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Basic Information

The Radioactive Waste Repository Authority (RAWRA) was established by the Ministry of Industry and Trade on 1 June 1997 according to the Atomic Act (Act 18/1997, on peaceful uses of nuclear energy and ionising radiation, Article 26). RAWRA has been a fully state-controlled organisation since 2000 in compliance with Act 219/2000, Article 51.

Main tasks and activities:

  • ensuring the preparation, construction, commissioning, operation and closure of radioactive waste repositories and the monitoring of the impact of such repositories on the surrounding environment;
  • ensuring the safe management of radioactive waste;
  • ensuring the reprocessing of spent or irradiated nuclear fuel so as to transform it into a form suitable for disposal and/or subsequent re-use;
  • maintaining records of accepted radioactive waste and its producers;
  • administering payments made by radioactive waste producers to the Nuclear Account;
  • preparing proposals for the determination of the scale of charges to be paid by radioactive waste producers to the Nuclear Account;
  • ensuring and coordinating research and development relating to radioactive waste management;
  • monitoring the creation of financial reserves by licence holders for the future decommissioning of their nuclear facilities;
  • providing services associated with radioactive waste management;
  • managing radioactive waste which was historically transported to the Czech Republic from abroad and which cannot be returned;
  • ensuring the interim management of radioactive waste which has been transferred, for whatever reason, into State ownership.

Further conditions and obligations relevant to the Authority are set out in the Atomic Act and other legal regulations such as the Labour Code, State Budget Rules, the Building Act, the Public Tender Act, the Mining Act etc. as well as RAWRA’s statutes of establishment.

Our principal obligations consist of the efficient management of repositories for the disposal of low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste and the development of a deep geological repository. We have, since 2000, been responsible for the management of all the radioactive waste repositories in the Czech Republic: the Richard repository near Litoměřice which is used for the disposal of institutional waste, the Dukovany repository for waste generated by Czech nuclear power plants and the Bratrství repository for the disposal of waste containing only naturally occurring radionuclides. We are further responsible for the coordination of work associated with the development and construction of a deep repository for the disposal of high-level waste and spent nuclear fuel which is scheduled to be put into operation by 2065.

International cooperation

The management of radioactive waste has to be tackled responsibly by each and every country which uses ionising radiation sources, including those countries which do not have a nuclear energy programme. With a view to the seriousness and complexity of the issues surrounding the management of nuclear waste, we have established extensive cooperation with foreign partners and have become closely involved in activities coordinated by a range of international institutions.

The most significant area of cooperation in this respect consists of the development and verification of methods for the assessment of repository safety and the demonstration of deep geological repository feasibility. Thus we are able to take advantage of proven, technically reliable and widely recognised methods and tools for the long-term forecasting of repository system behaviour.

As far as RAWRA is concerned, the IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency) and the OECD/NEA (the Nuclear Energy Agency at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) provide the main sources of information in terms of waste management, stimulate legislative and regulatory change and coordinate most events relating to radioactive waste management. RAWRA takes an active part in preparing relevant discussion papers and coordinated research programmes and delegates its experts to various technical committees and IAEA missions as well as to meetings of consultants or advisory groups. RAWRA is also involved in a range of research and development projects funded by the European Commission through which it primarily supports the participation of Czech firms and research institutes and covers approximately half the costs of such projects.

Since 1998 RAWRA has been involved in the activities of the so-called Club of Agencies which, under the patronage of the European Commission, forms a voluntary platform for the informal exchange of information on individual problems concerning radioactive waste management. RAWRA’s cooperation with partner organisations all over the world plays an important role concerning the exchange of experience and knowledge and, importantly, also provides an opportunity to participate in a host of ground-breaking experiments conducted by these organisations.