his introduction, he also mentioned: issues of new technologies coming up, SMRs and new designs that have not been in operating in Europe before. There are also new nuclear states in Europe, such as Poland which require new considerations of nuclear safety. The need for a fact- based approach was underlined with the hope to get some common understandings of issues with this dialogue. Andrei Florea (DG ENER) mentioned that in all liability conventions, disputes should be handled in the court of the operator, not of the victim while Stefan Bogdan (DG ENER) mentioned that the Commission always do as much as possible to have countries joining the liability regimes.
The Commission study from Study 2020 (commissioned 2017) presented looked at the limits of the (insufficient) compensation and what are obstacles for private insuring companies. The available insurance capacity (¨250 mio. €) is much below liabilities with updated conventions of nuclear liability. The study identified possible improvements in the short term such as expanding/strengthening mutual insurance or setting single lifetime policy limits (with 30% decrease in insurance policy) and improvements in the mid-term with an EU wide system for liability.
After a fruitful dialogue and dynamic dialogue the following were some of the conclusions formulated:
Some members of NTW have collectively published a book, on Transparency and Public Participation for Radioactive Waste Management in Europe investigating how the pillars of the Aarhus Convention, and a broader understanding of transparency by Civil Society (CS), can be transposed into Radioactive Waste Management (RWM), particularly in the establishment of Radioactive Waste (RW) facilities in different national contexts.
With an analysis of nine national cases from Europe, the book provides the results of the investigations, including comments, suggestions, questions, and other observations, collected in interaction with other EURAD-1 participants from civil society. It discusses the feedback provided within a questionnaire completed by ROUTES members for the development of national programmes on radioactive waste management submitted to the waste directive, based on effective access to information, public participation, justice, resources, and transparency.
The book will interest nuclear energy policymakers, government employees, and radioactive waste management facility operators. It will also aid researchers and academics investigating public perception and facility siting considerations.
In the frame of the EU joint programme on radioactive waste management EURAD-1, the NTW members involved, together with other civil society members and EURAD participants, addressed aspects of rolling stewardship in radioactive waste management in the context of research and fruitful Interactions with Civil Society (ICS) methodology.
This helped in developing the following outputs within the 2 “strategic studies” work packages in which NTW was participating:
In parallel, NTW also launched a working group on this topic in which several presentations have been made by knowledgeable speakers from various backgrounds and with complementary knowledge such as Robert Del Tredici, Dr. Gordon Edwards, Marcos Buser, Reinhard Uberhost or Maryna Surkova. For NTW, Niels Henrik Hooge and Gilles Hériard-Dubreuil also provided some inputs.
The following presentations proposed in this working group are also available on NTW’s You Tube channel:
Webinar #2 – part 2
“History of disposal projects and need for stewardship”
by Marcos Buser, a geologist with a degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, also consultant and expert who has been active for more than four decades in the management of industrial and radioactive waste projects, and a former member of several scientific commissions for the Swiss government, including the Swiss Federal Commission for Nuclear Safety. He was a member of the StocaMine steering committee.
In fact, NTW has envisioned connected topic related to the concept of Rolling Stewardship addressing challenges of the long-term engagement and maintenance in various way, such as “Intergenerational Stewardship” or “Long-term Stewardship” for instance. This work is meant to be continued within the same platforms which were previously used such as the SITEX.network and EURAD but also with any interested partners such as researchers specialized in environmental stewardship or in radioactive waste management in the long term.
This is why, a « stewardship culture » could be defined as a democratic and sustainable way to inclusively and pluralistically roll accountability and management across generations in the long term, in the spirit of the Aarhus Convention.
Through the research activities carried out within its framework, PIANOFORTE contributes to the implementation of European policies such as the European plan to combat cancer , the green pact for growth, and the implementation of the roadmap for reducing industrial and natural risks.
In this article named, Nuclear safety and the Common, the authors, Gilles Hériard-Dubreuil and Julien Dewoghelaëre have provided a study on the notion of Common in relation of the nuclear safety in the French context. This article has been published with other articles on the notion of Common in the frame of a collective publication named “Dynamiques du Commun” (2021).
The introduction is reported below, while the full article is accessible there.
“Civil nuclear power generation activities are associated with very significant risks for humans and the biosphere. They also give rise to the production of dangerous radioactive materials, the presence of which must be envisaged for very long periods, and even infinite from the perspective of a human life itself.
