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Doc. 8054
31 March 1998
Radioactive waste management
Report
Committee on Science and Technology
Rapporteur: Mr. Jozef Prokes, Slovakia, not registered in a group
Radioactive waste is a cause of much public concern, raising a whole range of scientific, political and ethical issues all over the world.
This report does not deal with the arguments for and against the use of nuclear energy. That is a separate issue. The report starts from the reality that all the Council of Europe member states are facing problems generated by the existence of radioactive waste, produced by sources located either inside or outside national borders.
The report explains the basic principles and main stages of radioactive waste management and then puts forwards recommendations to member governments on how to improve this management and increase the quality of general public information in this field.
I. Draft resolution
1. Constant public concern about the safety of nuclear energy has motivated the long-standing interest shown in this matter by the Parliamentary Assembly that has presented a series of recommendations to member governments on different aspects of the issue. The problem of radioactive waste is an integral part of the safety of nuclear energy and its management deserves careful consideration.
2. The Assembly considers that radioactive waste management calls for closer international co-operation and that each country using civil nuclear energy has to settle, by its own means, the problem of waste produced.
3. The public often receives inadequate information, leading to a lack of proper understanding of all that concerns the nuclear sector.
4. The public authorities and the companies that treat radioactive waste, must provide information on the current state of and progress in waste management, particularly the scientific, technical, institutional, economic, environmental and ethical aspects.
5. Clearly, in a field in which decisions are taken that affect millennia, no absolute certainty can be possible. This is why traditional scientific methods are sometimes inappropriate. The radioactive waste issue will, however, need to be solved in a manner that satisfies both health and environmental concerns.
6. The Assembly therefore calls on Council of Europe member states:
i. to ensure that all operations in the nuclear energy production chain that are linked to waste comply with the safety standards and principles drawn up by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). These also contain fundamental principles for the protection of and burdens on future generations;
ii. to continue their support of and co-operation with international organisations dealing with radioactive waste management and to insist on the continuous improvement of treatment technologies, by adopting as a priority aim the minimisation of the quantities and of the radiological and chemical toxicity of waste;
iii. to encourage international co-operation on transmutation of radioactive high-level and long-lived waste;
iv. to give objective information to the public on all matters concerning the nuclear sector and to show greater transparency in the field of radioactive waste management, so as to avoid inaccurate information;
v. to take all possible steps to ensure that the public is properly informed about the measures adopted for managing different types of waste in the short, medium and long term;
vi. to ensure that the illegal transport and storage of radioactive waste are completely stopped;
vii. to study the technical, economical and political feasibility of the creation of international repositories for radioactive waste;
viii. to sign, ratify and put into practice the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, elaborated under the auspices of the IAEA;
ix. to co-operate with the appropriate international organisations in research programmes for improving the methods and technology of radioactive waste management.
II. Explanatory memorandum by Mr Josef Prokes
Table of contents
Introduction 5
I. Fundamental Principles of Radioactive Waste Management 5
II. Forms and management of various types of wastes 6
III. Geological disposal 7
IV. Quantities of nuclear waste 8
V. Transport of nuclear waste 9
VI. Safety and environmental protection 9
VII. International co-operation 10
VIII. The situation at national level 10
IX. General public information 11
Conclusion 11
1. Radioactive waste management resulting from the operation of nuclear power plants is often cited as the most important unresolved issue concerning nuclear energy. Nevertheless, a broad scientific and technical consensus exists that all categories of radioactive waste can be managed and disposed of in accordance with all regulatory requirements, by the careful application of currently available technologies. Many stages of radioactive waste management, including the disposal of low-level and intermediate level waste, are in fact safely implemented under routine industrial procedures. Strategies are also being devised and implemented to store and dispose of high-level, long-lived waste in deep geological repositories.
2. The Rapporteur wishes to express his deep gratitude towards the experts representing the International Agency for Atomic Energy (IAEA), the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), the French National Agency of Radioactive Waste (ANDRA), the Swedish Nuclear Safety Inspectorate and the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy for their participation in the hearings organised by the Committee on Science and Technology and for their valuable contributions in the elaboration of the report.
I. Fundamental Principles of Radioactive Waste Management
3. The safe radioactive waste management is given particular attention in all countries engaged in nuclear power generation but also involves all countries making use of radioactive materials for medical, industrial, and research purposes.
