介绍:
2. Basic concept and structure of the Joint Convention
The Group of Experts took the Nuclear Safety Convention as a model. The main obligations under the Joint Convention are:
(1) to establish a legislative and regulatory framework for the safety of spent fuel management and radioactive waste management;
(2) to set up an independent regulatory body (safety authority);
(3) to apply general safety principles.
As with the Nuclear Safety Convention, the contracting parties must "report" on implementation of these obligations at "review meetings" held at regular intervals-a relatively informal implementation procedure.
To repeat an expression in tie Preamble to the Nuclear Safety Convention, the Joint Convention is an "incentive Convention" with the objective of developing an appropriate "safety culture" in countries which use nuclear materials that generate radioactive waste. The obligations cover various aspects of the safety culture without imposing technical requirements on the contracting parties.
While using the Nuclear Safety Convention as a model, difficulties of a different nature arose before the Group of Experts. The negotiations have been particularly sensitive on the issue of the scope of application. The discussions on this aspect are addressed in the next part of this article. These issues have economic and political implications and the article describes the willingness to reach a political compromise. The third part of the article focuses on the relationship of the Joint Convention with other relevant international instruments. It is based on the legal arguments put forward by the Group of Experts in order to evaluate the consequences of possible gaps and overlaps in relation to other instruments.
B. Scope of Application
1. Spent fuel/radioactive waste: a Joint Convention
(a) Background to a controversy: spent fuel as a resource. From the outset of the discussions there was clear disagreement between those countries which wanted spent fuel to be covered by the Convention (the Nordic countries, the United States, the United Kingdom, etc) and those that did not (France, China, India, Pakistan, the Netherlands). The latter were in a clear minority in the Group of Experts.
The difference of approach did not mean that those countries opposed to including spent fuel considered it unnecessary to apply to spent fuel management safety principles similar to those applicable to radioactive waste management It appeared clear that in safety terms spent fuel and radioactive waste must be subject to the same management requirements.
The reason certain countries were opposed to including spent fuel was that they feared that treating the two types of material on the same basis would restrict their freedom of choice in regard to fuel cycle policy. For these countries, spent fuel is not the same as radioactive waste, i.e. material for which no further utilisation is envisaged. It is, on the contrary, a valuable and, after reprocessing, a precious source of energy. It is, in other words, a "resource".
This being so, the discussions, sometimes heated, centred on this "controversy" and rapidly came to a standstill, each delegation maintaining its position.
A first attempt at compromise resulted from a proposal by Professor Baer, the Chairman of the Group of Experts. The compromise was summarised by the words "as far as the gates of the reprocessing plant" and entailed the Convention covering spent fuel up to its transfer to a reprocessing plant Interim storage facilities for spent fuel pending final disposal or pending reprocessing, or for which no decision as to disposal or reprocessing had yet been taken (outside the reprocessing plant), as well as final disposal sites for spent fuel would have been covered by the Convention. This proposal (the Baer compromise), which was still unclear on whether radioactive waste/spent fuel would be treated in the same way, did not obtain general consensus within the Group of Experts and positions hardened still further.
At a meeting of the Group of Experts in June 1996, France, to resolve the waste/spent fuel problem, proposed as a compromise that only spent fuel declared by the contracting party concerned as having no further use be covered by the Convention. This proposal was dictated by a concern for clarity and logic it was better clearly to distinguish the two materials. On the one hand there would be radioactive waste and spent fuel of no further use (rightly treated as waste) which would be covered by a "Waste Convention". On the other, there would be spent fuel for reprocessing which would not be covered by the Convention.
This proposal, which had the major drawback of leaving spent fuel for reprocessing, as well as that for which no decision had been taken, outside any treaty system, was not received favourably by countries wishing to see more extensive coverage of spent fuel, and discussions once again came to a standstill.
