Luxembourg, National Report on the measures taken by Luxembourg to fulfill the obligations laid down in the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, 2006

Luxembourg has signed the Joint Convention on 1st October 1997 and is a Party thereof since 19 November 2001. The Convention entered into force on 21 June 2001. Luxembourg has no nuclear power plant, no other fuel-cycle facility, no research reactor and no other facility generating radioactive substances. Thus many requirements of the Joint Convention do not apply to Luxembourg. It further has no spent nuclear fuel and no high level radioactive waste on its territory. There are other reasons which explain, why the actual total amount of radioactive waste, in form of disused sealed sources of low activity, is marginal: - small size of the country; - import license for a radioactive sealed source is only granted by the competent authority under the condition that the foreign supplier certifies taking back the disused radioactive source; - import and installation of radioactive smoke detectors and of radioactive lightning conductors has been forbidden for many years; - most of the old “historical” radioactive sealed sources have been returned to the country of origin or to a foreign waste management facility. In Luxembourg radioactive waste is only arising from the use of radioactive sources in industry, medicine and to a small extent from the use in education and research. Its activity and its volume being very low, the Luxembourg Government takes the position that the option of a national management facility and of a final disposal facility would be unrealistic, because not at all commensurate. Therefore all disused sealed sources have to be returned to the country of origin and if this turns out to be impossible, to a foreign waste management facility. Since 1967, Luxembourg has a legislation and a regulation on radiation protection, which cover all relevant nuclear and radiological safety issues. This regulation is revised periodically in order to be in conformity with the provisions of the Directives of the European Union of which Luxembourg is a Member State. The last revision of the national regulation entered into force in 2000. The legal framework relates to the protection of the general population, to the protection of workers and to the protection of the environment from damage that may be caused by radioactive sources or radioactive waste. The aim of this report is to demonstrate that Luxembourg meets its obligations of the Joint Convention. This demonstration is mainly based on the Luxembourg legislation and policy framework concerning the management, the control and the inspection of radioactive sources and radioactive waste held in the country. The situation with regard to the obligations of the Convention has practically not changed since the first Review Meeting. For this reason duplications from the previous report could not be fully avoided. The present report focuses further on subjects addressed by written questions during the preparation of the last meeting. The report is structured in conformity with the “Guidelines regarding the form and structure of national reports” issued by the IAEA on 1 July 2002 (INFCIRC/604). However the section concerning the safety of spent fuel management covering articles 4-10 of the Joint Convention is dropped, as it is not applicable to Luxembourg.