THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN ADDRESSING

RADIOACTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT AND DECOMMISSIONING Recognition of the value of radioactive waste management issues for economic development and for the environment as well as a lack of proven solutions has triggered many international activities.

Today, any country could base radioactive waste related activities on the Joint Convention on Safety of Radioactive Waste and Safety of Spent Fuel as well as on the relevant IAEA Safety Standards. The latter are periodically revised to integrate the most recent state of the art knowledge and experience.

To date, the third round of the Joint Convention peer review process has been completed, and the third Review Meeting provided the participating countries not only with a kind of international audit of related activities, but also

with an important lessons learned from other Contracting Parties’ practices.

Consequently, while designing or evaluating a national legal and regulatory framework, each country could use not only international consensus documents, but also good practices of countries with different sizes of nuclear programmes.

These international consensus documents are also complemented with international databases and networking, including:

—DISPONET — International Low Level Waste Disposal Network.

DISPONET is a tool to encourage and facilitate information and experience sharing and knowledge transfer on different issues related to LILW disposal as well as to obtain relevant feedback for the IAEA’s programme on low level waste disposal;

—LABONET — Training in and Demonstration of Characterization Laboratories of Low and Intermediate Level Waste;

—Underground Research Facilities (URF) Network — Training in and Demonstration of Waste Disposal Technologies in Underground Research Facilities. The URF Network is a mechanism to ensure Member States’

awareness of the latest state of the art technology in geological disposal;

—International Decommissioning Network (IDN) — In 2007, the IAEA launched the IDN to provide a continuing forum for the sharing of practical decommissioning experience in response to the needs expressed at the International Conference on Lessons Learned from the Decommissioning of Nuclear Facilities and the Safe Termination of Nuclear Activities, held in Greece in 2006. IDN brings together existing decommissioning initiatives, both inside and outside the IAEA;

—ENVIRONET — Environmental Management and Remediation Network.

Environet is being established by the IAEA as a facilitator to increase effec-tiveness and efficiency in the sharing of international experience on good practices for remediation of radiologically contaminated sited. The network is also aimed at introducing the life-cycle approach to nuclear and non-nuclear operations in order to minimize the need of future remediation measures.

There are also both completed and ongoing cooperation projects focused on finding answers to the most critical practical questions:

—Strategic Action Plan for Implementation of European Regional Repositories (SAPIERR) — the Project on Strategic Action Plan for Implementation of European Regional Repositories established under the auspices of the European Commission is devoted to pilot studies on the feasibility of shared regional storage facilities and geological repositories, for use by European countries;

—PRISM — the Project on Practical Illustration and Use of the Safety Case Concept in Management of Near-Surface Disposal;

—GEOSAF — the International Project on Demonstrating the Safety of Geological Disposal;

—European Pilot Study — the international project focused on regulatory expectations for the different milestones and addressing uncertainty management, taking into account that the safety authorities in a number of European countries were interested in exploring the possibility of a harmonized approach to the demonstration of safety of geological disposals.

—FaSa — the International Project on the Use of Safety Assessment in Planning and Implementation of Decommissioning of Facilities using Radioactive Materials;

—DeSa — the International Project on the Evaluation and Demonstration of Safety during Decommissioning of Nuclear Facilities (2004–2007).

All the above international activities could provide nuclear regulators with knowledge and proven solutions to meet particular challenges related to radioactive waste management and decommissioning.

5. CONCLUSIONS

There are still many unsolved technical issues, and all radwaste and decommissioning challenges can become regulatory ones.

The Joint Convention and the IAEA Safety Standards have already created a solid basis for developing a national legal and regulatory framework for radwaste management and decommissioning, provided that some degree of flexibility in technical solutions to meet safety goals is allowed, and feedback from both practical experience and research is adequately adopted.

Also, the regulator should consider all relations and interfaces while dealing with separate facility or activity, and should be open for early dialogue and moderation between the waste producer and the waste operator, considering the overall picture while paying attention to technical issues. It is important to be ready to deal with delays, non-conformities and non-compliances.

The regulatory community should not forget to promote and participate actively in the Joint Convention review process, the development and implemen-tation of the IAEA Safety Standards, relevant networking and international cooperation activities. Special efforts should focus on openness and transparency as well as global knowledge exchange.

Our joint actions and coordinated efforts could really make a difference.

REFERENCES

[1] EUROPEAN COMMISSION, Attitudes towards radioactive waste, Special Eurobarometer 297 (2008).

[2] NEDASHKOVSKA, D., SHOVKUN V., Public opinion about status and development of nuclear power in Ukraine, National Security and Defence, No. 3 (2008) 52–60 (in Ukrainian).

[3] INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY, Nuclear Technology Review 2009, IAEA, Vienna (2010).

[4] INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY, Decommissioning of Research Reactors and Other Small Facilities by Making Optimal Use of Available Resources, Technical Reports Series No. 463, IAEA, Vienna (2008).