Rolling stewardship in radioactive waste management

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:

• UMAN work package where a presentation of rolling stewardship with regard to human uncertainties:
  ➡️ ICS workshop Ljubljana intergenerational stewardship culture final
  and various drawings from different authors to have visual representations of the concept:
  ➡️Visual representations of rolling stewardship
• ROUTES work package where the section 6.4 of the deliverable D9.18 was dedicated to Rolling Stewardship which can be described as a strong version of Long-Term Stewardship (LTS) of Radioactive Waste:
  ➡️ https://www.ejp-eurad.eu/publications/eurad-d918-implementation-routes-action-plan-third-phase 

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 #1
  “Human uncertainties relevant to the safety associated with radioactive waste management and Rolling Stewardship”
  by Niels Henrik Hooge Master of Laws and Master of Arts in Philosophy. Interested in environmental and sustainability for a long time he has manifested itself in activism, cooperation with green NGOs in Denmark and abroad, as well as in many types of writing. In addition to editorial staff work in Danish environmental magazines, he has published several books, including most recently the novel “Kosova” (2016) and the poetry collections “Grøn nation” (Green Nation, 2015), “Miljødigte” (Environmental Poems, 2018) and “Miljødigte 2” (Environmental Poems 2, 2019).
  “The origin and evolution of the concept of Rolling Stewardship”
  by Ph.D. in Mathematics and Master of Arts in English Literature, Gordon Edwards, who has been a Professor of Mathematics and Science during all his career during which he did many publications in that field but not only. From 1970 to 1974, he was the editor of Survival magazine. In 1975 he co-founded the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility and has been its president since 1978. Edwards has worked widely as a consultant on nuclear issues and has been qualified as a nuclear expert by courts in Canada and elsewhere.
• Webinar #2 – part 1 

  “Darkness, Visibility, and Transparency”
  by Robert del Tredici has a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature at the University of California, and he has been a teacher for much of his life, giving courses in Photography, Drawing, Mythology, and History of Animated Film at the University of Calgary in Alberta and at Vanier College and Concordia University in Montreal. He is and has been a prolific graphic artist and documentary photographer: The People of Three Mile Island (1980), At Work in the Fields of the Bomb (1987), Closing the Circle on the Splitting-off the Atom (1993); Linking Legacies (1995); From Cleanup to Stewardship (1997).

  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.

• Webinar #3
  “An Introduction to Safety Culture – a possible resource for Rolling Stewardship of Radioactive Waste Management ?”
  by Gilles Hériard Dubreuil, born in 1957, has a background in mathematics and human sciences (sociology, ethics, risk management). From 1982 to 1990, he worked for various consulting firms, then for Mutadis from 1991 onwards, developing research and consultancy activities in the fields of governance of high-risk activities and sustainable development, as well as in the design and testing of democratic governance systems at local, national and international levels.
  “Rolling Stewardship – Safety Culture ; a regulatory perspective”
  by Maryna Surkova a professional at the Federal Agency for Nuclear Control (FANC) in Belgium where she oversees nuclear safety and regulatory affairs within the Ghent metropolitan area. Maryna holds qualifications from the SCK CEN Academy for Nuclear Science and Technology. With a strong technical and regulatory background, she ensures compliance with national and international nuclear standards. Based in Belgium, she combines scientific expertise with policy implementation to support FANC’s mission.
  

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.