General principles

1. Member States shall establish and maintain national policies on spent fuel and radioactive waste management. Without prejudice to Article 2(3), each Member State shall have ultimate responsibility for management of the spent fuel and radioactive waste generated in it.

2. Where radioactive waste or spent fuel is shipped for processing or reprocessing to a Member State or a third country, the ultimate responsibility for the safe and responsible disposal of those materials, including any waste as a by-product, shall remain with the Member State or third country from which the radioactive material was shipped.

3. National policies shall be based on all of the following principles:

the generation of radioactive waste shall be kept to the minimum which is reasonably practicable, both in terms of activity and volume, by means of appropriate design measures and of operating and decommissioning practices, including the recycling and reuse of materials;

the interdependencies between all steps in spent fuel and radioactive waste generation and management shall be taken into account;

spent fuel and radioactive waste shall be safely managed, including in the long term with passive safety features;

implementation of measures shall follow a graded approach;

the costs for the management of spent fuel and radioactive waste shall be borne by those who generated those materials;

an evidence-based and documented decision-making process shall be applied with regard to all stages of the management of spent fuel and radioactive waste.

4. Radioactive waste shall be disposed of in the Member State in which it was generated, unless at the time of shipment an agreement, taking into account the criteria established by the Commission in accordance with Article 16(2) of Directive 2006/117/Euratom, has entered into force between the Member State concerned and another Member State or a third country to use a disposal facility in one of them.

Prior to a shipment to a third country, the exporting Member State shall inform the Commission of the content of any such agreement and take reasonable measures to be assured that:

the country of destination has concluded an agreement with the Community covering spent fuel and radioactive waste management or is a party to the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management (‘the Joint Convention’);

the country of destination has radioactive waste management and disposal programmes with objectives representing a high level of safety equivalent to those established by this Directive; and

the disposal facility in the country of destination is authorised for the radioactive waste to be shipped, is operating prior to the shipment, and is managed in accordance with the requirements set down in the radioactive waste management and disposal programme of that country of destination.

CHAPTER 2

OBLIGATIONS

COUNCIL DIRECTIVE 2011/70/EURATOM of 19 July 2011 establishing a Community framework for the responsible and safe management of spent fuel and radioactive waste