DS550 - Storage of Radioactive Waste

Status: STEP 5

Revision von WS-G-6.1

Beteiligte IAEO-Komitees: WASSC, RASSC, EPReSC, NUSSC, NSGC

Specific Safety Guide

Zurück zur Übersicht "In Entwicklung befindliche Safety Standards"

Background Information

WS-G-6.1 was published in 2006, with the objective to provide regulatory bodies and operating organizations that generate and manage radioactive waste with recommendations on how to meet the safety requirements established in WS-R-2, Predisposal Management of Radioactive Waste, Including Decommissioning, for the safe storage of radioactive waste.

Since 2006, several Safety Standards Series publications have been revised and new safety standards have been published that affect the contents of WS-G-6.1. The recommendations on how to meet the safety requirements as presented in WS-G-6.1, do not incorporate the new information, approaches and practical experiences contained in Safety Requirements published after 2006 such as GSR Part 3 (superseding WS-R-2 since 2009), GSR Part 4 (Rev. 1), GSR Part 5, GSR Part 6, GSR Part 7 or being under revision or publication procedures during working on this proposed publication. WS-G-6.1 also needs to be aligned with the other Safety Guides on predisposal management of radioactive waste published after 2006, such as SSG-40, SSG-41, SSG-45, GSG-1. At the 52nd WASSC meeting in October 2021, WASSC requested the Secretariat to develop a DPP to revise WS-G-6.1.

The proposed publication will:

• apply to the storage of radioactive waste in a wide range of facilities, including those at which waste is generated, treated, and conditioned. The storage facility could range from a secure cupboard or closet in a laboratory, through to larger designated areas such as rooms or buildings, up to and including a large site dedicated to the storage of radioactive waste.
• address the entire period of storage, ranging from only few days, weeks, or months - in case of decay storage - to a few decades and even hundred years as for long term storage. To address wide range of storage facilities and different stages of their lifetime a graded approach is intended to be applied in the text of proposed publication both in terms of implementation of safety requirements and for development of the safety case with supporting safety assessments.
• highlight the physical protection of storage facilities and considerations for control and accounting of radioactive waste and accounting and control of nuclear material, where appropriate, to recognize implications for safety.

Additionally:

• The proposed publication is intended to apply to new storage facilities for radioactive waste and will include recommendations on how to apply it for existing storage facilities.
• The proposed publication will elaborate on the place and on the links of radioactive waste storage in the national radioactive waste management programme.
• The latest recommendations on ageing management for long term storage of radioactive waste and for extended storage beyond the design lifetime will be provided, including the feasibility and safety aspects of waste retrieval and the subsequent steps up to the transfer of waste from the storage facility.
• Recommendations on the development of a safety case for storage of radioactive waste and performing a corresponding safety assessment need to be moved from Appendix to the main body of the proposed publication, revised to bring them in line with GSG-3, The Safety Case and Safety Assessment for the Predisposal Management of Radioactive Waste, published in 2013, and to address the waste acceptance criteria.
• The proposed publication will differentiate storage facilities not only according to the scale (small and large), but also according to the purpose and intended time of storing waste (decay storage, hold storage, long term storage).

The proposed publication will not address:

a) The wet or dry storage of spent nuclear fuel declared as radioactive waste, which is addressed in SSG-15 (Rev 1);

b) The storage of waste from the mining and processing of uranium and thorium ores and minerals;

c) The storage of other waste containing elevated concentrations of naturally occurring radionuclides and waste from mineral processing activities.