RWMAC's Advice to Ministers on the Radioactive Waste Implications of Reprocessing

3. THE FORM OF THE RWMAC STUDY

3.1 RWMAC’s work programme

The RWMAC’s work on the currently reported review of the waste implications of reprocessing commenced in September 1999. The task of initial data assembly and analysis was allocated to the Committee’s Sellafield Working Group, whose membership is set out in Annex 2. This Working Group also had responsibility for preparing the initial drafts of the study report. These drafts, and the conclusions contained within them, were discussed and finalised by the whole Committee. The advice contained within this report was thereafter delivered to Ministers on 8 August 2000.

The Working Group held six meetings between September 1999 and July 2000. During the early meetings the Project Definition Statement contained in Annex 3 was formulated and agreed. The Committee chose to consider both the spent fuel itself and the solid radioactive materials arisings and liquid and gaseous discharges of radioactivity associated with its reprocessing under the course of its work.

The term "solid radioactive materials arisings" was chosen purposefully. This is because, under current Government policy, spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing and the reprocessed uranium and separated plutonium from it are not regarded as wastes but rather resources which have value as a source of future power generation. This view is the subject of current debate (see section 2.2). The view that RWMAC took in carrying out its study was that, irrespective of their ultimate use and value, such materials give rise to more immediate processing and handling requirements.

3.2 Relationship to other studies

RWMAC saw the need for its own work to be focussed on the implications of reprocessing set within the UK context. However, the Committee also maintained its familiarity with a number of other studies published during the course of its own work.

Notable among these were: the first stages of the continuing stakeholder dialogue organised by BNFL to inform the company of possible improvement of their future environmental performance^9,10; the House of Commons Select Committee on Trade and Industry inquiry into the proposed public private partnership (PPP) for BNFL, which looked in particular at the future commercial prospects for reprocessing⁶; and a generalised study by the Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (NEA/OECD) on the radiological impacts of spent oxide nuclear fuel management options, which considered reprocessing as one option¹¹.

Whilst maintaining an awareness of these other studies, RWMAC saw them as having essentially different aims from those of its own work, and refers to them in the remainder of this report only where there is a direct link to the Committee’s own interests.

On a specific matter, it should be noted that the main differences between RWMAC’s analysis and that used by BNFL stakeholder working groups^9,10 are: update to 1 April 2000; more specific consideration of uranium and plutonium arisings; use of updated discharge and dose forecast models in light of RWMAC review; and some consideration of wider issues e.g. costs and social and political issues.

3.3 The form of this report

The way that subsequent sections of this report are laid out is as follows. Section 4 discusses the assembly and interpretation of data, including the various future scenarios considered. Sections 5 and 6 then go on to discuss the solid material arisings for these various scenarios and their material treatment, storage and downstream handling implications. Section 7 talks of discharges and the radiation doses associated with them. Social and political issues and the costs of materials handling are considered in sections 8 and 9. Section 10 makes some concluding points. A resume of the study and its main outcomes is given in the Executive Summary at the beginning of the report.