Abstract
It is a striking and happy reality today at the same time, marked universally: What it is agreed to call the nuclear controversy is remained circumscribed with nuclear energy and rather confined with the industrialized countries. The other economic and social applications of the nuclear techniques experience a very important development all over the world and which has to continue. The countries of intermediate socio-economic level do not escape this report. And even if these countries have, generally, slightly resorted to nuclear energy, the World Energy Conference (the USA, 1999) provides that nuclear energy will know in the court - medium term a rise in the emerging countries which will come to compensate for its relative retreat in the industrialized countries.
There is consequently a number unceasingly crescent of “small producers” of radioactive waste particularly in the emerging countries but, unfortunately, this waste is not dealt with in a rigorous and exhaustive way, generating a potential serious threat engraves for the people and the environment. The analysis of this situation, from the case of Tunisia, reveals the following cause: miss of infrastructures, qualified personnel, financial means and impossibility of coping with these difficulties without international co-operation there. In this communication we propose a strategy, on a 20 years horizon of management of the radioactive waste for Tunisia taking account of the means of the country and the essential contribution of the co-operation. We make share in this respect already committed experiment of the three-way co-operation Tunisia - IAEA - Belgium.
The strategy that we propose articulates on the following points:
1. Definition of the long-term objectives and the principles;
2. The institutional and regular project;
3. The inventory of the radioactive waste;
4. The planning of the formation;
5. The project of a pilot unit for waste processing and storage;
6. The question of the evacuation;
The above actions are evoked in interference with the role of the international co-operation.
