12 Control of shipments of radioactive
waste and fuel
| (a)
(26138)
14686/04
COM(04) 716
|
Draft Council Directive on the supervision and control of shipments of radioactive waste
|
| (b)
(27149)
5058/06
COM(05) 673
|
Amended draft Council Directive on the supervision and control of shipments of radioactive waste
|
| Legal base | Articles 31 and 32 Euratom; consultation; QMV
|
| Department | Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
|
| Basis of consideration | Minister's letter of 4 December 2006
|
| Previous Committee Report | (a) HC 38-iii (2004-05), para 5 (12 January 2005)
(both) HC 34-xviii (2005-06), para 6 (8 February 2006) and HC 41-i (2006-07), para 4 (22 November 2006)
|
| Discussed in Council | 13 November 2006
|
| Committee's assessment | Politically important
|
| Committee's decision | Cleared
|
Background
12.1 Community measures for protecting the general public and
workers from ionising radiation provide for the supervision and
control of shipments of radioactive waste between Member States
and into and out of the Community. In November 2004, the Commission
proposed (document (a)) a number of changes, many of which were
relatively minor. However, the proposal would also have required
shipments of spent fuel intended for reprocessing, and thus not
hitherto considered as waste, to be subject to the procedures
laid down in the Directive, and, as our predecessors noted on
12 January 2005, the Government considered that, since such shipments
have a further use and are thus not waste, the implications of
this needed to be considered further. In particular, it was concerned
that such a step could impose a new burden on the Nuclear Decommissioning
Authority (NDA), and that the costs could be substantial.
12.2 Since the Government had also said that it would be providing
a Regulatory Impact Assessment, our predecessors decided to await
this before taking a view on the proposal. In the meantime, the
Commission produced in December 2005 an amended proposal (document
(b)), though, according to the Government, its scope and main
provisions did not differ from those in the original proposal.
As before, a Regulatory Impact Assessment was promised, though
— in
contrast to the original proposal —
we were now told that the extension of the scope of the Directive
to cover spent fuel should not imply considerable costs to Member
States or nuclear operators. Despite this, we said in our Report
of 8 February 2006 that we too would await the promised Regulatory
Impact Assessment, where we hoped that the Government would clarify
why its current view of the likely costs to the UK differed from
that taken on the original proposal.
12.3 We subsequently received from the Minister for
Climate Change and Environment at the Department of Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Ian Pearson) a letter of 9 November
2006. This pointed out that the earlier cost assumption had been
based on the NDA's aspiration to secure a substantial amount of
new reprocessing business and on the prospect that Member States
politically opposed to reprocessing could cause costly delays
by refusing to allow such shipments to transit their territory.
It said that neither of these assumptions "now appears to
be valid", adding in the latter case that the text of the
proposal had been amended to safeguard free passage of shipments
through the territorial waters of other Member States. The letter
concluded by regretting that it has not been possible to provide
the promised Regulatory Impact Assessment, but informed us that
the proposal would be going to the Council as an A point on 13
November, when it would be supported by the UK, on the grounds
that it was not contentious and did not alter in any significant
way the current control regime for shipments of radioactive waste.
12.4 In our Report of 22 November 2006, we raised
a number of concerns. First, we noted that our predecessors had
been told that the proposal to extend the definition of waste
to cover spent fuel represented a "significant expansion
of the existing Directive", and that there was already in
place a "robust" system of international regulations
in this area, making it unnecessary to require Member States to
comply with these further provisions, which did not add any radiological
protection benefits. Since the Minister had now said that the
proposal was not contentious, partly (it would seem) because the
NDA no longer wishes to secure a substantial amount of reprocessing
business, this suggested to us that, contrary to the earlier impression,
the point at issue here was now not so much one of principle,
as related to the projected scale of the NDA's reprocessing activities.
We, therefore, asked the Minister to clarify this apparent shift
in the Government's position.
