Scope
This Regulation shall apply to any person or undertaking setting up or operating an installation for the production, separation, reprocessing, storage, disposal or other use of nuclear material.
It shall not apply to holders of end products, such as alloys or ceramics, used for non-nuclear purposes which incorporate nuclear materials that are in practice irrecoverable, nor to holders of mineral materials other than ores, and related processed substances, which are used for non-nuclear purposes and not for obtaining source material.
Definitions
For the purpose of this Regulation:
(1)
‘non-nuclear-weapon Member States’ means Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland, and Sweden;
(2)
‘nuclear-weapon Member State’ means France;
(3)
‘third country’ means any State which is not a member of the Community;
(4)
‘nuclear material’ means ores, source materials or special fissile materials as defined in Article 197 of the Treaty;
(5)
‘ores’ means ores as defined in Article 197, point 4, of the Treaty and as specified in the EAEC Council Regulation No 9 ( 11 ) ;
(6)
‘categories’ (of nuclear material) are natural uranium, depleted uranium, uranium enriched in uranium-235 or uranium-233 to less than 20 %, uranium enriched in uranium-235 or uranium-233 to 20 % and above, thorium, plutonium, and any other material specified by the Council in accordance with the provisions of Art 197 of the Treaty;
(7)
‘waste’ means nuclear material in concentrations or forms which make the nuclear material not recoverable for practical or economic reasons, for which no further use is foreseen and which may be disposed of;
(8)
‘retained waste’ means waste, generated from processing or from an operational accident, that is measured or estimated on the basis of measurements, that has been transferred to a specific location within the material balance area from which it can be retrieved, and that is deemed to be not recoverable for the time being;
(9)
‘conditioned waste’ means waste in which nuclear material, measured or estimated on the basis of measurements, has been conditioned in such a way (for example, in glass, cement, concrete or bitumen) that it is not suitable for further nuclear use;
(10)
‘discards to the environment’ means nuclear material, measured or estimated on the basis of measurements, that has been irrevocably discarded into the environment as the result of a planned discharge and in such a way that it is not suitable for further use;
(11)
‘disposal’ means the emplacement of waste, spent fuel or any other nuclear material in an installation without the intention of retrieval;
(12)
‘spent fuel’ means nuclear fuel that has been irradiated in and permanently removed from a reactor core; spent fuel may either be considered as a usable resource that can be reprocessed or may be disposed of if no further use is foreseen;
(13)
‘item’ means an identifiable unit such as a fuel assembly or a fuel pin;
(14)
‘batch’ means a portion of nuclear material handled as a unit for accounting purposes at a key measurement point and for which the composition and quantity are defined by a single set of specifications or measurements; the nuclear material may be in bulk form or contained in a number of items;
(15)
‘batch data’ means the total weight of each category of nuclear material and, in the case of plutonium and uranium, the isotopic composition when appropriate; for reporting purposes the weights of individual items in the batch shall be added together before rounding to the nearest unit;
(16)
‘effective kilogram’ is a special unit used in the context of safeguarding nuclear material, obtained by taking:
(a)
for plutonium, its weight in kilograms;
(b)
for uranium with an enrichment of 0,01 (1 %) and above, its weight in kilograms multiplied by the square of its enrichment;
(c)
for uranium with an enrichment below 0,01 (1 %) and above 0,005 (0,5 %), its weight in kilograms multiplied by 0,0001;
and
(d)
for depleted uranium with an enrichment of 0,005 (0,5 %) or below, and for thorium, its weight in kilograms multiplied by 0,00005;
(17)
‘material balance area’ (MBA) means an area such that, for the purpose of establishing the material balance:
(a)
the quantity of nuclear material in each transfer into or out of each material balance area can be determined;
and
(b)
the physical inventory of nuclear material in each material balance area can be determined when necessary in accordance with specified procedures;
(18)
‘key measurement point’ means a location where nuclear material appears in such a form that it may be measured to determine material flow or inventory, including but not limited to, the places where nuclear material enters, leaves or is stored in, material balance areas;
(19)
‘book inventory’ of a material balance area means the algebraic sum of the most recent physical inventory of that material balance area, and of all inventory changes that have occurred since that physical inventory was taken;
(20)
‘physical inventory’ means the sum of all the measured batch quantities or derived estimates of batch quantities of nuclear material on hand at a given time within a material balance area, obtained in accordance with specified procedures;
(21)
‘material unaccounted for’ means the difference between the physical inventory and the book inventory;
(22)
‘shipper/receiver difference’ means the difference between the quantity of nuclear material in a batch as measured at the receiving material balance area and the quantity as stated by the shipping material balance area;
(23)
