UK Integrated Radioactive Waste and Decommissioning Policy
In this article Editor, Trevor Jones, summarises the significant changes in radioactive waste management over the course of his 25 years in the UK nuclear sector.
It is 20 years since the government established the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority( NDA) to oversee decommissioning of the UK ' s legacy civil nuclear sites and the management of Higher Activity Wastes( HAW). Its remit was expanded in 2006, when the Nuclear Industry Radioactive Waste Executive( NIREX) was disbanded and the NDA became responsible for planning and implementing geological disposal, and again in 2007 when it was given responsibility for Low Level Waste( LLW) management.
These were times of crisis for both the geological disposal programme and LLW management, and the NDA was tasked with making strategically vital changes. There was a critical shortage of LLW disposal capacity, and one of the NDA ' s first actions was to award a contract to manage the Low Level Waste Repository( LLWR) and partner with the NDA to develop and implement a national strategy for LLW. The LLW strategy was published in 2010, and focussed on application of the waste hierarchy, making best use of existing LLW management assets, and developing new fit-for-purpose waste management routes. The National Waste Programme( NWP) was set up in 2011 to implement the LLW strategy.
Significant effort was invested in developing an Environmental Safety Case( ESC) for the LLWR, resulting in the grant of a new permit and planning permission in 2015. The detailed understanding of environmental performance provided by the ESC has subsequently allowed LLWR to explore options for further optimisation of the facility. This includes possibilities for the safe disposal of some waste categories not currently permitted, such as short-lived Intermediate Level Waste( ILW), subject to regulatory approval. Development of the ESC is a continual process, and the next update is due to be submitted to the Environment Agency in May 2026.
The approach to HAW management was initially set out in the NDA ' s annual strategies, and focussed on hazard reduction by the early retrieval, conditioning and interim storage of HAW pending the availability of a Geological Disposal Facility( GDF). Radioactive Waste Management( RWM) was established as an“ arm ' s length” subsidiary of the NDA in 2014 to deliver the GDF programme and advise on HAW packaging requirements for eventual geological disposal.
A specific HAW strategy which moved away from a single“ preferred option” in favour of a flexible, risk-informed lifecycle management approach was published in 2016. However, success in delivering step changes in LLW management led to scrutiny of the fundamental basis on which management decisions are made for all radioactive waste categories. It was concluded that the traditional classification of waste based on activity concentration( Bq / g) is suboptimal, as it does not reflect environmental risks after disposal and results in the early sentencing of waste streams for management via either the LLW or HAW route( i. e. surface disposal or packaging and storage pending geological disposal).
The 2016 HAW strategy was therefore replaced by an integrated radioactive waste
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