Constraints to Implementing Decommissioning and Environmental Remediation in IAEA Member States MAIN OUTCOMES

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1 55 th IAEA General Conference Side Event organised by the Waste Technology Section Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology IAEA Department of Nuclear Energy Constraints to Implementing Decommissioning and Environmental Remediation in IAEA Member States 21 September 2011 MAIN OUTCOMES Background The aim of the event was to gain a better understanding of why progress with decommissioning and environmental remediation projects in many countries is slow or negligible and to explore options for improvement. The programme of the event is included in Appendix 1. Overall Summary It is evident from the discussion that the constraints to implementation of decommissioning and environmental remediation projects are multifaceted, covering issues in the political, legal, technical, financial and transport spheres. It was common ground among the speakers (see Appendix 2) that the most fundamental requirements for proceeding with decommissioning and remediation projects were: an adequate legal and regulatory framework, including safety criteria for the management of materials and remediation or release of sites; an adequate funding scheme; access to appropriate technologies; and availability of trained specialist personnel. The relative importance of these issues, in terms of being significant constraints to moving forward with national programmes, is less clear, e.g. staffing costs for the routine upkeep of disused facilities are anyway very high even if no active decommissioning or remediation work is taking place. It is therefore possible that available funds could be used more efficiently. In many countries funding is provided directly or indirectly from national budgets, and therefore decommissioning and remediation may need to compete with other national priorities to secure funding. Because of this, as well as for reasons relating to public sensitivity about the future use of nuclear sites, strong government commitment is crucial to making progress. An important precondition for a national decommissioning or remediation programme is the establishment of a national policy and an appropriate legal and institutional infrastructure for its implemenation, including institutional arrangements for liability and project management and for management of the residual waste. In the case of State-owned liabilities, experience suggests that having a single State Agency responsible for managing the restoration programme (such as the Department of Energy in the US and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority in the UK) can be helpful in ensuring that scarce national resources are used in the most efficient way. 1

2 The availability of waste disposal routes is often a very significant constraint to moving ahead with decommissioning, and sometimes also with remediation programmes. In addressing this issue, it is important also to develop integrated national approaches to waste management, e.g. to ensure that the management of waste at national level, including the development of waste disposal facilities, is properly planned, taking account of the needs of waste producers and regulatory authorities. A related issue concerns the transport of radioactive materials, which may be extremely expensive and often leads to public concern, and therefore requires thoughtful interaction with affected communities on transport routes and with waste transporters. Although there is generally a preference for using proven and non-sophisticated technologies in decommissioning and remediation activities, more advanced techniques may sometimes be necessary, e.g. for work undertaken in very hazardous environments, and this can be a constraint to progress in certain programmes. A related issue is that relevant expertise tends to be concentrated in industrial organisations working in a small number of countries - those having the most active programmes. Other countries may wish to develop similar expertise, e.g. by retraining personnel previously involved in plant operation, and a major task for the international organisations is therefore to assist with this transfer of knowledge. It is noteworthy that decommissioning and remediation projects in certain countries have sometimes been possible only as a result of external assistance. In light of this, and given the vast amounts of waste still remaining from former uranium mining activities, it was postulated that new institutional arrangements, encompassing a multi-donor framework, may be needed to secure meaningful progress in certain countries. Conclusions Much remains to be done in terms of cleaning up the legacies from the early development of nuclear energy, including the dismantling of redundant research facilities, fuel cycle facilities, research reactors and power plants. Long-term solutions often still need to be found for management of the resulting waste, including development of disposal facilities that meet public acceptance requirements. Some technologically advanced countries have begun seriously to deal with these legacies, and therefore have built up appropriate technical resources, but many countries still face very significant challenges. Several speakers supported a suggestion by the UK Ambassador that additional efforts be made to establish mechanisms to study current international best practices in a systematic way, perhaps through the formation of a working group to analyse and report on these issues. There was general agreement that the Agency should explore with key Member States and international organisations what further steps should be taken to establish such a mechanism. The Agency was encouraged to continue its activities aimed at enhancing knowledge transfer between programmes. 2