‘source data’ means those data, recorded during measurement or calibration or used to derive empirical relationships, which identify nuclear material and provide batch data, including: weight of compounds; conversion factors to determine weight of element; specific gravity; element concentration; isotopic ratios; relationship between volume and manometer readings; and relationship between plutonium produced and power generated;
(24)
‘site’ means an area delimited by the Community and a non-nuclear-weapon Member State, comprising one or more installations, including closed-down installations, as defined in their relevant basic technical characteristics, whereby:
(a)
in the case of a closed-down installation where source material or special fissile material in quantities of less than one effective kilogram was customarily used, the meaning of ‘site’ is limited to locations with hot cells or where activities related to conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication or reprocessing were carried out;
(b)
‘site’ also includes all plants co-located with the installations which provide or use essential services including hot cells for processing irradiated materials not containing nuclear material; plants for the treatment, storage and disposal of waste; and buildings associated with activities specified in Annex 1 to Additional Protocol 1999/188/Euratom and identified by the State concerned;
(c)
in the case of a national Location Outside Facility (LOF), all included holders of small amounts of nuclear material may together constitute one site;
(25)
‘hot cell’ means a cell or interconnected cells totalling at least 6 m 3 in volume with shielding equal to or greater than the equivalent of 0,5 m of concrete, with a density of 3,2 g/cm 3 or greater, outfitted with equipment for remote operations;
(26)
‘site representative’ means any person, undertaking or entity designated by a non-nuclear-weapon Member State as being responsible for the declaration referred to in Article 6(1);
(27)
‘installation’ means, from the planning stage until it is confirmed as decommissioned:
(a)
a reactor, a critical installation, a conversion plant, a fabrication plant, a reprocessing plant, an isotope separation plant, a separate storage installation, an encapsulation plant, a geological repository, a waste treatment, waste storage or waste disposal installation or any other location where source material or special fissile material is held or is customarily used in amounts greater than one effective kilogram;
(b)
any LOF;
(c)
any location where, in order to obtain source materials, ores are extracted, kept or processed;
(28)
‘Location Outside Facilities’ (LOF) means a location not covered under the definition set out in point 27(a) where source material or special fissile material is held or customarily used in amounts of one effective kilogram or less;
(29)
‘national Location Outside Facilities’ means a particular LOF comprising holders of small amounts of nuclear material in line with criteria agreed between the Member States where the material is held and the Commission;
(30)
‘Catch All MBA’ (CAM) means a particular LOF comprising small amounts of nuclear material according to criteria set out in Annex I-N;
(31)
‘closed-down’ means, when referring to an installation, that it has been verified that operations have been stopped and that all nuclear material subject to Euratom safeguards has been removed;
(32)
‘under decommissioning’ means, when referring to an installation, that activities on dismantling, or recovery and removal of nuclear material or the removing or rendering inoperable of essential equipment are ongoing with the aim of decommissioning the installation;
(33)
‘decommissioned’ means, when referring to an installation, that it has been verified that all nuclear material subject to Euratom safeguards has been removed and residual structures and equipment essential for using the installation for purposes other than disposal of nuclear material which is no longer subject to Euratom safeguards have been removed or rendered inoperable so that processing or utilization of nuclear material is no longer possible;
(34)
‘operator’ means any person or undertaking, including any organisation, planning to set up or legally responsible for setting up or operating an installation;
(35)
‘equivalence principle’ means that a particular safeguard obligation applying to a quantity of nuclear material may be transferred to another quantity of nuclear material, subject to equivalence criteria;
(36)
‘equivalence criteria’ means specific criteria to be fulfilled with regard to the quantity, category, isotopic composition, physical form, chemical form and material state of nuclear material in order to apply the equivalence principle;
(37)
‘proportionality principle’ means that, when nuclear material subject to a particular safeguard obligation is mixed or transformed in a given proportion with nuclear material not subject thereto, the product, by-product, waste or losses generated from processing is subject to the particular safeguard obligation in the same proportion;
(38)
‘pool accounting’ means a specific accounting method whereby a unique obligation code (pool code) is used to declare book inventories and physical inventory listings to the Commission pursuant to Articles 14 and 15, although the nuclear material may be subject to various particular safeguard obligations;
(39)
‘accountancy pool’ means the scope within which the application of pool accounting has been authorised in one or several material balance areas.
