In the UK, monitoring and inspection is required by the regulators to ensure continued safe storage, retrievability and disposability of packages of radioactive waste in interim storage. Monitoring and inspection requirements may also be determined by any requirements for transport, further storage or disposal when the store is emptied. This paper presents an approach to establishing a monitoring and inspection strategy for stored intermediate level waste (ILW) packages that was developed under the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s Direct Research Portfolio programme. The key aspects to be considered when developing a package monitoring and inspection strategy are identified and used to develop a generic multi-stage process that will enable store operators to identify a justifiable monitoring and inspection strategy for ILW packages in long-term interim storage. Two spreadsheet tools have also been developed to facilitate use of the multi-stage process by store operators (IMPS – Inspection and Monitoring of Packages in Stores and CBAT – Cost / Benefit Analysis Tool). A statistically based methodology has been used to identify the number of waste packages to be inspected and an appropriate frequency of inspection, and aspects such as cost, risk and operational feasibility are taken into account.

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