At present the management of radioactive waste is regulated by the clauses of twenty eight Federal acts, including the Civil, Administrative and Criminal Codes, twenty Presidential decrees, forty decrees and regulations of the RF Government. There are also 18 legal acts issued by the ministries. These documents were developed in accordance with the IAEA "Joint Convention on the safe handling of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste” and "Principles of radioactive waste handling”.
During last 15 years Russia took efforts to regulate nuclear industry activities. But one of the most important parts of the nuclear fuel cycle - safe RW handling - was left outside the framework of legal regulation by federal acts. Most experts acknowledge the necessity of having the appropriate law. At present a draft of the Federal Act "On handling radioactive waste” is being considered by the Government, and by the end of 2008 it will go to the State Duma.
By now Rosatom has produced the following three documents:

Doctrine of radioactive waste management in the Russian Federation.

The Doctrine (the guideline from the Government) clauses serve as the basis for formulating the governmental policy and developing proposals for the integrated RW management system. It is also a basis for development and implementation of target programs aimed at establishing and sustainable functioning of the integrated public RW management system. This document is based on existing legal acts and international RF commitments.
The Doctrine takes into account the recommendations of the UN Rio-de-Janeiro Conference, 1992. It acknowledges that "necessity to optimize work on the RW management gets a special relevance in view of more extensive activities on the decommissioning of nuclear facilities”.
The Doctrine also acknowledges that in addition to the running costs of RW handling, which should be included into the price paid by the customer using the atomic energy or sources of ionizing radiation, there must be target allocations to a specialized fund (reserve). The fund will be used for capital investment into the design and building of final repositories, etc. It is also noted that the special fund (reserve) will be accumulating the necessary means, spending of which will be carried out in compliance with acting legislation.
Therefore, public participation in such control is possible, if there are appropriate provisions in the legal acts. One of the principles declared by the Doctrine on the integrated RW management system is "openness, glasnost, fullness and reliability of information on the RW management in accordance with the acting legislation”. The importance of "organizing a systematic work with the public on the issues of the RW management system” is noted. But these principles are just declared, and it is not clear how they will be specified in the Act on RW management and put into practice.

Concept and draft of the Federal Act "On radioactive waste management”

Two versions of the concept and, correspondingly, two versions of the draft have been developed; they have substantial differences.
The first version was developed by an independent non-governmental organization of legal research "Institute of law and legal-legislative development”; it was issued on April 2007.
Developers of the first Concept had the main task of determining working organizational
and financial mechanisms of RW management.
Important provisions of the first draft are:
а) introduction of the integrated system of RW management;
b) determination of the federal executive body responsible for the RW management
appointed by the RF President or, on behalf of him, by the RF government (other documents
say that it must be the executive body, which is responsible for the production of the largest part of RW). The competence of this body includes the legal-legislative regulation of RF handling, control of safety at RW handling, control of activities related to the RW handling (as we can see, even before the enactment of the act "On safe RW handling” this function was performed by the Federal Atomic Energy Agency, that is, if the new act follows this concept, this agency will become an authorized RW management body or, which is more likely, a separated part of the agency will get this responsibility);
c) determination of the regulatory body responsible for the safety of RW management appointed by the RF President or, on behalf of him, by the RF government to regulate
nuclear, radiological, technical and fire safety (Rostekhnadzor).
These bodies will have the following responsibilities:
filing requests to the bodies having the right of legislative initiative;
proposals on legal acts development and on safety provisions during RW handling;
oversight of nuclear, radiological, technical and fire safety;
examination of the safety of projects on RW management, also by inviting independent experts;
control in the field of environmental protection and use of natural resources at the RW handling;
control over expenditures of money and materials assigned for activities on regulating nuclear, radiological and fire safety.
Therefore, it is evident that responsibilities of a body responsible for the RW management
and of the regulatory body coincide, and a question arises about a possible conflict of interests and insufficient independence of the governmental body regulating issues of nuclear and radiation safety. This contradicts the provisions of the Convention on nuclear safety and Joint Convention on safe handling of nuclear fuel and radioactive waste (both conventions were ratified by Russia); it also contradicts the Federal Act "On nuclear energy utilization”. In accordance with these documents the development of federal norms and rules in the field
of nuclear energy utilization is within the competence of specially authorized bodies responsible for the safety regulation during the utilization of nuclear energy.
It is important that the draft have a dedicated chapter on decommissioning and provisions
for establishing decommissioning infrastructure.
In view of this, there is an interesting proposal on funding of the RW handling. The document proposes that RW should be managed by an assigned governmental organization.
In accordance with the RF Civil Code a governmental company should account for budgetary and non-budgetary means spent by it. An essential condition for establishing such a special organization is the transparency of its activities, close control of the state and the public, personal responsibility of its managers.
In order to provide the public control it is proposed to have the Supervisory Council, members of which represent authorities, RW producers and non-governmental organizations.
The Supervisory Council should have the following functions:
control of justified, effective and objective-oriented use of money by the specialized
organization;
initiation of revision of tariffs on the long-term storage or disposal of RW (procedure to be formalized by the statutory document of the organization);
development of recommendations to the federal executive body, which controls the RW management, on the planning and organization of the federal budgeting earmarked for the RW handling.
The budgetary means, which are not spent during the current year, are channeled to a special reserve fund. The Supervisory council takes a decision on the reserve money spending, to avoid the reserve fund embezzlement members of the Supervisory Council bear the subsidiary responsibility for the reimbursement of losses.
The act also takes into account the huge "historical legacy” of RW resulting from the military programs and during many decades of using atomic energy without proper financial allocations on the RW management activities.
It is proposed to make a difference between the legal provisions on the previously accumulated waste and provisions for handling currently produced waste. The latter are dealt with by the "polluter pays principle.”
That is, a legal entity, the activities of which produce radioactive waste, should bear the financial responsibility for all RW management operations up its final disposal.
All activities on waste collection, conditioning, recycling, temporary storage and transportation can be carried out independently by the "polluter” or by a specialized
organization contracted to do this job. All waste, both generated before the enactment of the Act on RW management and new arisings, should be transferred to the responsibility of this specialized organization.
Activities on managing previously accumulated radioactive waste should be funded from the federal budget, budgets of RF subjects and municipalities.
But the budgetary means cannot solve the problem of "historical heritage”, therefore it is proposed to establish a special fund - a non-profit organization. This fund can receive money from international organizations, foreign countries, any companies including waste producers, also from private persons, local and regional budgets.
In order to work efficiently this fund should be completely transparent. In order to prevent misspending of the fund money it is proposed to include a list of activities, which can be financed from the fund, into the text of the RF Act "On safe RW management”.
Along with the disposal and longterm storage of previously accumulated RW it is the refurbishment of RW storages and cleanup operations after accidents in the RW storages. The fund resources are a part of the extra-budgetary means of the specialized organization.
The "historical” waste will be separated from the currently-produced by a special commission, the main function of which will be making the inventory of previously accumulated RW and its separation from the newly-generated RW using the waste-ac-counting system.
Developers of this draft assert that they took efforts to avoid contradictions between it and the previous documents regulating RW handing activities. Still it is proposed to bring all acting regulations in compliance with the new act within 6 months after its coming into force.
A second version of the Concept was issued in September 2007. This draft of the Federal Act "On radioactive waste handling” was developed in accordance with provisions of Point 4 of the Action plan for implementing the second stage of the State policy in the field of nuclear and radiological safety of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2010 and a long-term prospective (RF Government Regulation of 17 December 2005 № 2237-r) ordered by the RF
Government. The bill was developed jointly by many ministries and agencies, but the Federal Agency for Atomic Energy was the responsible party.
The new version of the Concept states that "the draft takes into account the provisions
of the Joint Convention... in particular, that the final responsibility for the safety lies with the state”.
But this version dropped such important functions of the federal executive body regulating
safety as nuclear energy utilization, as the oversight and control of RW management activities, and as development and enactment of norms and rules in the field of nuclear energy utilization in compliance with the Russian legislation. The Concept only mentions the responsibility of the regulatory body to license the RW management activities.
The new Concept does not explain the governmental approach to the problem of "historical” waste management.
It also misses an approach to determining the procedure for establishing the RW management fund. The Supervisory Council responsible for the Fund activities transparency and PR, which had been present in the previous version, disappeared.
The body responsible for administering the RW management should determine the levels of fees from the RW producers and be responsible for the RW management funding.
In this respect the Concept pays special attention to nuclear power plants, for which the top level of allocations is set, i.e. the top limit of contribution. This is done "for the purpose of their (NPP) predictable development.” That is, in accordance with the Concept, safe RW handling by NPPs (including the decommissioning period) is of less priority than building of new reactors.

