Do It Together…Or Wait. Radioactive Waste Management in the Netherlands

Fifty years of nuclear industry and the wide spread use of radioactive materials in Europe have resulted in matured programmes for radioactive waste management. According to the selfsufficiency principle, each country collects, processes, stores and disposes of its radioactive waste. National programmes allow close control of possible environmental and safety impacts, but are not the optimal choice for disposal of radioactive waste in countries with small nuclear programmes. Most technical, safety and environmental arguments are in favour of a ‘shared’ disposal. In this paper, it will be shown that although these concerns are the dominant drivers, common sense, historical facts, and economic considerations point to the shared or regional solution as well.