NDA Issues Guidance For Storage Of Higher Activity Wastes

1st September 2011

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has issued national guidance about the storage of higher activity wastes at its sites, including Dounreay.

The guidance aims to standardise the arrangements for storage of this type of waste during the next 100 years.

National policy for the long-term management of this type of waste changed in Scotland recently, from deep geological disposal in a UK repository to near-site near-surface storage.

Aimed at the nuclear decommissioning sector, the Industry Guidance for Interim Storage of Higher Activity Waste Packages will undergo a programme of 'road-testing' and independent peer review to ensure that its recommendations bring value to the industry both in the short term and in the long term.

Waste storage is an essential component of the higher activity waste management lifecycle, providing a safe, secure environment for conditioned waste packages awaiting final disposal. In England and Wales, final disposal will be to the deep Geological Disposal Facility, while Scottish Government policy is for long-term management in near-surface facilities.

A system of robust storage arrangements provides high confidence that packages will remain in a safe condition, be disposable at the end of the storage period and will be unaffected by any variance in the availability of disposal routes. In line with UK and Scottish Policies and CoRWM recommendations, the arrangements will need to remain effective for a period of at least 100 years.

Following publication of the NDA's 2009 UK Higher Radioactivity Wastes Storage Review, the NDA took the lead in setting up a cross-industry Integrated Project Team (IPT). Comprising representatives from all the current SLCs, with support from the regulators, the IPT was responsible for delivering the Industry Guidance on the storage of packaged HAW for the current UK civil decommissioning and clean-up programmes.
Formation of the IPT promoted cross-industry working, enabling agreement on common issues and the identification of issues that would merit R&D investigation through the NDA's Direct Research Portfolio [ref].

Issue 1 of the Guidance was prepared following extensive engagement with regulators and key industry representatives, and provides a positive response to a number of important issues raised by the CoRWM and NDA storage reviews.
Work on the Guidance also brought together, for the first time, store operators from around the UK. An initial meeting at Trawsfynydd in 2010 to look at the scope of the contents was followed by a recent workshop at Sellafield, where final views on the draft were exchanged.

The focus is on ILW which arises at most nuclear sites rather than HLW, which is stored only at Sellafield. However, the principles should apply to all conditioned wastes in long-term storage.

The Guidance represents a first attempt to develop integrated toolkits and solutions to assist future store designs and improve existing store operations, including package performance criteria, monitoring technologies and maintaining disposability [ref2].
Once the road-testing programme is complete, the intention is to formally launch the document in the summer 2012 with the aim of continual improvement to ensure the Guidance remains fit-for-purpose.

If you wish to submit your views to the ongoing programme then please contact the Strategy Team on: strategy[AT]nda.gov.uk

See more details at
http://www.nda.gov.uk/stakeholders/newsletter/industry-guidance.cfm