Annex I.B. Site reuse experience in Belgium

In the past, SCK-CEN (Belgian Nuclear Research Centre) was involved in both nuclear and non-nuclear research programmes. In the early 1990s, the Belgian Federal Government decided to restrict the objective of SCK-CEN to the strictly nuclear programmes. A new research centre, VITO (Flemish Institute for Technological Research) was founded by the regional government and took over all non-nuclear activities. Furthermore, the federal and the regional governments agreed to house VITO partly in former SCK-CEN buildings and partly in new buildings to be erected on the site, having in mind a number of additional benefits, such as re-employment and reduction of costs compared with the acquisition of a new location. However, in addition to highly equipped non-nuclear laboratories and offices, some of these buildings contain laboratories and installations with a radiological history. In general, decommissioning aims at reaching the greenfield state by dismantling the equipment, removing contaminated parts of walls and floors using appropriate techniques, and finally demolishing the remaining structures using conventional techniques. Since important parts of some of the buildings in question contain valuable non-nuclear infrastructure and equipment, SCK-CEN decided to deviate from the common strategy by limiting the decommissioning work to the radioactive parts of the nuclear installation and to obtain permission for unrestricted reuse of the building after removing all radioactive material. After refurbishment, the building can be used for new industrial purposes outside the nuclear field. The choice of the reuse strategy proved to be economically, socially and ecologically advantageous. Experience from this project has shown that it will be advantageous to consider future redevelopment and reuse of a nuclear site at an early stage, while it is still being used for its original purpose