RWMAC Annual Report 2001/2002

Chapter 1: RWMAC and its work for Government

Status and functions

1.1 The Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee (RWMAC) was established in 1978 to provide independent expert advice to the United Kingdom Government on policy and practices for the management of civil radioactive wastes. RWMAC is a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB). Its terms of reference, and a list of its members, are set out in Annex 1.

1.2 Devolved arrangements for the government of Scotland and Wales were introduced in 1999 and RWMAC assumed the status of a Jointly Established Body. The Committee is now jointly sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Scottish Executive (SE) and the National Assembly for Wales (NAW). As well as advising the three sponsoring bodies, RWMAC also, from time to time, provides advice to other organisations. These include other parts of Government, particularly the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and regulatory bodies, notably the Environment Agency (EA), which covers England and Wales, and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) which is accountable to SE Ministers and to the Scottish Parliament.

1.3 RWMAC, like other NDPBs, is required to publish an Annual Report. This Annual Report (the 22nd in the series) describes work completed since 1 August 2001. It also gives details of the Committee's work in progress at the time of preparation of the report, the general aims of the work programme for 2002-2003, and details of RWMAC's organisation, working methods, and publications, including its website.

1.4 Following devolution, RWMAC's sponsoring Ministers agreed that, for administrative convenience, the financing and administration of the Committee (including formal arrangements in respect of appointments to it) should be handled through Defra, although these are matters which, formally, fall to Defra and the Devolved Administrations jointly.

The current RWMAC work programme

1.5 RWMAC's work is made up of two main elements. The Committee's primary responsibility is to respond to requests for advice from its sponsoring Ministers: this is known as the Ministerial work programme and makes up by far the major part of the Committee's work. RWMAC can pursue other topics on which it believes advice would be of benefit to Ministers: this is termed the RWMAC own programme.

1.6 During 2001-2002, two items from the Ministerial work programme were completed and advice submitted. Both studies were undertaken jointly with the Nuclear Safety Advisory Committee (NuSAC) and examined:

• the conditioning, packaging and storage of intermediate level radioactive waste (ILW);
• the structures and principles of the civil regulation of nuclear safety and the management of radioactive materials and radioactive waste in the UK, known as the Regulatory Review.

1.7 The report on ILW management was supplied to RWMAC's sponsoring Ministers in April 2002. In line with accepted RWMAC practice of placing all the Committee's Ministerial advice in the public domain, it was published in June 2002 ¹. The Regulatory Review will be delivered to Ministers in RWMAC's sponsoring bodies later in 2002 and will be published as soon as possible thereafter. The findings of both studies are also of interest to the Health and Safety Commission (HSC), as the main sponsor of NuSAC, and to the Minister for Industry, Energy and Construction in the DTI.

1.8 In March 2002, RWMAC responded to the Government on its public consultation paper Managing Radioactive Waste Safely: Proposals for Developing a Policy for Managing Solid Radioactive Waste in the UK ². The response was published in June 2002 ³. The Committee's views on the process by which future policy should be formulated are set out in greater detail in chapter 2. In October 2002, the Committee responded to the Government's White Paper Managing the Nuclear Legacy ⁴, which sets out its proposed approach to nuclear clean-up funded by the taxpayer. A copy of the response is set out in Annex 5.

1.9 Work is ongoing on three items from the current Ministerial programme:

• management of solid low level radioactive waste (LLW);
• the coverage and accuracy of the UK Radioactive Waste Inventory;
• application of the concepts of Best Practicable Means (BPM) and Best Practicable Environmental Option (BPEO) to the management and regulation of radioactive waste.

1.10 RWMAC responds, often by specific invitation, to consultation exercises carried out by Government, regulators, and others on various aspects of radioactive waste management and associated issues. The most numerous are those undertaken by EA and SEPA in relation to applications for authorisations to dispose of radioactive waste under the Radioactive Substances Act 1993 (RSA93). The Committee's views on these applications are summarised in chapter 5. Chapter 6 sets out the circumstances of a range of other consultations and the nature of the RWMAC response in each case.

The future RWMAC work programme

1.11 The RWMAC Chairman, Professor Charles Curtis, has written to Ministers setting out the Committee's ideas on topics for possible inclusion in the 2002-03 work programme, but the composition of the programme had not been finally decided at the time this Annual Report was published.

References

¹ Report of a Joint Study by the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee and the Nuclear Safety Advisory Committee: Current Arrangements and Requirements for the Conditioning, Packaging and Storage of Intermediate Level Radioactive Waste, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, June 2002.

² Managing Radioactive Waste Safely: Proposals for Developing a Policy for Managing Solid Radioactive Waste in the UK, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs et al, September 2001.

³ The Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee's Response to the Government's Consultation Document: "Managing Radioactive Waste Safely", Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, June 2002.

⁴ Managing the Nuclear Legacy, a strategy for action (Cm 5552), Department of Trade and Industry, July 2002.