Collection and Dissemination of Radwaste Storage Information by the IAEA

The IAEA’s Net Enabled Waste Management Database (NEWMDB, see Subsection 11.1) is used to collect information about waste storage facilities in IAEA Member States. The intent is for the NEWMDB to be the most comprehensive source of information about waste storage facilities and stored waste inventories. As discussed in Subsection 6.3.2, the results of the first two data collection cycles with the NEWMDB were published on the Internet and on CD ROM. Reports are accessible on line or can be ordered from the NEWMDB web site [2.3]. The third data collection was held March to July 2004 and the results were published on the NEWMDB web site.

References for Section 6

6.1 International Atomic Energy Agency, Nuclear Safety and Security web page on the Safety of the Transport of Radioactive Material,

http://www-ns.iaea.org/tech-areas/radiation-safety/transport.htm

6.2 International Atomic Energy Agency, “The Principles of Radioactive Waste Management”, Safety Fundamentals 111-F (1995)

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub989e_scr.pdf

6.3 International Atomic Energy Agency, “Waste Management Records up to Repository Closure - Managing the Primary Level Information (PLI) Set”, IAEA Technical Document IAEA-TECDOC-1398 (2004).

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/te_1398_web.pdf

6.4 Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK-CEN), “Overview of Nuclear Measurement Methods at SCK-CEN: Destructive and Non-destructive Techniques”

http://www.sckcen.be/sckcen_en/activities/research/anpossi/an-possi_04.shtml

6.5 US Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, Technology Development, Decontamination and Decommissioning Focus Area, DOE/EM-0253 (June 1995).

6.6 Bossart, S.J., Hyde, J.M., Vagnetti, R.W., “Bringing Innovative Technologies to the D&D Marketplace”, Proceedings of SPECTRUM ’98, International Conference on Decommissioning and Decontamination and on Nuclear and Hazardous Waste Management, Denver, Colorado, 13-18 September 1998, pp.81-87, American Nuclear Society (1998).

6.7 US Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, Technology Development, Deactivation and Decommissioning Focus Area, RESRAD-Build, DOE/EM-0417, Washington D.C., (December 1998).

6.8 Kessinger, M.K., Greenwald, W.L., Huff, F.E., “Cost Results and Lessons Learned from Large Scale Demonstration Projects”, Proceedings of SPECTRUM ’98, Int. Conf. On Decommissioning and Decontamination and on Nuclear and Hazardous Waste Management, Denver, Colorado, 13-18 Sep. 1998, pp.9-15, American Nuclear Society (1998).

6.9 Smith, A.M., Mathern, G.E., Meservey, R.H., “Interim Status of the Accelerated Site Technology Deployment Integrated Decontamination and Decommissioning Project”, Internal Report INEEL/EXT-98-01107, INEEL, (November 1998).

6.10 Bhattacharyya, S.K., et al., “Large Scale Demonstration of D&D Technologies”, Proceedings of ICONE 5, 5th International Conference on Nuclear Engineering, Nice, France, 26-30 May 1997, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1997).

6.11 US Department of Energy, “Pipe Crawler Internal Piping Characterization System”, Deactivation and Decommissioning Focus Area, Innovative Technology, DOE/EM-0355, February 1998, DOE, Washington D.C., USA, 1998

6.12 Fogle, R.F., Kuelske, K., Kellener, R.A., “The visual and Radiological Inspection of a Pipe line Using a Tele-operated Pipe Crawler”, RADWASTE Magazine, pp. 41-49 (July 1996).

6.13 US Department of Energy, “Pipe Inspection Using the Pipe Crawler”, DOE/EM-0425, Washington D.C. (May 1999).

6.14 US Department of Energy, “Pipe Crawler Internal Piping Characterization System”, DOE/EM-0355, Washington D.C. (February 1998).

6.15 Hutter A. et al., “Innovative Characterization Technologies in Support of DOE/EM D&D Activities”, Proceedings of SPECTRUM 2002, Reno, Nevada, 4-8 August 2002, American Nuclear Society (2002).

6.16 Rawool-Sullivan, M.W., “Alpha Contamination Monitoring for Decontamination and Decommissioning”, LALP-94-145, Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM, USA, December (1994)

6.17 Macarthur, D., Rawool-Sullivan, M., Dockray, T., “Monitoring Pipes for Residual Alpha Contamination”, Proceedings of SPECTRUM ’96, Int. Topical Meeting on Nuclear and Hazardous Waste Management, Seattle, WA, USA, 18-23 August 1996, American Nuclear Society, Inc. La Grange Park, IL, USA, pp.1086-1090 (1996).