3 APPENDIX 1 PROGRAMME Session Chair: Scientific Secretaries: Tero Varjoranta, Director, Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology (NEFW), IAEA Department of Nuclear Energy Horst Monken Fernandes and Patrick O Sullivan IAEA Waste Technology Section 13:10 13:15 Welcome and Introduction to the Side Event Tero Varjoranta, Director, NEFW Ambassador Simon Smith, Resident Representative of United Kingdom to the IAEA 13:15 13:30 Statements by Representatives of the IAEA Alexander Bychkov, Deputy Director General Head of the Department of Nuclear Energy Kwaku Aning, Deputy Director General, Head of the Department of Technical Cooperation Pil-Soo Hahn, Director, Division of Radiation, Transport and Waste Safety, Department of Nuclear Safety and Security 13:30 13:45 Special Presentation on Aftermath of Fukushima Nuclear Accident Tadashi Inoue, Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI), Japan 13:45 14:20 Statements by Representatives of Member States Peter Lyons, Office of Nuclear Energy, US Department of Energy Evgeny Kudryavtsev, Rosatom, Russian Federation Brian Burnett, UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority Balthasar Lindauer, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Timur Zhantikin, Kazakhstan Atomic Energy Committee Ynte Stockmann, European Commission 14:20 14:50 Panel-led Discussion 14:50 15:00 Closing Remarks: Tero Varjoranta, Director, NEFW 3

4 APPENDIX 2 SUMMARY OF STATEMENTS BY PANELLISTS His Excellency Simon Smith, UK Permanent Representative to the IAEA Opening the meeting, Ambassador Smith said the nuclear energy had a very good record in the United Kingdom and it was of the utmost importance that the resulting high level of public confidence in the industry be maintained if its future were to be safeguarded. Public confidence could not be taken for granted and the nuclear industry needed to work continuously to improve its structures and working arrangements. In light of the above, he saw significant benefit in any mechanisms that might be established to study best international practice as regards decommissioning and environmental remediation. He said the United Kingdom was supportive of any initiative the Agency might take in this direction. Alexander Bychkov, IAEA Deputy Director General for Nuclear Energy Mr Bychkov said that an important prerequisite in all countries for decommissioning and remediation is the establishment of an appropriate national infrastructure, including a legal and regulatory framework, financing arrangements and systems for the management of spent fuel and radioactive waste. Putting in place an appropriate national infrastructure is an important but not a sufficient condition for success: the implementation of decommissioning and environmental remediation requires that appropriate technical and human resources are also available. He said the Agency had established a number of waste management networks, including the International Decommissioning Network and Environet, which aim to promote capacity building in Member States by encouraging the transfer of information between professionals working in these fields and by facilitating skills development through training activities, including specialised courses, workshops and secondments. The activities undertaken by the networks were already achieving results, particularly at the level of individuals. The next important hurdle is to facilitate better collaboration at the level of organisations, including among industrial companies interested in working in these fields, and to create an environment that more easily allows technology and expertise developed in one country to be applied in others. Kwaku Aning, IAEA Deputy Director General for Technical Cooperation Mr Aning said the increase in the number of Member States seeking to expand their application of nuclear technology and to introduce nuclear power has made the need to address legacy sites and decommission nuclear installations that have ended their life-cycle even more pressing. He emphasised that lessons from past experience have to be well learned, and incorporated into any plans for the future. Environmental issues and decommissioning must be considered from the very onset of a project. The availability of funds for such activities has to be ensured. In the case of nuclear power, the countries should always have a national decommissioning and environmental remediation policy and strategies in place. He suggested that, if the legacies from the past cannot be resolved in a satisfactory manner, there will be no future for nuclear energy. In addition, remediating contaminated sites and dismantling and decontaminating disused facilities can be seen as moral obligations to this and to future generations. He said that a key success factor in addressing these long-standing challenges will be the degree to innovative ways and mechanisms to address both decommissioning and environmental remediation 4