12.5 We were, however, equally concerned that, having
previously promised a Regulatory Impact Assessment, the Government
should have been willing to see this proposal agreed in the Council
whilst there was still a scrutiny reserve on it, and we asked
why no such Assessment had yet been provided. Also, since these
proposals had been on the table for two years, we said it was
unacceptable that we should have been informed of the Government's
decision to support them in the Council only four days before
a decision was due to be taken, and we said that we would like
the Minister to explain why we had not been alerted to this development
well before now.
Minister's letter of 4 December 2006
12.6 We have now received from the Minister a further
letter of 4 December, in which he says:
"As the Committee is aware, the UK's initial
position, as set out in EM 14686/04, was to oppose expansion of
the scope of the current control regime to include spent fuel.
This was because Member States of transit would, for the first
time, have been able to refuse consent for shipments of spent
fuel passing through their territories (defined in the Directive
as including territorial waters). DTI expressed concerns that
this introduced the possibility that a Member State that was politically
opposed to reprocessing could effectively block such shipments,
leading to costly delays.
"EM 5058/06, on a slightly revised proposal
from the Commission (but still extending to shipments of spent
fuel), reflected two developments since the first EM. First, it
had become clear by then that all imports of spent fuel under
existing reprocessing contracts would be completed prior to the
new Directive coming into effect. Although the NDA is still seeking
new reprocessing business, no new contracts are currently in prospect
and it seems unlikely that a substantial amount of new business
will materialise. Second, the UK had secured amendments to the
draft Directive to safeguard the free passage of shipments through
territorial waters and to limit the grounds on which Member States
could withhold their consent to breaches of international transport
regulations. These developments together removed the initial concerns
that the Directive could have substantial costs implications for
the NDA, hence the Government's amended assessment that the Directive
would be unlikely to imply considerable additional costs.
"It remains the Government's intention to provide
an RIA in respect of this legislation. However, our current view,
as described above, that implementation of the Directive will
not impact greatly on the NDA's costs, has made that assessment
less relevant, since other costs and benefits are unlikely to
be significantly different from those under the current regime.
The RIA was not therefore afforded priority over other urgent
work. It is now in hand and will be completed by mid February
2007.
"The Committee records its disappointment at
not being informed at an earlier stage of the Government's decision
to support the Directive. I was on the point of writing to the
Committee when my officials learned that the process of the Directive
going to Coreper and then to the Council was proceeding faster
than usual, so obliging me to write to you in the terms of my
letter of 9 November. However, I consider that the Government's
support for the Directive was already implicit in the EM submitted
by my predecessor in January of that year, which indicated that,
on the basis of the draft text as it then stood, the Government
envisaged no major policy implications, no material changes to
the existing administrative regime and no significant additional
costs to industry."
Conclusion
12.7 Whilst we have noted the Minister's latest
explanations, we still have a number of concerns.
12.8 First, on the substance of the proposal,
it may well be that the earlier practical difficulties have been
resolved in the way described, but the fact remains that the proposal
presumably still classifies as waste material which is intended
for reprocessing, and moreover introduces a new legislative measure
in an area where our predecessors were told that there was already
in place a "robust" system of international regulations.
In view of this, and the lack of any additional radiological benefits,
it is hard to see what this aspect of the proposal will achieve.
12.9 Secondly, even if a Regulatory Impact Assessment
confirms that the Directive will not impact greatly on the NDA's
costs, the promise of such an Assessment led both us and our predecessors
explicitly to defer scrutiny until it was available. Consequently,
it would — to put it mildly — have been both courteous,
and more conducive to the smooth running of the scrutiny process,
if the Minister had told us earlier that the Assessment was to
be deferred in favour of "more urgent" work.
12.10 Finally, the Minister appears to suggest
that an implicit suggestion in an earlier Explanatory Memorandum
of the Government's support for the proposal somehow justifies
the decision to over-ride the scrutiny reserve. That is emphatically
not the case, and we maintain that we could — and should
— have been alerted to these developments in sufficient
time for the scrutiny process to have been completed properly.
12.11 Having registered these points, we do not
propose to pursue them further, and we are therefore clearing
the documents. However, we believe that the Department's scrutiny
handling in this instance falls short of the standards we are
entitled to expect, and we hope that the Minister and his officials
will avoid such lapses in future.
|
