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RWMAC's Advice on: the Scope and Content of the Core Scientific Research Programme on Intermediate Level Radioactive Waste Disposal

Press Release:
20 October 1998

The Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee (RWMAC) today publishes its recommendations on what should be the scope and content of the UK's core scientific research programme on intermediate level radioactive waste (ILW)* disposal. The RWMAC is the independent body that advises the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, and the Secretaries of State for Scotland and for Wales, on issues relating to radioactive waste management. As part of its programme for 1998, the RWMAC was asked to provide "advice on the scope and content of the core scientific research programme on intermediate level waste disposal". The RWMAC's advice is supplied against a background of uncertain Government policy for the long-term management of the United Kingdom's intermediate level radioactive waste. This follows the end of UK Nirex's investigation of the Longlands Farm site near Sellafield as a possible site for a deep disposal facility for such waste. In this context, the RWMAC's advice may be summarised as follows:

• Irrespective of the policy eventually decided to deal with the waste - long-term or indefinite storage, or disposal deep underground - there needs to be a substantive and continuing programme of research into the safe treatment and packaging of the waste.
• The work undertaken by Nirex at Longlands Farm must be suitably pulled together and documented. It could form the basis for useful work in the future, for example, securing a better understanding of repository safety case needs and presentation.
• Despite the collapse of the Nirex programme, the RWMAC sees eventual deep disposal underground to be the only tenable means of dealing with intermediate level radioactive waste in the context of sustainable development. However, what Longlands Farm showed is that the case for such disposal and the ability to be able to do it safely, needs to be explained more convincingly. There is research that can be undertaken to assist with this.
• However, at the end of the day, it is the public's views and opinions that count and the RWMAC believes that there is further work that should be undertaken to help understand public perceptions of the problem and its means of solution to aid development of future policy.

* Radioactive waste is classified according to the amount of radioactivity it contains - high, intermediate or low. In the UK, high level waste exists only as the extremely active liquid waste by-product of the reprocessing of spent fuel, which must be solidified and then cooled through extended storage before being disposed of. Intermediate level waste, which is both liquid and solid, is less radioactive and does not generate significant heat. It comes from a variety of sources including nuclear facility operation, decommissioning and reprocessing. If it is to be disposed of, as opposed to stored, this must be deep underground within a suitable geological formation since the radioactivity in some of the waste will take thousands of years to decay. In this regard, it differs from most low level solid waste which may be disposed of in engineered trenches much nearer the surface.

Notes to Editors

The independent Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee was set up in response to a recommendation of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution's Sixth Report on Nuclear Power and the Environment. Its terms of reference are:

"To advise the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions , and the Secretaries of State for Scotland and for Wales on the technical and environmental implications of major issues concerning the development and implementation of an overall policy for all aspects of the management of civil radioactive waste, including research and development; and on any such matters referred to it by the Secretaries of State."

The Chairman of the RWMAC is Sir Gordon Beveridge, former President and Vice-Chancellor of the Queen's University of Belfast.

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