Radioactive waste from Europe's 143 nuclear reactors must in future be buried in secure bunkers, ministers from EU member states agreed on Tuesday. The new rules force national nuclear authorities to draw up disposal plans by 2015, which will be vetted by Europe's energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger.
"After years of inaction, the EU for the very first time commits itself to a final disposal of nuclear waste," Oettinger said in a statement. The 14 European Union member states using nuclear power currently store the radioactive waste in surface bunkers or warehouses for decades while it cools down.
But crises such as Russia's wildfires last summer and leakage at Japan's earthquake and tsunami stricken Fukushima plant have highlighted the risks posed by surface storage.
Nuclear energy has not been popular in Europe since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, but it is even less so since Fukushima was hit in March, and Germany has even agreed to phase out nuclear power completely by 2022.
Oettinger has made nuclear safety one of the main issues of his five-year tenure, pushing ministers to develop a pan-European safety strategy for the first time.
The first step in that strategy is a series of "stress tests" on nuclear plants, which started in June. The second is Tuesday's decision to dispose of spent nuclear fuel in secure repositories.
Oettinger's team, which will vet the national strategies, has already stated its preference for "deep geological repositories" - caverns to be built in clay or granite rocks between 100 and 700 metres underground.
Safety standards drawn up by the International Atomic Energy Agency will also become legally binding as part of the plan. Nuclear industry body Foratom welcomed the agreement and said it would reduce the burden on future generations.
"The scientific consensus is that deep geological disposal represents the safest and most sustainable end-point," said Foratom director general Santiago San Antonio.
But Greenpeace said underground burial would not address the fundamental issue.
"Only countries that face the unsolvable problem of radioactive waste head-on by ending their reliance on nuclear power can stop the vicious circle that shifts responsibility to the next generations," said Greenpeace anti-nuclear campaigner Jan Haverkamp.
The EU's 143 nuclear plants produce about 50,000 cubic metres (1.77 million cu ft) of radioactive waste each year, says Foratom. About 15 percent of that is high level waste.
Oettinger had initially proposed a total ban on exports of radioactive waste to other countries for reprocessing, but ministers created a loophole for future exports.
Instead, waste can be shipped to countries that already have deep geological storage. "At present, such deep geological repositories do not exist anywhere in the world nor is a repository in construction outside of the EU," said Oettinger's team, talking down the extent of the loophole. "It takes currently a minimum of 40 years to develop and build one."
EU sources said existing reprocessing contracts would remain valid between Russia and former soviet governments in eastern Europe, allowing the continued shipment of radioactive material.
The loopholes for export were opposed by Sweden, Luxembourg and Austria, who abstained from the vote to avoid killing the agreement altogether. "While recognising the added value of several important provisions in the directive, Sweden, Austria and Luxembourg however regret that the community has not been able to confirm its full responsibilities to take care of its own spent fuel and radioactive waste," they said in a joint declaration.
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