Public hearing on the National Radioactive Waste Management Programme

=> CZECH version of this article

Public hearing on the National Radioactive Waste Management Programme
''' The Czech Strategic Environmental Assessment process of the update of the National Programme on Radioactive Waste and Spent Nuclear Fuel Management has entered its final stage. '''

The Ministry of the Environment has published an assessment of the national programme on its Cenia portal. There the Ministry of Industry and Trade announced that the public hearing on the programme will be held in Prague on June 28, 2017. Based on the original promises of the Director of the Repository Authority (SÚRAO/RAWRA), Jiří Slovák, which he made at the Working Group for Dialogue on November 19, 2015, public hearings were to be held in all the affected regions (Ústecký, Plzeňský, Jihočeský, Vysočina ...), were supposed to be focusing on the regional issues and should have taken a form of Hyde Park (note: an interative Czech TV program Hyde Park).

The Platform Against Deep Repository considers the approach of the Ministry of the Environment (MŽP), which issued a positive statement on the update submitted by the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MPO), and setting the deadline for comments on the national programme in the framework of the SEA process during summer holidays as a “wasted opportunity“ to open up the necessary nationwide social debate about this serious topic that will accompany the Czech population forever. For example, Platform states that the national programme has not evaluated alternatives for waste disposal other than a deep geological repository. Furthermore, it considers the MPO and RAWRA’s approach as hurried and straightforward, and perceives negatively that state institutions do not enable effective public engagement.

The Platform has prepared an online form, through which people can send their comments on the national programme by July 3.

Olga Kališová, Calla (June 16, 2017)