4. "The fundamental principles of radioactive waste management", as formulated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are listed in appendix 1.
5. As already mentioned during the parliamentary hearings organised by the Committee on Science and Technology with experts in the field of nuclear energy, the main ethical principles for radioactive waste management are the following:
a. the liabilities of waste management should be considered when undertaking new projects;
b. those who generate the wastes should take responsibility, and provide the resources, for the management of these materials in a way that will not impose undue burdens on future generations;
c. wastes should be managed in a way that secures an acceptable level of protection for human health and the environment, and affords future generations at least the level of safety which is acceptable today;
d. a waste management strategy should not be based on the presumption of a stable societal structure for the indefinite future, nor of technological advance. It should aim at bequeathing a passively safe situation that places no reliance on active institutional controls.
6. There are three ways in which the fundamental objective of radioactive waste management - the protection of current and future generations from unacceptable exposure to radiation from the wastes - can be achieved. They are:
- by containment, generally using a combination of man-made and natural barriers to achieve effective isolation of the wastes till their radioactivity has decayed to levels that no longer pose an unacceptable risk;
- by dispersal, ensuring however that the wastes become so dilute in the environment that they do not present an unacceptable risk to people at any time in any way;
- or by a combination of containment, decay, and later dispersal.
7. Detailed planning and control of each stage of the waste management sequence is required in order to ensure that this objective is met.
II. Forms and management of various types of wastes
8. Radioactive gas: The natural radioactive gas radon is released during the mining and milling of uranium ore and uranium enrichment. Improved techniques are being applied to reduce further the already low radiation doses that occur. The small amounts of radioactive gases produced in reactors themselves are held under pressure in delay tanks to allow decay of the shorter-lived components and filtered before realise. The resulting low-level gaseous effluent is dispersed through closely monitored stacks. Techniques are available to immobilise long-lived components to make them suitable for disposal.
9. Slightly radioactive liquids derive from the operation of reactors and reprocessing plants. These contain traces of fission and activation products from the fuel and from the cooling ponds in which fuel is stored, and require some form of treatment before release. These techniques concentrate the radioactivity in a solid or liquid form suitable for containment, and result in a residual low-level liquid effluent that is dispersed, after adequate containment, if needed, in accordance with site authorisations.
10. Slightly radioactive rubbish arises wherever radioactive materials are handled. This low-level waste is reduced in volume by compaction, incineration or decontamination prior to disposal near the surface or deep underground. Near-surface disposal in trenches or increasingly in engineered facilities has been implemented for many decades in several countries, and deep disposal at depths up to hundreds of metres is being carried out or planned in a number of countries.
11. Decommissioning wastes. Nearly 98% of the radioactivity in completely shut-down nuclear power stations is concentrated in the reactors. Some specialists therefore believe that reactors should be sealed for a certain period, thus benefiting from the natural decline in radioactivity, before the installation is completely dismantled. Others do not want to wait for years before completing this process: following the dismantling of the auxiliary buildings surrounding the reactor, they continue the programme by dismantling the reactor itself. Programmes to dismantle prototype and research reactors have provided sufficient experience with these highly active parts and have proved that such dismantling is feasible. Auxiliary and peripheral buildings are generally dismantled immediately after final shut down, since this presents no particular difficulties and produces only low or very low-level waste.
12. Medium-level wastes such as filter sludges, fuel cladding and used industrial and medical radioisotope sources may require short or very long-term isolation and are generally immobilised in cement or bitumen prior to disposal. Such wastes require sufficiently strong shieldings to be of no risk in case of accident: they are therefore stored in steel drums with additional concrete for shielding. They require disposal in massive structures near the surface or 50 to 500 m underground in concrete lined caverns or existing mines, backfilled and plugged with concrete. The disposal of short-lived medium-level wastes has been implemented in several European countries. Long-lived medium-level wastes are held in stores pending the development of deep geological disposal facilities. The status of low and medium level waste disposal facilities in various countries in 1996 is presented in appendix 2.
