CIAO DATE: 03/2012

Standards & Regulations for the Geologic Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Waste

March 2011

Center for International Security and Cooperation

Abstract

This paper draws on my experience as a reviewer of the scientific programs and performance assessments of the geological repository for transuranic waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico and the proposed repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. In addition, I have served on numerous committees of the National Research Council that have addressed many aspects of nuclear waste management. These comments and recommendations focus on standards and regulations for licensing a geological repository for SNF and HLW; however, I have added a brief annex on the classification of nuclear wastes. The initial classification of the waste determines the disposal strategy: deep geological disposal vs. near surface disposal. In this paper, I present the basis for the following recommendations:  The standard and supporting regulations for the licensing of a geologic repository should be generic - applicable to all potential sites. These standards and regulations should be finalized prior to the site-selection process.  Site-selection should be based on a set of common-sense criteria (e.g., NRC, 1978). If during site characterization it is discovered that the site does not meet the technical criteria, then it should be abandoned. These criteria should not only consider the characteristics of the site, but should also include careful consideration of the degree to which a site can be analyzed. Unnecessary complexity can jeopardize the confidence in the analysis of a suitable site.  The standard must acknowledge and adapt its structure and standard-of-proof to the fact that there are two time-scales of interest: the human time-scale that extends to some thousands of years and the geologic time-scale that extends to many hundreds of thousands of years. Reasonable and robust containment at both time scales is possible, but the type of analysis and standard-of-proof will be different for each.  Because there are two time-scales and because the types of “proof” for each are very different, the total system analysis of performance, reduced to a single numerical estimate of risk at some very distant time, should be abandoned. The standard should not require scientists and engineers to complete an analysis that is at its best opaque and at its worst not believable. At the end of this paper, I have provided a short list of references that are not meant to be comprehensive, but rather were selected because they provide an expanded discussion of some of the critical points in this paper.

Resource link: Standards & Regulations for the Geologic Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Waste [PDF] - 807K