Reducing Safeguards Accounting and Verification Efforts on Retained Wastes
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MRS Advances © 2020 Materials Research Society DOI: 10.1557/adv.2020.102
Reducing Safeguards Accounting and Verification Efforts on Retained Wastes Robert J. Finch1,a and Nicholas Smith2 1
Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, USA
2
International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, Austria
ABSTRACT
The global expansion of nuclear energy will generate increasing quantities of waste with low levels of plutonium or other nuclear materials (NM) potentially subject to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. Reducing requirements on retained wastes has the potential to reduce future demands on already strained IAEA resources. We describe an effort to help the IAEA and Member States better estimate projected waste loads and associated safeguards obligations by developing a reporting tool to estimate types and sizes of future waste-storage and -disposal facilities. States can use such information to plan waste facilities, including size and type. The IAEA can use these data for inclusion in multiple agency reports and products for the benefit of Member States.
INTRODUCTION Spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and radioactive waste are by-products of nuclear reactors used for power generation, research, training, and isotope production. Radioactive waste is also generated from a variety of radioactive materials used in medicine, industry and research. Of special concern is SNF, which contains long-lived radionuclides and requires that States appropriately dispose SNF (or, if reprocessed, any waste streams that contain long-lived actinides and fission products). Requirements for managing and disposing radioactive wastes depend in large part on whether waste is classified as high-level (HLW), intermediate-level (ILW), low-level (LLW) or very lowa
Corresponding author: [email protected]
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level (VLLW) [1]. Final disposal of these various wastes can range from deep geological disposal (for HLW and SNF) to near-surface disposal in trenches (for some LLW and VLLW). The IAEA has periodically summarized the status of and trends in global waste inventories and has gleaned information about national programs for managing SNF and other radioactive wastes. The IAEA collects much of this information through its Net Enabled Waste Management Database (NEWMDB) [2]. In 2018, the IAEA published an overview of the status and trends in SNF and radioactive waste management (with data current through 2013), including expected future waste arisings and national strategies for managing these materials now and in the future [3]. The 2018 publication is based primarily on national profiles submitted by 47 participating Member States, supplemented by published reports to the Fifth Review Meeting of the Contracting Parties to the Joint Convention [4]. These data indicate that, worldwide, approximately
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