Euradwaste '08 - EU Bookshop - Europa

aware of its potential effects. Residues were simply left unattended in various backyards that
formed several “uncontrolled” landfills or dumps, some of which have even been rediscovered over
the last few years. Those so-called “orphan sites” date back to the discovery of radioactivity by
Henri Becquerel in 1896 until the Second World War, and include the laboratory of Pierre Curie
and later of his wife, Marie. However, such legacy from the early years of the nuclear age is far
from being the most hazardous.
The development of military and power applications, together with the matching array of research
infrastructures, triggered the production of large quantities of waste that were initially entombed in
trenches or dumped into the sea. Those first disposal operations, which may still be qualified as
“entombment”, were conducted either on NPP sites or in their close neighbourhood, as in the case
of the disposal facility located near the village of Drigg, beside the Sellafield Complex in the
United Kingdom or of the Centre de la Manche Disposal Facility near the La Hague Site, in France.
Similar operations were performed on many NPP sites, especially in Eastern European countries,
such as Ignalina, in Lithuania, or Dukovany, in the Czech Republic. All such pioneer operations
underwent or are still undergoing remediation and consolidation work on their installations in order
to protect human beings and their environment. Sometimes, the waste is retrieved and reconditioned
before being disposed of in dedicated structures, a solution that allows waste packages to
meet the overall safety functions of the disposal facility over compatible timescales with the activity
of the radionuclides contained in the waste. Figure 1 shows a trench from which waste packages
have been retrieved with a view to disposing of them under permanent safety conditions.
Figure 1: Photograph of an open-ground disposal trench, after waste removal
Sea dumping stopped once the London Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by
Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter was adopted in November 1972 and entered into force in
1975 [1] with a view to prohibiting the immersion of land residues, including radioactive waste. It
should be noted, however, that the direct release of materials into the sea through ducts is not considered
as immersion.
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