Managing the legacies from the past nuclear activities is an issue of increasing global concern. A JRC report looks into the drivers that allow implementing decommissioning and environmental remediation programmes.

Significant progress has been indeed achieved in recent years in terms of addressing the legacy from the early development of nuclear energy. Some countries are quite advanced with decommissioning and have built up appropriate technical resources and expertise. Nevertheless many national programmes still face very significant challenges.

The water used to produce food available in urban areas generally doesn’t make it into city sustainability estimates, which only take into account direct water use and parameters such as waste collection and energy efficiency of buildings. This can distort estimates, as, for example, in the Mediterranean, water consumed elsewhere in the cultivation and the processing of the food delivered to consumers in cities surpasses the direct water use per capita at least 20 times, according to a JRC-led report.