SCK CEN and NIRAS-ONDRAF Renew Partnership to Strengthen Belgium’s Radwaste Management Programme
SCK CEN (ENS Corporate Member) and NIRAS-ONDRAF, Belgium’s national agency for radioactive waste management, have announced the renewal of their research and technical support partnership, originally formalised five years ago.
Indeed, the original agreement has evolved into a fully integrated collaboration, built around a structured approach to support Belgium’s long-term radioactive waste management programme.
The partnership is structured around four programme lines: waste characterisation, surface disposal, shallow disposal, and deep disposal.
These priorities are further organised into eight domains that reflect the Belgian context: spent fuel, waste behaviour, cement technologies, clay characterisation, gas transport, radionuclide migration, monitoring, and communication.
At the heart of the collaboration lies HADES, Belgium’s underground research laboratory operated by EURIDICE, a joint partnership between SCK CEN and NIRAS-ONDRAF.
Having been operating in the Boom Clay for over four decades, HADES serves as the central tool for deep disposal research and hosts flagship long-term experiments, providing data for the future design of a deep disposal facility.
“A research partnership only truly matters if it serves to carry knowledge across generations. (…) The past five years have taught us how to organise for that; the next ten will test whether we can deliver,”
said Elke Jacops, Head of Expertise group Waste & Disposal at SCK CEN.
Read the full SCK CEN Press Release.
Belgium has been developing its radioactive waste management programme for several decades. Since September 2025, a surface disposal facility has been under construction in Dessel, designed to accommodate low- and intermediate-level short-lived radioactive waste.
For high-level and long-lived radioactive waste, the federal government laid important legal foundations with a royal decree in 2022, establishing deep disposal as the reference solution.
Focusing on radioactive waste management and innovative approaches, ENS also co-organised a dedicated webinar in partnership with SCK CEN to explore the circular economy principles in the field of nuclear waste management and their applications in the SCK research work.
