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Managing Our Radioactive Waste Safely 1 CoRWM Doc 700 July 2006 Contents C ONTENTS Introduction by the Chair ............................................................................................................... 2 Overview Radioactive waste – a new approach ........................................................................ 3 Chapter 1 Introduction – the radioactive waste problem .......................................................... 14 Chapter 2 Identifying the radioactive wastes and materials that the UK has to manage ......... 19 Chapter 3 Other current initiatives in the development of policy .............................................. 26 Chapter 4 CoRWM’s principles and practice............................................................................ 29 Chapter 5 Key steps in the programme .................................................................................... 33 Chapter 6 An ethical problem ................................................................................................... 38 Chapter 7 Involvement of citizens and stakeholders ................................................................ 43 Chapter 8 CoRWM and science ............................................................................................... 56 Chapter 9 Learning from overseas ........................................................................................... 64 Chapter 10 Identifying and shortlisting waste management options .......................................... 67 Chapter 11 Assessing the shortlisted options............................................................................. 74 Chapter 12 How CoRWM reached its recommendations........................................................... 92 Chapter 13 Confidence in geological disposal.......................................................................... 101 Chapter 14 CoRWM’s recommendations ................................................................................. 111 Chapter 15 Geological disposal................................................................................................ 116 Chapter 16 Interim storage ....................................................................................................... 123 Chapter 17 Implementing a management strategy................................................................... 134 Chapter 18 Addressing uncertainties........................................................................................ 144 Chapter 19 Next steps .............................................................................................................. 151 A NNEXES Annex 1 Terms of reference .......................................................................................... 154 Annex 2 CoRWM members and working groups .......................................................... 159 Annex 3 Inventory.......................................................................................................... 164 Annex 4 Additional detail on options assessment ......................................................... 172 Annex 5 Timelines ......................................................................................................... 183 Annex 6 Acronyms and glossary of technical terms...................................................... 186 Managing our radioactive waste safely 1 Introduction by the Chair Introduction by the Chair The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management was asked by Government in 2003 to make recommendations for the long-term management of the UK’s higher activity wastes that would both protect the public and the environment, and inspire public confidence. To do this, we have combined a technical assessment of options with ethical considerations, examination of overseas experience and a wide-ranging programme of engagement both with the public and with interested parties (stakeholders). I am happy to present our recommendations in the pages that follow. Chapter 14 contains our main recommendations and brief rationales for each. This integrated package of recommendations deals centrally with specific management options for radioactive wastes but they are also framed more broadly. Government, in setting the Committee’s terms of reference, also suggested that we might also want to offer advice on implementation issues and we have placed our recommendations on options within a proposed implementation process. Reports on implementation and on the inventory of wastes are also attached to this report. It is impossible to acknowledge all the many individuals and organisations that have helped CoRWM to reach its conclusions. But I do especially want to thank both our secretariat and our programme managers (AMEC NNC for most of the two and a half years) without whom our very large task would have proved impossible in the time we had to complete our work. The Committee believes that our recommendations form a sound basis for the further development of radioactive waste management policy in the UK, and urges Government to build on the momentum we have helped establish. Gordon MacKerron 31 July 2006 2 Managing our radioactive waste safely Overview : Radioactive waste – a new approach Overview: Radioactive waste - a new approach For over three decades, efforts to find solutions to the problem of long-term radioactive waste management in the UK have failed. Government initiated a fundamental review of policy and appointed the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) to take this forward. CoRWM has adopted an innovative approach, based on engagement with the public and stakeholders, expert knowledge and reflection on ethical issues. Consideration of these inputs has led to a set of interdependent proposals which recommend: (1) geological disposal as the end state; (2) the vital role of interim storage; and (3) a new approach to implementation, based on the willingness of local communities to participate, partnership and enhanced well-being. The proposals form a basis for Government to act upon without delay. 2. Ever since the Flowers Report three decades ago drew attention to the problem, the UK has sought but failed to find a long-term solution to the problem of managing its higher activity radioactive wastes. In part, the problem has been a technical one, the need to identify solutions which, in the words of the Flowers Report, could demonstrate ‘beyond reasonable doubt that a method exists to ensure the safe containment of long-lived highly radioactive waste for the indefinite future’.1 But radioactive waste is also a social problem. Its association with nuclear energy and weapons and the risks to health from radioactivity make the management of radioactive waste an issue of controversy and conflict. A solution to the problem must not only be technically achievable but also publicly acceptable. CoRWM’s terms of reference (see Annex 1) recognise this in specifying the need for management options that both protect people and the environment and inspire public confidence. This Report brings together both technical and social considerations, in setting out the best way forward for the management of radioactive wastes in decades to come. 3. The problem of radioactive waste must be understood in terms of a changing social and political context. From the later 1940s until the early 1970s radioactive waste did not constitute a political problem. The focus was on the development of the nuclear industry and the weapons programme; wastes were either dumped at sea (first near the Channel Islands, later in the north Atlantic) or accumulated in stores at nuclear sites, notably Sellafield and Dounreay. From the mid 1970s until the early 1990s, the international nuclear industry experienced a series of setbacks in terms of high costs and technological problems. These included accidents at Three Mile Island and later at Chernobyl, growing concerns about radioactive emissions and, in the UK, conflicts over proposals for reprocessing and proposed locations for radioactive waste facilities. The links to weapons, and the dangers of proliferation, further added to a decline in confidence and a lack of trust in the nuclear industry. During this period, every initiative to find a way forward to manage radioactive waste foundered in the wake of opposition and protest. First, the drilling programme to assess the geological suitability of sites for high level waste disposal faced local protests and was abandoned. Then, sea dumping of wastes was suspended in the face of combined action by trades unions, Greenpeace and international protests. Next came attempts to find suitable sites in eastern England for the disposal on land of intermediate and low level wastes which were effectively countered by coalitions of local government and citizen protest movements. 4. These initiatives tried to impose technical solutions but failed to respond to the need for public acceptability. In an effort to find a solution that would be technically suitable, but also achieve local public support, the Nuclear Industry Radioactive Waste Management Executive (Nirex) identified Sellafield and Managing our radioactive waste safely 3 Overview: Radioactive waste – a new approach Dounreay (later withdrawn) as potential sites for the deep disposal of intermediate and low level wastes. After an extensive borehole drilling programme and a lengthy Public Inquiry, the proposal for an underground laboratory (Rock Characterisation Facility, RCF) at Sellafield was rejected in 1997. The series of reversals culminating at Sellafield
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