Overview

In 2021, the European Commission (EC) adopted a new proposal for a Council Regulation establishing a dedicated financial programme for the decommissioning of nuclear facilities and the management of radioactive waste. This instrument covers the co-funding of the decommissioning programmes of Bulgaria, Slovakia, and the decommissioning and waste management of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) sites (namely JRC-Geel in Belgium, JRC-Karlsruhe in Germany, JRC-Ispra in Italy and JRC-Petten in the Netherlands). A separate Council Regulation was adopted for the decommissioning programme of Lithuania.

The EC JRC is mandated to foster the spread of decommissioning knowledge across all the European Union Member States and facilitate knowledge sharing arising from implementing the above mentioned decommissioning programmes, funded by the Nuclear Decommissioning Assistance Programme (NDAP).

The NDKM Initiative is a strategic effort to capture, consolidate, and disseminate knowledge from the Nuclear Decommissioning Assistance Programme beneficiaries and share it with a broader network of stakeholders (e.g. Member States, safety authorities, and utilities and decommissioning operators). This initiative fosters collaboration across Europe, promoting best practices, expertise exchange, and stakeholder engagement in nuclear decommissioning.

The NDKM Initiative pursues two main goals: Knowledge Preservation and Exchange, and Ties development. 

The initiative is already advancing nuclear decommissioning knowledge management through engaging with nuclear decommissioning operators from the EU Member States, other international organisations like the IAEA or the OECD/NEA, and promoting connections between industry, academia, and research centres through the European Learning Initiatives on Nuclear Decommissioning and Environmental Remediation (ELINDER).

What we do

The NDKM initiative is involved in the following activities:

• Knowledge products developed by the EU nuclear decommissioning operators and other EU stakeholders,
• ELINDER, EU learning initiative on nuclear decommissioning and environmental remediation,
• Decommissioning Summer School, a 5-day multidisciplinary training on nuclear decommissioning and waste management for post-graduate students.