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RWMAC's Review of: Radioactive Waste Management Issues at UKAEA Dounreay
Press Release:
28 January 1999
The Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee (RWMAC) today publishes its Review of Radioactive Waste Management at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority's (UKAEA's) nuclear site at Dounreay, in Caithness, Scotland.
The RWMAC study was agreed with Government Ministers in early 1998. It is based on site visits, and on discussions with both UKAEA managers and a wide range of other organisations and individuals interested in Dounreay, which took place in July and August 1998. The Committee's work followed, therefore, the regulatory audit of safety at Dounreay carried out in June 1998 by the Health and Safety Executive and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency which was brought forward in time as a response to safety concerns raised by the accidental loss of power to Dounreay's Fuel Cycle Area (FCA)* on 7 May 1998.
The RWMAC's work is intended to provide a broad overview of radioactive waste management at Dounreay, and the background against which these take place, noting the developments of the last few years and recommending improvements for the future. It does not address issues of plant safety, which are outside the RWMAC's remit, and were covered in detail by the regulators in their audit. The RWMAC's ninety page Review discusses the main radioactive waste management facilities at Dounreay. It assesses the current state of UKAEA's plans for managing the major wastes produced at the site, its progress in implementing those plans and the likely direction of work in the future.
The Review also looks at Dounreay's senior management structure, including.the use of contractors, the significance for the Highlands region and the Caithness area of the nuclear operations undertaken at the site, and the effectiveness of UKAEA's "open and honest policy" in relation to information given to the public about those operations.
It sets out 15 main conclusions about radioactive waste management at Dounreay and makes 19 major recommendations, the most significant of the latter being the need to:
- formulate a comprehensive strategic plan for the long-term management of all the wastes arising on the Dounreay site;
- reconsider the seemingly long timescales for decommissioning and clean-up work on the site;
- construct a new disposal facility for low level radioactive wastes, engineered to modern standards, to deal with all such wastes arising, both at present and in the future, from activities at the site;
- review options for managing the nuclear fuel held at Dounreay, including whether or not to replace the irradiated fuel dissolver in the Prototype Fast Reactor Reprocessing Plant.
The RWMAC Working Group, which carried out the fieldwork for the Review, was chaired by Lynda M Warren, Professor of Environmental Law at the University of Wales Aberystwyth. The Chairman of the RWMAC is Sir Gordon Beveridge, formerly President and Vice Chancellor of the Queen's University of Belfast.
* The FCA is the collective term for the plants undertaking nuclear fuel cycle operations at Dounreay, including the fabrication and reprocessing of specialist nuclear fuels, and the recovery of nuclear material.
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."
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