It inevitably leads to the aggravation of the decommissioning problem for old reactors or closed for other reasons, it also means that the decommissioning fund will not be replenished.
In the current situation of developing market relations in the industry the proposed transfer of responsibility for RW (together with the property rights on it) to the state will result in an additional burden on taxpayers, which will have to finance the RW long-term storage or disposal; and interests of future generations are likely to be violated.
The draft act specifies provisions of the Concept. But the analysis of the new draft raises many questions.
It is not clear what reference base was used in determining the following terms:
RW temporary storage (up to 50 years);
RW long-term storage (from 50 to 100 years);
"Historical” RW (all RW produced before 1 January 2010, except those generated by the commercial activities of companies not fulfilling the state order after 28 September 2008).
RW storages filled to capacity or not meeting modern safety requirements should be closed (this is currently in progress), but the draft does not explain the term "closure”.
Article 4 "Main principles of the integrated RW management system functioning in the Russian Federation should include the "polluter pays principle”.
The act should regulate not only the provisions for development and the formulation of federal norms and rules in the field of nuclear energy utilization, but also their putting into force (Article 5).
In the draft the regulatory function of the federal body for nuclear and radiological safety is substituted by the function of safety enforcement by a competent body on RW management. This contradicts the modern tendency of separating responsibilities between the two bodies and strengthening the independence of regulatory body - this, as it was said above, is prescribed by the provisions of the Convention on nuclear safety and Joint Convention.
The Supervisory Council mentioned in Article 45 does not have a definition. The procedure of its formation is not determined too. The control of justified spending of the fund money goes to the revision commission of the governmental competent body responsible for RW  management. Therefore, the external control of the fund expenditures is not foreseen by the draft act.
The RW management at decommissioning of old power units will be funded from the joint RW management fund. This can lead to the repeated shortage of funding and result in the exponential growth of SNF and RW piles during the planned large-scale development of nuclear industry. The safe handling in accordance with modern requirement won't be possible due to the lack of funding. In the new version the public participation in the RW safety management is reduced to the "unbiased information of the public by the mass media about the radiological situation on the territories (of municipalities neighboring nuclear facilities)”.
International cooperation of the Russian Federation in the field of RW management is limited to the cooperation of the responsible body (Article 48). This cooperation should involve federal and other bodies.
Finally, some articles of the discussed draft contradict the draft Concept of the RW management. E.g. the Concept gives the function of licensing of RW management activities
to the regulatory body, and the draft (Article 31) - to the governmental body responsible for RW management.