The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority

Part of our Radioactive Waste Management Directorate's (RWMD) role is to work with waste producers on their plans for packaging nuclear waste and to assess whether these packages are suitable for eventual disposal in an underground facility.

This is called the Letter of Compliance assessment process. Annual Reports detailing work carried out in this area have been produced since 2000. The most recent has now been published and is available at the following link on the NDA website

 NDA RWMD Interactions With Waste Packagers On Plans For Packaging Radioactive Wastes - April 08 To March 2009 (5.84MB)

Simon Wisbey, RWMD's Packaging Assessments Manager said: "The Letter of Compliance process is used extensively throughout the UK nuclear industry and is subject to independent scrutiny by the nuclear environmental regulator. It is central to NDA's clean-up mission and gives confidence that higher-activity wastes being packaged today will be suitable for eventual transport and geological disposal.

In addition to carrying out assessments and issuing Letters of Compliance (LoC), we are also responsible for formal assessment of quality management systems used in the conditioning and packaging of wastes.

Simon explained that the Letter of Compliance process is made available to all nuclear licensed site operators in the UK which is in line with regulatory guidance for production of Radioactive Waste Management Cases.

This Annual Report provides details of the six final stage Letters of Compliance that were issued during the year taking the overall total to 87 and covering some 39,800m3 of intermediate level waste – or some 15% of all such waste reported in the 2007 UK Radioactive Waste Inventory.

In addition, early stage Letters of Compliance and /or assessment reports were issued covering a further 79,200m3 of waste for which packaging strategies are being developed. This means that as of end March 2009, RWMD has considered almost 44% of UK intermediate level waste within its LoC assessment process.

The Letter of Compliance process is also applied to sites in Scotland where the Government policy is for on-site storage of higher activity wastes. The regulator's view is that packages conditioned in anticipation of geological disposal, and assessed under the LoC process, will also be suitable for long-term storage.