Long-Term Radioactive Waste Management in the Netherlands: Seeking Guidance for Decision-Making

Abstract

The Netherlands pursues a ‘dual strategy’—national and international—with regard to the management of radioactive waste and spent fuel. On the national level an above-ground facility was built in the 1990s to store radioactive waste for a period of at least 100 years. By around the year 2130 a geological disposal facility is envisaged to be operational. The Netherlands also pursues an international strategy, which leaves the possibility open for collaboration with other European Union Member States to establish a shared geological disposal facility. Currently, the country’s radioactive waste policy lacks a concrete step-by-step decision-making process to implement the above dual strategy. This chapter identifies several decision-making challenges that need to be addressed, such as clarifying the principles of retrievability and reversibility, setting up criteria to reserve potential search locations for a geological disposal facility, developing a long-term, integral, participatory knowledge agenda, strengthening the knowledge landscape and developing a participatory decision-making process that enjoys public and political support.