Press release

13. Juli 2018

On Thursday June 28 in Paris, Pierre-Marie Abadie, CEO of Andra signed a partnership agreement with Ewold Seeba, acting chairman of management board, of BGE, Germany’s counterpart agency created in 2017, as a result of merging federal organisations involved in the disposal of radioactive waste.

This partnership agreement lays down formal conditions to enable the information exchange between the two agencies and implementation of respective cooperation work, for the duration of five years with the option to extend the agreement.

As the German siting process for the high-level waste disposal facility has restarted, BGE intends to benefit from Andra’s experience concerning the strategies implemented in France since 1991 with the objective to prepare the ground for Cigeo. In particular, BGE is interested in stepwise development of the French project including its organisation, in the knowledge in realising a repository project in a clay formation, especially on the basis of the scientific and industrial experience made in the URL Bure, as well as in Andra’s strategy of communication and dialogue with the stakeholders to the project.

Andra, for its part, would like to explore in detail the siting process launched in Germany in the particular circumstances of ultimate nuclear phase-out adopted in 2011. Andra will specifically look at the dialogue and information strategy developed by BGE in Germany on the collective heritage that radioactive waste represents. Of further interest is the experience of BGE in actually constructing and operating deep geologic repositories.

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