The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority

 

The NDA hosted a visit by a group of US experts on geological disposal in November 2009.

The US Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board is a geological disposal technical oversight body, appointed by the President on the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Board met with team members from the Radioactive Waste Management Directorate, responsible for implementing geological disposal in the UK, who are located at Harwell in Oxfordshire.

Ten out of 11 of the Board members were on the trip, along with four technical support staff. They gave a presentation to the RWMD team on their responsibilities which was followed by a lively question-and-answer session which inevitably included questions about Yucca Mountain, America's proposed site for an underground nuclear waste repository.

In return, specialists from RWMD gave a number of presentations covering site characterisation, safety case preparation (transport, operational, post-closure), waste packaging approval process and the needs-driven approach to R&D. This again gave rise to a number of deeper discussions on between the Board and RWMD.

The Board then travelled to Cumbria where they toured the THORP reprocessing plant at Sellafield, before holding discussions with senior NDA and Sellafield staff on reprocessing and decommissioning experiences.

While in Cumbria, the Board members also met the West Cumbria Partnership, a grouping of two local borough councils and the county council, which have expressed an interest in hosting the deep geological repository.

The Board finished its UK tour in London and held meetings with the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM), an advisory group to government, and with officials from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) responsible for waste management policy.

Bruce McKirdy, the Acting RWMD Director, said:

"We were delighted to host the visit by the Board. We have had a long association with them and it was interesting and informative to exchange views on a number of technical subjects of common interest."

John Garrick, Chairman of the Board, said:

"The Board members participating in the UK meetings were most grateful and impressed with the many excellent exchanges we had with the various segments of the UK's nuclear waste programme. It is obvious that the UK is making a systematic and deliberate effort to implement a programme that, indeed, is responsive to the desires of the public and taking full advantage of international experience with respect to its implementation."

European perspective on waste

NDA's Head of International Relations John Mathieson recently attended a two-day meeting of the Club of Agencies in Sweden.

The Club brings together all the EU's waste management organisationsat the invitation of the European Commission's Directorate Generals Research (which provides the Secretariat of the group), and Energy and Transport. Established 24 years ago, it meets twice a year, with the aim of exchanging information on radioactive waste management programmes covering decommissioning, clean-up and disposal, and discussing specialist topics of interest. The Commission uses the opportunity to advise the group on what is emerging from Brussels and Luxembourg.

On this occasion, the topic was long-term waste package data management. The meeting at Oskarshamn was hosted by Sweden's SKB and included a technical tour of the copper canister laboratory, the Äspö hard rock laboratory and the CLAB underground spent fuel storage facility.

More information on our role in geological disposal