13. High-level waste is either in the form of spent fuel or concentrated waste from reprocessing. In both cases, massive shielding is needed, as is a period of cooling to allow the heat to die away: this generally takes place in cooling ponds at reactor sites or at a centralised store. Used fuel that is not to be reprocessed is encapsulated in containers designed to last for hundreds to millions of years. High-level waste from reprocessing is vitrified and sealed into stainless steel containers. Both types of high-level waste will be disposed of deep underground in stable, geological formations that are subject to detailed assessment prior to disposal. However, there are considerable technical benefits from delaying disposal for at least several decades, during which time much of the heat emission of both types of high-level waste will have died away. No country has yet implemented final disposal of high-level waste, but plans and studies are under way. There are also works on transmutation of high-level long life waste into low and medium-level waste.
14. The disposal of long-lived radioactive wastes in deep and stable geological formations presents a series of technical merits that has lead to broad international consensus for these solutions among experts.
15. Other disposal options, aiming at long-time isolation of wastes from the biosphere were considered: deposition in polar ice caps or extraterrestrial space is poorly controllable and, for disposal under the deep ocean floor, international agreement would be difficult to obtain.
16. Safe disposal of long-lived wastes deep underground is based on containment by multiple barriers, of which the principal ones are the engineered structures of the repository itself and the retentive properties of the mass of rock between the repository and the surface. There are many different types of geological formations that can provide the necessary protection and ensure that the radioactivity of the wastes decays to negligible levels before they reach the biosphere.
17. The principle of long-term isolation used in geological disposal is already the means by which the biosphere is protected from the vastly greater quantities of toxic and radioactive minerals naturally present in the earth. It is not a cheap waste management concept, but certainly, in the case of nuclear power production, its cost can be recovered according to the "Polluter Pays" principle, as a small fraction of the cost of nuclear electricity.
18. There still is a continuing public debate on the ethical case for geological disposal as a preferred means to indefinite storage and monitoring strategy. The partisans of the latter argue that suitable efforts to ensure continued development or improvement of options for final solutions should be developed. The current generation should provide next generations with the skills, the resources and the opportunities to deal with the problem of nuclear waste. Next generations will have the task to find the final solutions. Some judge this approach unethical because in effect it would always pass responsibility for real action to future generations.
19. The solution of storage avoids the difficulty of predicting the far future, but it has the deficiency that there is still the presumption of the stability of future societies, as there is a need for continued ability to carry out the required safety and institutional measures. One should not forget also the risk of the future society becoming accustomed to the existence and proximity of storage facilities and progressively ignoring the associated risks.
20. Studies that have been carried out on the feasibility of an international repository have suggested that there are not likely to be significant technical, economic or legal obstacles, but that political problems linked to siting make such a repository unlikely in the near future.
IV. Quantities of nuclear waste
21. A 1000 MW nuclear plant uses about 80 kg of slightly enriched uranium per day. A similar coal plant uses about 7000 tons of coal per day.
22. The average annual waste production of a 1000 MW nuclear power plant consists in:
- high level waste (spent fuel): 25-27 tons (reprocessed/vitrified, about 3 m3);
- intermediate level waste: 310 tons;
- low level waste (contaminated clothing, tools etc.): 460 tons.
23. Even with sophisticated clean coal technology, a coal plant of the same power will emit about:
- 900 tons of SO2;
- 4500 tons of NOx;
- 6 500 000 tons of CO2;
- 400 tons of various heavy metal waste.
24. It is obvious that the quantity of nuclear fuel, its transport, land use, storage and quantity of waste is all much smaller than for fossil fuels. FORATOM estimates that a ton of uranium produces as much energy as 20 000 tons of coal. In the UK (which was the first country in Europe to use nuclear produced electricity), all the radioactive waste produced from all sources by 2030 will be equivalent to about three weeks' worth of British garbage. Of this nuclear-related waste, about 90 % are low-level waste.
25. FORATOM estimates the amount of radioactive waste from the world's nuclear plants by 1987 to 6000 tons of spent fuel. If the same amount of electricity which was produced by using this fuel would have been produced by coal plants, the production of toxic heavy metal waste such as mercury, arsenic, vanadium etc, mostly emitted to the atmosphere, would have been about 100 000 tons. Moreover, radioactivity diminishes over time, while toxic materials remain toxic forever - and they remain on the surface of the earth.
26. Two principles are at the basis of the regulations and procedures for transporting nuclear materials:
1) the transportation procedure should minimise the chances for an accident to occur;
2) the materials should be packaged so no radioactive material is released if an accident should occur.
