The International Conference on Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, held in Córdoba, Spain (2000) [3.10] identified a number of issues relevant to the IAEA’s Waste Safety Programme. It was concluded that the ongoing activities of the IAEA were largely addressing these issues, but a number of actions were proposed aimed at strengthening and focusing the work to ensure the issues were adequately covered.
One particular issue identified was that while Safety Standards on near surface disposal had been issued, the scope and some of the criteria underlying these standards are not applicable to waste containing long lived radionuclides. This is particularly the case for waste from the mining and processing of radioactive ores and minerals and for waste from the remediation of areas contaminated with long lived radionuclides (pp 264-267 of the Córdoba Conference Proceedings focused on international “inconsistencies” for the disposal of long lived waste at or near surface). Another concern identified was the disposal of spent radioactive sources in boreholes, which does not fall clearly into the category of either near surface or geological disposal.
It was concluded that a need existed to establish a common framework for disposal principles that would account for all the different types of radioactive waste. A document was subsequently prepared setting out proposals for a common framework and its application.
During 2002, comments were received on the proposals document from the Subgroup on Principles and Criteria of the Waste Safety Standards Committee (see Subsection 12.1.2). A particular issue
raised was the optimum approach for the disposal of non-heat-generating, long lived radioactive waste, and a questionnaire requesting information on national approaches being adopted for the management of this waste type was later sent to the members of WASSC. A technical committee examined a revised version of the proposals document in June 2003, and, as a result, a technical document setting out elements of a common framework will be issued during 2004 to promote wider international discussion on the subject. A September 2003 draft of the technical document stated the following:
“In order to assure that all radioactive waste is managed in an acceptably safe manner, it has been suggested that a “common framework” should be established to provide an approach to ensuing such safe management, and particularly disposal, of all radioactive waste types consistent with internationally accepted principles of radioactive waste management…
…The framework would provide a general understanding of:
• the basis on which radioactive waste forms can be classified for the purpose of identifying and appropriate category of generic waste disposal options,
• the identification of appropriate category of waste disposal options for each waste type that are in accordance with internationally agreed safety principles, and
• the means by which the safety of such options can be assured through the development of storage and disposal systems with suitable characteristics and degrees of robustness, so as to offer an acceptable degree of protection for human health and the environment, as defined in international safety standards.”
The outcome of such international discussions will be used to revisit the Safety Guide on waste classification, which was published in 1994 [3.4]. This work will commence in 2005. The process will entail obtaining agreement on the need for revision and the proposed format and structure of the revised guidance from the Safety Standards Committees and Commission. New proposed guidance will be drafted and sent to Member States for comment. Subsequently, the guidance will be subjected to approval by the Committees and Commission. This process normally takes two to three years to achieve consensus among Member States.
References for Section 3.
3.1 Golder and Associates, “International Waste Management: A Compendium of Programs and Standards”, prepared by Golder Associates Incorporated, published by WM Symposia Incorporated, February 1997.
3.2 International Atomic Energy Agency, “Radioactive Waste Management Profiles - Compilation of Data from the Waste Management Database, No. 3”, CD ROM IAEA/WMDB/3, Vienna (2000).
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/rwmp-3/RWMP-V3.PDF
3.3 EURELECTRIC, “Nuclear Power Plants’ Radwaste in Perspective”, a report by the Union of the Electricity Industry, Report Number 2001-2110-0008 (2001).
http://www.eurelectric.org/Download/Download.aspx?DocumentID=9300
3.4 International Atomic Energy Agency, “Classification of Radioactive Wastes”, Safety Guide, Safety Series 111-G-1.1, IAEA, Vienna (1994)
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub950e_web.pdf
3.5 Csullog, G.W., Pozdniakov, I., Shah, U., Kostitsin, V., Bell, M.J., “The International Atomic Energy Agency’s Net-Enabled Waste Management Database”, Waste Management 2001 Symposium, Tucson, Arizona, USA, February 2001.
3.6 European Commission, “Commission Recommendation of 15 September 1999 on a classification system for solid radioactive waste (SEC(1999) 1302 final)”, Official Journal of the European Communities, L265 Volume 42, 13 October 1999.
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/1999/l_265/l_26519991013en00370045.pdf
3.7 International Atomic Energy Agency, “Radioactive Waste Management Profiles Number 5 – Compilation of Data from the Net Enabled Waste Management Database”, sub-report
“Overview Report – Consolidated Radioactive Waste Inventory”, IAEA CD ROM, IAEA/WMDB/5, Vienna, May 2003.
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/rwmp-5/RWMP-V5.pdf
3.8 United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the United Nations Environment Program, “International Expert Meeting on Information for Decision-Making”, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, sponsored by the Government of Canada (2000).
http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/csd/iem-info-report.pdf
3.9 International Atomic Energy Agency, “International Basic Safety Standards for Protection against Ionizing Radiation and for the Safety of Radiation Sources”, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, International Atomic Energy Agency, International Labour Organization, OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, Pan American Health Organization, World Health Organization, Safety Series No. 115, Vienna, Austria, 1996.
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/SS-115-CD-E/SS115E.zip
3.10 International Atomic Energy Agency, Proceedings of the International Conference on Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, Córdoba, Spain, 13 - 17 March 2000, International Atomic Energy Agency publication STI/PUB/1094, August 2000.
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PubDetails.asp?pubId=6045
4 SOURCES OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE
The purpose of this Section is to describe the sources (origins) of radioactive waste. In the first two issues of this report, this Section was used to provide a high level overview of the sources of radioactive waste. These first two issues also provided brief summaries of radioactive waste arising from current practices, both nuclear applications and the nuclear fuel cycle (NFC), and from environmental remediation activities.
Since the first issue, this Section has also described two types of large volume, low activity waste containing long lived (more than 30 year half life) radionuclides; namely, uranium mine and mill (UMM) waste and naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) waste. These two types of waste may require special attention within a country’s overall radioactive waste management framework and, therefore, they are given special attention in the Status and Trends report series – see Subsection 4.1 and Subsection 4.2. Additionally, another type of large volume, low activity waste, commonly referred to as very low level waste (VLLW) in some IAEA Member States, also receives special attention by some Member States; see Subsection 4.3 and Subsection 8.1).
Please note that within the industrial sectors that generate UMM residues and NORM residues, not all residues may be declared or considered as waste since some may be processed further for recovery of other marketable materials. Therefore, in this section of the Status and Trends report, the terms UMM waste and NORM waste are used interchangeably with UMM residues and NORM residues. Please also note that in some Member States, there may be partial or complete overlap of UMM waste, NORM waste and VLLW. For example, a Member State may include NORM waste as a type of VLLW waste. See Section 3 regarding differences in waste classification in IAEA Member States.
Wastes arising from facility decommissioning are discussed in Section 5, “Decommissioning of Nuclear Facilities”.