From the very beginning, these activities have been the subject of strong political opposition from various groups within the populations of the producing countries and at international level. These confrontations involve pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear players, with a relatively indifferent public in the background, with the exception of periods of concern caused by the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents. The opposition to these activities is based on the rejection of exposure to nuclear risks and their potential consequences at national and international level. The possibility of safe management of nuclear activity is a central object of controversy.
This contestation also concerns the technical, economic and social relevance of the choice of nuclear power generation, particularly in the current context of energy transition. Nuclear activities are facing a deterioration in their economic model, with a sharp rise in productivity requirements, combined with stricter European regulations restricting state aid and increased financial and economic transparency5, which in Europe is limiting the public support from which this activity has historically benefited.
The European context today is characterised by a wide disparity in energy choices, particularly where nuclear power is concerned. Only some European countries are involved in nuclear production, often in connection with military nuclear activities. Some of these countries have decided to withdraw from nuclear power at different times. They are planning a transition to other forms of energy production. But phasing out nuclear power does not mean phasing out nuclear safety, which remains a long-term or even very long-term issue for these countries. Ultimately, nuclear safety is an issue for all European countries. Indeed, serious nuclear accidents are always of a cross-border nature and the management of radioactive materials, although a national responsibility, remains a common safety issue for Europe’s neighbours.
Nuclear safety requires a wide range of technical, scientific, economic, social and political conditions to be met. As a result, safety is highly vulnerable to changes in the economic climate affecting the industry, in an unstable international context that differs in many respects from that which prevailed in the second half of the last century. A systemic deterioration6 in nuclear safety and security conditions could result from these profound changes in the national and international context. The ability of dyadic governance between State and Market to support nuclear safety requirements in an unfavourable economic climate is questionable. At European level, this situation is a new factor which tends to make nuclear safety a common issue for the peoples of Europe.
A study of the governance of nuclear activities since their inception reveals a profound evolution, the most recent stage of which, in Europe, is based on the societal recognition of nuclear safety as a common problem (with, in particular, an increase in the power of the European institutions on this issue), over and above the diverse positions of the Member States with regard to nuclear energy. Favoured in particular by the Aarhus Convention (1998), this development has the seeds of a gradual recomposition of nuclear safety governance, with the institutional components of safety interacting in a Common dynamic: 1) the operator (the Market), 2) the State and its institutions and 3) civil society. This move towards triadic governance could ultimately bring about a political rebalancing of the negotiation processes that govern the establishment of nuclear safety rules and standards.”
2023-07-31
Nuclear waste from NPPs remains an unsolved and highly dangerous problem, as spent fuel must remain isolated from the environment for a million years.
In an attempt to solve the nuclear waste problem, an EU-wide directive was introduced in 2011, the “Council Directive 2011/70/Euratom establishing a Community framework for the responsible and safe management of spent fuel and radioactive waste”. This directive tried to force EU member states to address the issue seriously, after this had been neglected for decades – thus immediately proving that nuclear waste has never been effectively dealt with.
The Joint Project has been active for years in monitoring the implementation of the Nuclear Waste Directive, especially with regard to transparency and opportunities for public participation.
The 2023 update of our report is available here.
Nuclear Transparency Watch (NTW) is a European citizen network of organisations and members dedicated to giving access to information on nuclear safety issues, Radioactive Waste (RW) being an important issue of short and long term safety, NTW is following this subject since its beginnings.
One major contribution of NTW to this topic is the “Broad Framework for Effective Public Information and Participation in Environmental Decision-making in Radioactive Waste Management” or BEPPER report (2015) which is the extended report made by the same authors for the European Commission on transparency within radioactive waste management.
🔎 NTW members are continuously working nationally (with local partners) as well as internationally (under the frame of the European Commission with the EURAD research program) on this topic. Therefore, in order to update and share information a webinar series was launched in 2023 to report on 9 national cases presented by NGOs representatives from each country.
Indeed, the day after the invasion, on 25 February 2022, the armies of the Russian Federation attacked the Chornobyl power station and a few days later the largest power station in Europe: Zaporizhzhia
👉 find here ENSREG statement
Tanja Perko, Nadja Zeleznik (NTW Chairwoman) and Peter Mihok (NTW member) have translated recent social science and humanities research (2020–2025) into evidence-based recommendations for policymakers managing societal aspects of radon and naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM).
By bridging the gap between researchers and decision-makers, this work ensures that radon and NORM policies are informed by robust evidence, context-sensitive insights, and tested approaches.
Full paper -> Click here
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