27. The safety standards used for the transport are based on the "Regulations for Safe Transport of Radioactive Material" of the IAEA. Their objective is to protect persons, property and the environment from the effects of radiation during the transport of any radioactive material (waste included). This protection is achieved by requiring containment of the radioactive contents, control of external radiation levels, prevention of criticality and prevention of damage caused by heat.
28. The Regulations apply to the transport of radioactive material by all modes on land, water or in the air, comprising all operations and conditions associated with and involved in the movement: the design, manufacture, maintenance and repair of packaging and the preparation, consigning, leading, carriage, unloading and receipt at the final destination.
29. A graded approach is applied to the performance standards in the Regulations, that is characterised by three general severity levels:
a) routine conditions of transport (incident free);
b) normal conditions of transport (minor mishaps);
c) accident conditions of transport.
VI. Safety and environmental protection
30. Radiation protection is based on the recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) that are based on three principles: justification, optimisation of protection and individual dose and risk limitation. These principles apply to all activities with an element of radiological risk.
31. The "justification" principle concerns all practice that involves additional radiation exposure, and which should be justified by the benefits that result. It must be assumed that all exposure, however small, may carry some risk. Therefore, in the case of radioactive waste management, the practice that gives rise to the waste must be justified. Generation of electricity by nuclear means will save large quantities of coal, oil and gas from burning for the production of energy, thus enabling future generations to use those resources.
32. The "optimisation of protection" principle provides that all exposure should be kept As Low As Reasonably Achievable or Practicable (ALARA or ALARP), economic and social factors being taken into account. The word "reasonable" concerns the point that must come where the cost of achieving a further reduction of an already low risk cannot be justified. One parallel may be drawn with crash barriers that exist on motorways, but which no one would suggest to install on country roads, even though they would doubtless increase road safety somewhat. Finding the appropriate balance between the benefits and the cost of achieving a risk reduction defines the optimisation of protection.
33. The third ICRP principle, providing that individual exposure is subject to dose limits and control of risk, is based on comparisons between the risks associated with radiation exposure and other types of risk. The dose limits are normally specified in national regulations. It should be underlined that, however, exceeding a limit, under particular conditions, would be a serious matter for the purpose of the rules, but this does not automatically imply serious harm to the person exposed. To continue the above-made comparison, a car exceeding the legal speed limit does not automatically produce a serious road accident.
VII. International co-operation
34. The main roles of international organisations dealing with specific issues, as nuclear energy, are to develop recommendations on which national criteria, regulations and standards for the management of nuclear waste are based, to encourage and to facilitate co-operation between national programmes, to review progress and achieve technical and regulatory consensus and to disseminate information to governments and to the wider public.
35. The main international bodies are the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR); the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP); the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); the World Health Organisation (WHO); the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA); the European Commission, by its Euratom Treaty.
36. There are a number of collaborative research projects managed by international bodies, the most significant areas of international co-operation in the field of radioactive waste management being concerned with repository safety assessment. None of the international bodies play a direct role in the management of nuclear waste itself, although the IAEA plays an important role as part of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
37. The "Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management”, elaborated under the auspices of the IAEA, recognises that the definition of a fuel-cycle policy rests with the state. It was agreed that the Convention would be a "sister" convention to the Convention on Nuclear Safety, the signatories and parties to which are presented in appendix 3.
VIII. The situation at national level
38. National criteria, regulations and standards are based on international recommendations. They still vary from country to country, depending on economic, socio-political, legal and institutional structures or general geographic conditions. Despite the differences (which often concern such technical details as whether dose limits are expressed in terms of dose or risk, whether individual or collective dose or risk limits are used etc.), broad agreement exists about overall health and safety requirements and about the need to take uncertainties in safety assessment into account by providing appropriate safety margins.
39. In all OECD countries, as well as in many central and east European ones, responsibility for safety lies with the operators of nuclear facilities, while responsibility for regulation lies with governments. The regulatory body, empowered by the government, is responsible for the surveillance and control of all matters relating to safety.
40. A review of the nuclear law in central and eastern Europe is presented in appendix 4.
IX. General public information
41. A huge flow of information is appearing in the mass media on the subject of nuclear waste. Unfortunately, this information is very often biased against nuclear energy in general. Two main consequences are emerging: on the one hand, uninformed people are easily convinced that the disadvantages of nuclear power largely surpass its advantages, and the number of unconditional opponents to the nuclear industry increases; on the other hand, informed people are tempted to believe that all information concerning potential dangers related to nuclear power is false, being therefore not ready to consider it with enough seriousness.