6.18 Sullivan, T. et al., “Smart 3-D Characterization of Subsurface Contamination Around the Below Grade Ducts at the Brookhaven Graphite Research Reactor”, Proceedings of WM’01 Conference, 25 February-1 March 2001, Tucson, Arizona, USA, Waste Management Symposia Inc (2001).

6.19 International Atomic Energy Agency, “Application of membrane technologies for liquid radioactive waste processing”, Technical Report 431 (2004).

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/TRS431_web.pdf

6.20 Strathmann, H., “Ion-exchange membranes in industrial separations processes”, Journal of Separation Process Technology, 5(1), pp. 1-13 (1984).

6.21 International Atomic Energy Agency, “Application of Ion Exchange Processes for Treatment of Radioactive Waste and Management of Spent Ion Exchangers”, Technical Report Series No. 408 (2002).

6.22 International Atomic Energy Agency, “Predisposal management of organic radioactive waste”, Technical Report Series No. 427 (2004).

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/TRS427_web.pdf

6.23 Sørlie, A., “The Combined Disposal and Storage Facility for LLW and ILW in Himdalen, Norway: Now in Operation”, Waste Management 2001 Symposium, Tucson, Arizona, USA, 25 February – 1 March 2001.

6.24 Government of Canada, “Canadian National Report for the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management”, Section 2.8, published by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, CNSC Catalogue number INFO-0738 (2003).

http://www.nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/safety/pdf/0738_E1.pdf

6.25 Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Office, “Cleanup of Low-Level Radioactive Waste in Southern Ontario”, press release (June 28, 2001)

http://www.llrwmo.org/en/news/Media%20Releases/Cleanup_of_LLRW_in_Southeast_Ont_J un-28-2001.html

6.26 International Atomic Energy Agency, Proceedings of an International Conference on Issues and Trends in Radioactive Waste Management, Vienna, 9-13 December 2002 (2003).

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1175_web/Start.pdf

6.27 International Atomic Energy Agency, Proceedings of an International Conference on Storage of Spent Fuel from Power Reactors, Vienna, 2-6 June 2003.

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/csp_020c/Start.pdf

6.28 ibid, Fukuda, K., Danker, W., Lee, J.S., Bonne, A., Crijns, M.J. “IAEA Overview of global spent fuel storage”.

6.29 International Atomic Energy Agency, “The Long Term Storage of Radioactive Waste: Safety and Sustainability A Position Paper of International Experts”, publication IAEA-LTS/RW (2003).

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/LTS-RW_web.pdf

6.30 International Atomic Energy Agency, “Safe Storage of Radioactive Waste”, IAEA Safety Standard Series, Draft Safety Guide DS292.

http://www-ns.iaea.org/downloads/standards/status.pdf (as of September 15, 2004).

6.31 Working Material of Technical Meeting on Nuclear Fuel Cycle Options and Spent Fuel Management, Vienna, 28-30 May 2003, IAEA-NEFW-651.T1TM.25652, Vienna (2003).

6.32 International Atomic Energy Agency, “Spent fuel performance assessment and research”, IAEA Technical Document IAEA-TECDOC-1343, Vienna (2001).

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/te_1343_web.pdf

7 RADIOACTIVE WASTE DISPOSAL

The purpose of this Section is to highlight some aspects of waste disposal that might be topical for some waste managers (e.g. closure or upgrading of near surface disposal facilities) or that have recently displayed some progress (such as the impact of innovative nuclear technologies on waste management). Additionally, the Section describes typical approaches to disposal and examples of activities carried out by some Member States (e.g. research and development for geological repositories).

The IAEA defines radioactive waste disposal as [4.12]:

Emplacement of waste in an appropriate facility without the intention of retrieval.

The key word in the definition is intention (please see Page 76). Even in the absence of an intention to retrieve, waste could be recovered from a repository as a last resort if the repository was mined.

Mining waste could involve great costs and risks. In addition, even in the absence of an intention to retrieve, retrievability could be designed into a repository to facilitate waste retrieval should a future decision be made to retrieve it.

The following radioactive waste disposal related topics are discussed in the current issue of this Status and Trends report:

• emerging issues (Subsection 7.1),

• multinational/regional concepts for waste management facilities (Subsection 7.2),

• the impact of innovative nuclear technologies on radioactive waste management and decommissioning (Subsection 7.3),

• societal issues related to geological repositories (Subsection 7.4),

• research, development and demonstration in geological disposal (Subsection 7.5),

• example of the closure of a surface repository (Subsection 7.6),

• upgrading near surface disposal facilities (Subsection 7.7),

• the collection and dissemination of radioactive waste disposal information by the IAEA (Subsection 7.8).