The search for a location for a domestic nuclear waste repository actually started in 2018, the waste has been stored in the Lower Austrian site of Seibersdorf since 1974, and around 12,000 barrels with a capacity of 200 liters each are now in the interim storage facility.
An infringement procedure on the part of the EU created a need for action in the previous year. The Austrian Advisory Board for the disposal of low and medium level radioactive waste met for the first time at the end of March 2021. It was set up in the same month by decision of the federal government. Over the next three years, the advisory board is to develop open questions about the safe disposal of radioactive waste generated in Austria. It last met in mid-June, as the Environment Ministry told the APA.
“These are complex processes, these are processes where you have to clarify a lot of questions,” said Gewessler in the “ZiB1” and announced a transparent process. However, the task of the National Waste Management Advisory Board is to come up with scientifically founded proposals for the next three years The minister announced in March that the repository should be developed. The repository should enable security for 300 years. From a contractual point of view, it would even be time until 2045 to bring the storage under wraps in the long term.
Since Austria does not operate any commercial nuclear power plants, it is a comparatively minor problem. But also the low to medium level radioactive waste from medicine, industry and research has to be stored for several hundred years.
The EU Directive 2011/70 / Euratom obliges all member states to safely and responsibly dispose of their entire radioactive waste, which is currently stored at Nuclear Engineering Seibersdorf (NES), and if it does not subside, it must be finally disposed of, according to a draft of the Ministry. The required “National Program” must include the management of nuclear waste from its generation to final disposal and ensure the protection of the population and the environment from radiation, as it is regulated by the Radiation Protection Act.
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