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Determining the radioactive nature of waste: regulations and practices in various EU member states

Summary

The approaches to risk management and the measures recommended to protect facilities and employees are very different in the four EU countries compared in this study. While France has equipped its waste treatment facilities (incinerators and landfill sites) with gantries fitted with radiological monitoring systems to check that the radioactive content of loads does not exceed authorised thresholds, Germany considers such equipment to be unnecessary, or even incongruous, given that household and industrial waste is selectively sorted at source, and that waste considered to be potentially low-level radioactive is subject to a specific procedure drawn up at Länder level. The installation of detection systems at the entrance to waste treatment facilities is not a subject of discussion. Belgium and the Netherlands are in an intermediate position between these two extremes. In Wallonia, checks were made compulsory at the entrances to class 1 and 2 landfill sites in February 2003, and all landfill sites are now officially equipped with detection portals. The procedure to be followed in the event of the alarm signal being triggered is currently being drawn up. In Flanders, three incineration plants are equipped with monitoring devices on a voluntary basis; one of them is involved in an experimental project to develop a method for preventing accidental contamination of incineration plants. At present, any load that triggers the alarm signal at the entrance to the facility is returned to the sender. The protection of waste treatment facilities has been a subject of debate among Flemish waste management experts for some years now. Decision-making and legislation have been slowed down, in particular because of the financial and economic stakes involved in refusing a load of waste. In the Netherlands, the situation is even different. Since January 2003, metal recyclers have been required to equip their sites with a radioactivity monitoring system to identify the presence of contaminated metals in loads of scrap metal. This regulation on the detection of radioactivity in metals also sets out the arrangements for paying for the removal of contaminated components.

Publication date: December 2005

Achievement: ADIT

Reference: 05-0127/1A


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