Nuclear Power and Waste Management

The widespread concerns about climate change have led over recent years to increased interest in expanding or introducing nuclear power in many countries.
At the end of 2010, around 60 countries had contacted the IAEA about their nuclear plans. The major industrial accident at the Fukushima plant in Japan in March 2011 then led most nations to review their nuclear programmes. A few (Germany, Switzerland and Italy) concluded that nuclear risks were so high that the technology should not be used. Others, however, recognized that although the earthquake and tsunami were major natural disasters resulting in over 20 thousand deaths and huge financial losses, no loss of life resulted from radiation from the destroyed nuclear plants.

For these countries, the urgent need for increased energy supplies and the unabated concerns about CO2 emissions led to confirmation of their nuclear planning. Nuclear expansion will therefore continue in countries such as China, Russia, India, Korea, the UK, Finland, Brazil and the USA. Even more striking are the plans for new nuclear programmes in some regions: the UAE has started building the first of 8 power plants; Saudi Arabia has announced plans for 16 power plants.

In the context of the work of the Arius Association, a crucial point is that these new and expanding nuclear programmes fully realise the absolute necessity of developing a credible waste management strategy as a pre-requisite for public acceptance of nuclear power. For new nuclear programmes in particular, there are two options for tackling the most challenging waste management task, deep disposal of spent fuel or high-level radioactive wastes. These are implementing a national repository or else using a facility shared with other nations. Prudent new nuclear programmes will keep both options open in a so-called “dual track” approach. A recent example of a national policy adopting this approach is that of the UAE.

As will be described elsewhere on this site, the developments described have led to an expansion in the activities of Arius.
 
 

Current Arius Status

Arius is currently active in three regions of the world, as well as maintaining close working links with international organisations such as the IAEA and the EC.

  • We are working with various European countries to establish a European Repository Development Organisation (ERDO) that will develop shared geological disposal solutions for smaller EU nuclear power programmes.

  • We are engaged in an evaluation programme to consider whether similar, regional shared solutions would be appropriate for and of interest to emerging nuclear power programmes in the Arabian Gulf region and SE Asia.

These two initiatives are described below, along with our work on development of global multinational approaches to the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle.
 
 

Restructuring of Arius

At the 2010 Assembly of Members, various options for future Arius functioning were discussed. A sustainable future was recognised to be feasible only if further sources of funding could be identified to replace the European funds now exclusively applied to the ERDO-WG programme. The option which has been implemented was to continue as an Association under new rules involving the following actions:

  • Amend Arius Constitution
  • Project work must be supported by third parties rather than Organisational Members
  • Organisational Members pay only a nominal fee from 2011
  • Seek additional, primarily non-EU Members

The transition has gone smoothly. Arius has Organisational and Individual Members and currently project funding from sources including:

  • The ERDO-WG for which Arius provides the secretariat
  • The Sloan and Hewlett Foundations, as described above
  • From a subcontract exploring the potential for a regional option to be included as part of the UAE disposal strategy.

A new simplified Constitution was drafted, circulated to Members and approved by voting Members. The new Constitution replaces the President, who was elected from the Organisation Members, with a freely electable President and Vice-President who together take over the roles originally assigned to the Executive Director and Programme Director. By circular resolution Charles McCombie and Neil Chapman were elected to fill the new roles and Christine Boutellier was confirmed as Secretary and Treasurer of the newly constituted Arius Association.

Arius is very grateful to the past Presidents, Piero Risoluti of ENEA and Hans Codee of COVRA, who both not only made it possible for Arius to be represented by a national Organisation but also showed great personal commitment to the goals of the Association.
 
 

EUROPE: The ERDO Working Group

The ERDO (European Repository Development Organisation) Working Group that emerged from the SAPIERR projects financed by the European Commission is now up and running. The progress is being recorded on a dedicated website http://www.erdo-wg.eu. A brief summary of the development and status of the ERDO-WG is given below.
 
 

ERDO – the origins

The EC SAPIERR projects resulted in a proposal for a staged, adaptive implementation strategy for a European Repository Development Organisation (ERDO). The first step in the strategy was the establishment of a Working Group (ERDO-WG) of interested countries to carry out pre-cursor work to enable a consensus model to be agreed for a ERDO, using the SAPIERR findings as a starting point. This model will be presented to potentially interested countries, so that they can decide whether and when to set up the ERDO and whether they wish to be part of it. The ERDO-WG started work at the beginning of 2009. Arius provides the WG secretariat and the administration is provided by COVRA, the Netherlands radioactive waste management agency.

The principal objective of the group’s work is to provide a forum for potential participating countries in Europe to discuss and agree the basis upon which an ERDO could be formed. At that stage, the participant countries will decide whether to go ahead and establish the ERDO and, if so, with what national membership. The ERDO will be established, providing that a sufficient number of partner nations agree to the final proposals; it will operate as a sister organization to waste agencies that have opted for a purely national repository program (e.g. France, Sweden, Finland, Germany).

By combining their resources in this way, the ERDO partners demonstrate to other regions of the world the feasibility of enhancing safety and security while increasing the economic attractiveness of nuclear power, even for small countries.
 
 

ERDO-WG Progress to date

Positive progress has been. Four meetings have been held and the next is planned:

  • Brussels January 2009 (EC support; related to SAPIERR)
  • Prague September 2009 (hosted by RAWRA)
  • Vlissingen January 2010 (hosted by COVRA)
  • Bratislava May 2010 (hosted by Decom)
  • Vienna October 2010 (hosted by the Austrian Authorities)
  • Vlissingen March 2011 (hosted by COVRA)
  • Rome September 2011 (to be hosted by ENEA)

Discussion documents worked on to date have been devoted to the following topics:

  • Siting strategies for repositories
  • Size and form of Waste Management Organisations (WMO)
  • Outreach activities
  • ERDO Operating Guidelines
  • ERDO Model Constitution
  • A proposal that national governments move on to found an official ERDO based on the preparations of the Working Group
 
 

An ERDO model for the Arabian Gulf and SE Asian regions ?

Arius has received grants from two charitable foundations in the USA to enable the Association to extend the concept of regional, multinational cooperation to other parts of the world. Beginning with a European initiative was the simplest approach, since an overarching organizational structure (the EU) already exists. Arius has explored the feasibility of adapting and applying the ERDO model to other global regions and concluded that, of various possible areas worldwide, the regions that may show the most immediate promise and potential interest are the Arabian Gulf region and South-East Asia.

This assessment is based principally on the advanced state of development of new nuclear infrastructure, the presence of active national nuclear power development programs and the geographical potential for sharing waste management solutions. The overall aim of this scoping project will be to assess the interest within this region of working towards Regional Repository Development Organizations (RDOs) similar to the European ERDO.

Funding to explore these regional waste management possibilities has kindly been granted by:

  • The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Menlo Park, USA
  • The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, New York, USA

A scoping study was completed in early 2011 and funding for a further two year project has been awarded in mid-2011 by both Foundations.

Other possible regional groupings that Arius may consider exploring in the future could include Central and South America, and Africa.
 
 

Interactions with International Organisations

Contacts have been continued with the IAEA. Arius has been involved in preparing the numerous IAEA documents on the topic of regional storage and disposal.

Constructive discussions have been held with the current Chair of EDRAM (the group of major geological disposal programmes, including the USA). A paper will be presented at the 2011 ICEm Conference stressing the complementarity of national and multinational programmes, rather than having national and multinational programmes presented as competitors.

Arius has also been directly in US based studies on the Future of Nuclear Power – with a main focus of our contribution being to remind the nuclear community of the importance of considering the back-end of the fuel cycle right from the start of any nuclear planning.