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Chairman's Summing Up of the Third CEG Meeting's Major Decisions and Recommendations

(Brussels, 22 - 23 January 1997)

The 3^rd CEG meeting took place in Brussels 22-23 January 1997 and was attended by 34 participants from 9 countries, 4 international organisations and the EU.

The approved Agenda of the 3^rd CEG meeting consisted of 15 items covering the following two major co-operation issues:

update on the progress in implementation of or negotiations on co-operation projects by CEG meeting participants, and
review, presentations and discussion of coverage by co-operation of Russian High Priority Projects and of possible actions

as well as a number of

information matters, and
organisational measures

After detailed discussions, in particular of "action oriented" matters, the CEG made the following decisions and recommendations on the above presented major and subsidiary topics:

Update on the progress in implementation of or negotiations on co-operation projects by CEG meeting participants

The CEG

acknowledged the progress achieved in implementation, assuring of financing and approval of a number of projects, many of which are however outside of high priority topics;
noted at the same time that several important high priority projects are under extensive negotiations, sometimes at a final stage.

Review, presentations and discussion of coverage by co-operation of Russian High Priority Projects and possible actions

The CEG

considered and discussed presented by the RF representative an overview of the current status of accomplishment of the Federal Programme on "Radioactive Waste and Spent Nuclear Materials Management, Utilization and Disposal for 1996-2005", which on one side demonstrated that a certain progress has been achieved in the implementation of the Programme on the most critical directions and on the other side that due to continuing severe economical difficulties the realisation of the Programme is far behind its planned targets and the need for international co-operation becomes even more important;
expressed a certain concern that only 3 of 20 of High Priority Projects are "active", while 11 of them are not yet even negotiated for co-operation;
agreed that the possible steps to improve the situation with co-operation in high priority areas may include:

identifying potential partners for at least 2-3 high priority projects not covered by co-operation;
expansion of number of co-operating partners in cases when only partial, not sufficient financing is so far assured;

agreed to recommend to the CEG member countries/organisations to concentrate , at this stage, the efforts on co-operation in the field of technological chain of spent fuel management (spent fuel unloading, transportation to the shore, intermediate storing, transportation to "Mayak", storage at "Mayak");
considered and discussed the presentation on "Joint industry views on implementation of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) projects in the North-West of Russia" by representative of BNFL-Kvaerner-SGN-SKB, which described the results of a recent meeting of the above mentioned companies regarding their possible joint actions on priority projects at the Kola peninsula;
noted that it is a kind of a follow up of the recommendations of the 2^nd CEG meeting concerning high priority projects not yet or not sufficiently covered by existing co-operation;
noted the RF representative’s suggestion (accepted by the companies) to hold for the practical realisation of the initiative a meeting in Moscow on 24 February 1997 to specify the scope of all relevant projects and of any required additional information and the time schedule of its preparation;
noted that planned co-operation with the group of companies would apply to projects RUS 01, 02, 03 and 04;
strongly supported the initiative of the companies, thanked them for presenting this information to the CEG and welcomed the practical arrangements on the first step achieved;
welcomed that the discussion on further potential supporters of some other high priority projects resulted in the following list of those CEG members, who expressed their interest in supporting certain projects:

Germany RUS 08

France RUS 15

EU RUS18 and RUS 20

Norway RUS 20

asked other CEG members to also consider possibility of joining these or other co-operation projects;
expressed its deep satisfaction with the above concrete results of the discussion and action-oriented agreements.

Information matters

The CEG

noted with appreciation the results of the CEG Secretariat activities over the period of its operation (April-December 1996);
considered and approved the slightly modified PDF’s Field Headings Definitions and the PDF itself;
briefly considered the information on potential duplication or overlapping of some co-operation projects and in anticipation of some not yet completed PDFs decided not to proceed with the discussion of each of the group of such projects, but rather to consider them "at home" with due account of additional information to be received;
expressed its high appreciation of the technical session organised by the EC in conjunction with the 3^rd CEG meeting. In this connection the technical part of the 3^rd CEG meeting Agenda contained only one technical presentation on "Concept of Radioactive Waste Management in the North- West Region of RF", which was presented and discussed. The CEG considered this paper as an important additional information of direct interest to the Group and its members.

Organisational measures

The CEG

approved the CEG Secretariat’s report on "Financing of the Secretariat";
asked all contributing countries to transfer to the IAEA their respective contributions not later than the end of February to ensure a smooth financing and thus operation of the CEG Secretariat;
postponed the discussion on "Organisation and financing of peer reviews" to a later CEG meeting;
approved the paper on "Status of the CEG meetings’ participants" with a number of modifications reflecting the CEG’s support of wide availability to all CEG meeting participants of its technical documentation;
acknowledged that the technical DB being developed by the IIASA under a contract with the IAEA practically meets the expectations of the Group as discussed at the 2^nd CEG meeting.
thanked the Agency for its kind suggestion to provide the CEG with the possibility of using the RF related part of the DB;
agreed to establish a simple mechanism of "Progress Reporting" by updating of the "status" field in the PDF as well as by filling in a new PDF’s field "Progress over the reporting period" (with the indication of the updating date). The frequency of reporting was agreed to be semi-annual;
accepted with gratitude the confirmation of the suggestion made by the Russian CEG member at the previous meeting to hold the 4^th CEG meeting in Russia.
It was provisionally agreed to plan the meeting for 11-12 (13?) June 1997. The place and exact date of it will be finalised by the RF well before the meeting.