42. Two examples may illustrate the situation. In the summer of 1997, alarmist statements from Greenpeace about the radioactivity of discharges from the reprocessing plant in The Hague caused intense polemic. An official statement made by the French environment minister, trying to eliminate the roots of panic, explained that dilution of discharges in the sea minimised the risk for the population at large.
43. About two years earlier, the mass media focused for a relatively short time on the information that, for more than three decades, the Soviet Union and then Russia secretly pumped millions of cubic metres of atomic waste (half of all the nuclear waste it ever produced) directly into the earth, near the Volga, Ob and Yenisei rivers. The amount of radioactivity injected was estimated at three billion curies; by comparison, the Chernobyl accident released about 50 million curies (mostly in short-lived isotopes that decayed in a few months).
44. Comparison between the degree of gravity of the situations given as examples, both made known by the mass media, would be ridiculous. Still, partially due to the above-mentioned reasons, a superficial look may include both of them in the large category of "press allegations", hugely increasing the importance of the first and hugely decreasing the importance of the second.
45. If unconfined waste buried in Russia were to leak to the surface, it would certainly produce regional calamities downstream along the rivers. Experts say that if the radioactivity waste spread through the world's oceans, it might prompt a global rise in birth defects and cancer deaths. Without waiting for such catastrophic effects at a global scale, thorough studies of the facts near the sites mentioned would allow to increase considerably knowledge on the management of nuclear waste.
46. Any form of energy production gives rise to waste the management of which should be the subject of a constant and rigorously scientific preoccupation. Nuclear energy seems to be the focus of most of the attention paid to energy-related waste. Among the main reasons for this unbalanced situation is the inadequate information often received by the public.
47. A legal framework for the radioactive waste management exists and its acquaintance - and respect - should automatically lead to a general trust in the solutions adopted or envisaged. These aim to satisfy both health and environmental concerns. It is therefore essential that the public authorities and companies involved further increase transparency in all activities in the nuclear field. The accent should be put on constant efforts for continuously improving the technologies related to the radioactive waste management.
48. Meanwhile, international co-operation in research programmes and on the political level should be intensified, so that solutions leading to international consensus (as, for example, the creation of international repositories) may become reality.
Sources:
- "Radioactive Waste Management in Perspective", OECD/NEA, 1996;
- "The Environmental and Ethical Basis of Geological Disposal", A Collective Opinion of the NEA ; Radioactive Waste Management Committee, OCDE, Paris, 1995;
- "Nuclear Waste Bulletin" No.11, June 1996, NEA, OCDE;
- "IAEA Bulletin" Vol. 39, No.1/1997, Vienna;
- "Regulations for the Safe Transport of Radioactive Material", IAEA, 1996;
- "Overview of Nuclear Legislation in central and eastern Europe and the NIS", OECD/NEA, 1996;
- "Foratom Newsletter" N° 51, 1997.
Reporting committee : Committee on Science and Technology.
Budgetary implications for the Assembly: None.
Reference to committee: Doc. 7776 and Reference No. 2176 of 19 March 1997.
Draft resolution unanimously adopted by the committee on 20 March 1998.
Members of the committee: MM. Melnikov (Chairman), Birraux, Mrs Terborg, MM. Tiuri (Vice-Chairpersons), MM. About, Atac, Bauer, Beaufays, Berceanu, Brunhart, Cherep, Cherribi, Chornovil, Cioni, Cunliffe (Alternate: Etherington), Faldet, Fernandez Aguilar, Frey, Ivanov, Janecek, Jeszenszky, Johansson, Karlsson, Kitov, Kittis (Alternate: Hadjidemetriou), Lambergs, Leers, Lekberg, Lengagne, Lenzer, Liiv, Lorenzi, Maass, Melcak, Mozgan, Naysmith, Lord Newall, MM. Niza, Olrich, Onaindia, Pawlak, Petersen, Plattner, Prokes, Prusi, Raskinis, Rokos, Roseta, Ryabov, Steolea, Szalay, Theis, Turini (Alternate: Speroni), Upton, Uroic, Vella, Weyts, Wittbrodt, Yürür, Zhebrovsky, Zissi.
N.B. The names of those members who took part in the vote are printed in italics.
Secretaries of the committee: Mr Lervik, Mr Torcătoriu