The Long-Term Storage of Radioactive Waste and Spent Fuel: Safety and Policy Considerations

Storage is a necessary step in the overall management of radioactive waste. In recent years, due to the unavailability of disposal facilities, storage facilities intended originally as temporary, have had their lifetimes extended and consideration has been given, in some countries, to the use of long term storage (LTS) as a management option. In 2003, the IAEA published a position paper titled “The Long Term Storage of Radioactive Waste: Safety and Sustainability”. The position paper, which written for a non-specialist audience, focused on seven key factors for safety and sustainability of LTS, namely: safety, maintenance/institutional control, retrieval, security, costs, community attitudes and retention of information. The Agency is preparing a follow-up report to the position paper that elaborates in a more technical manner upon the issues raised in the position paper and issues important for implementation of LTS. It also provides some discussion of the reasons for implementing a LTS option and contrasts LTS with aspects of other management options. The present paper provides an overview of the draft follow-up report.