Radioactive waste management in the nuclear sector
Brussels, 27 September 2022: nucleareurope has today published a series of background papers on radioactive waste management and decommissioning activities. These documents summarise how radioactive waste is dealt with by the sector and provide further indepth information to complement our existing toolkit.
“Nuclear plays a key role in ensuring security of energy supplies and helping to achieve decarbonisation targets” states Yves Desbazeille, nucleareurope Director General. “At the same time, we must recognise that radioactive waste and how it is managed is often raised in discussions with stakeholders.”
Whilst the volume of radioactive material generated is fairly low compared to that of other industries, the nuclear industry has a responsibility to ensure that this material is handled appropriately to protect both people and the environment. Indeed, radioactive waste is a by-product from nuclear fuel manufacturing, operation of nuclear reactors, nuclear fuel processing plants, hospitals, industry, agriculture, and research facilities.
The nuclear sector already applies a circular economy approach in order to reduce the volumes of waste generated, to reuse and recycle as much as possible and to correctly manage any residual waste, as highlighted in our waste toolkit. These four papers aim to provide more detailed background information on the following:
- Decommissioning of nuclear power plants.
- Clearance of materials.
- Radioactive waste and spent fuel.
- Deep Geological Repositories.
The full toolkit can be found here
About us: nucleareurope is the Brussels-based trade association for the nuclear energy industry in Europe. Our membership is currently composed of 15 national nuclear associations and 6 corporate members. As a result, we represent nearly 3,000 European companies working in the industry which support around 1,100,000 jobs.
For more information, please contact Jessica Johnson: jessica.johnson@foratom.org