5 can be found, and looked forward to further discussions on how to expedite and move remediation and decommissioning ahead. Pil-Soo Hahn, IAEA Director for Radiation, Transport and Waste Safety Mr Hahn said that many countries have sites which remain as legacies to be managed after the initial phases of nuclear technology development, for example, sites where uranium was produced and sites that had facilities for R&D and experimentation. Restoration of these legacy sites includes activities such as facility decommissioning, remediation of contaminated lands and development of waste management-related facilities. Restoration also requires activities to reduce existing radiation hazards until long-term solutions can be implemented. A balanced and proportionate approach to risk management was necessary to manage adequately the legacy sites. Social, cultural and economic factors influence management decisions. Increasingly, the engagement of stakeholders is also seen as an integral part of the process for legacy site management. He said that many legacy sites were created at a time when regulatory supervision of operations was weak or absent. Regulatory supervision is a critical factor for radiation and nuclear safety during operations at nuclear sites. To date, little has been done internationally to enhance regulatory supervision of legacy sites, though recently the Agency had taken steps to address this issue through the establishment of the international working forum for the regulatory supervision of legacy contaminated sites (RSLS). The forum was launched in October 2010 in response to the General Conference resolutions in 2009 and Tadashi Inoue, CRIEPI, Japan Mr Inoue gave a presentation on current plans for the remediation of the contaminated area surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Much of this activity is highly specific to the situation local to Fukushima; considerations of general interest to constraining factors for global decommissioning and remediation included: The area requiring remediation will be determined by reference to an acceptable level of dose to a representative individual living in the remediated area; this dose level would be determined in consultation with local communities and was expected to be in the range 5-10 msv/year. In the specific case of farmland, residual activity concentrations in soil will be reduced to less than 5000 Bq/kg (based on an assumed transfer factor to rice grown in that soil). The overall remediation plan will be developed in consultation with local communities; the plan will take account of a catalogue of remediation technologies which is currently under development A significant constraint is the need to locate storage areas for the huge quantities of contaminated soil that will be classified as radioactive waste. Peter Lyons, Office of Nuclear Energy, US Department of Energy Mr Lyons noted that the Department of Energy managed several large remediation programmes at legacy sites, including at Savannah River, Richland, Idaho Falls and Oak Ridge. Annual expenditure normally ran to $5-6 billion, although this was boosted last year by additional resources from the economic stimulus funding programme. An important development in recent years has been the use of on-site entombment of disused nuclear and chemical facilities, e.g. at Hanford and Savannah River. The US has strongly supported the IDN since its inception, and sees this as providing an important mechanism for facilitating the sharing of experience between countries and for delivery of training. In 5

6 particular, training opportunities were limited and a broad and well-trained population was needed for a successful decommissioning programme. He noted several issues that could constrain a decommissioning programme, including lack of funding, inadequate legal and regulatory infrastructure and non-availability of specialist resources. Analysis was needed to understand the relative importance of these, especially as to whether lack of funding or of an appropriate infrastructure was generally the more fundamental constraint. The US supported the current initiative by IAEA to seek to encourage more systematic approaches to dealing with global decommissioning issues. Evgeny Kudryavtsev, Rosatom, Russian Federation Mr Kudryavtsev explained that Rosatom s decommissioning system comprised the following main elements: financing system, legal basis, an information database relating to the shutdown installations, and test and demonstration centres devoted to developing competencies and technologies for decommissioning of different categories of facility (uranium/graphite reactors, VVERs, fuel cycle facilities, material test reactors etc.). He said that preparatory work for decommissioning 151 facilities had started in 2010; work on a further 48 would begin by 2015 and on a further 20 by Mr Kudryavtsev said the main barriers to Rosatom s decommissioning activities were: Shared infrastructure with facilities still in operation Lack of finance High cost of transport and storage of radioactive waste Lack of disposal facilities for long-lived waste Delays in removal of nuclear materials and/or spent fuel to centralised storage or reprocessing Lack of clear legal and financial basis for large scale decommissioning projects Brian Burnett, UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority Mr Burnett said the organisations and arrangements put in place to own, regulate and deliver any nuclear decommissioning programme were critical success factors in performing the programme of work. In countries such as the UK, this involves a division of responsibility between the facility owners and the organisations responsible for implementing the decommissioning programme, though other countries combine these functions within the owner organisation. He noted that considerable expenditures were incurred in shutdown plants which are awaiting active decommissioning, and suggested that these funds could be used much more efficiently if project work was prioritised rather than undertaken in several plants simultaneously. The selection of lead projects also allowed the development of methodologies and best practice from both technical and project management perspectives and facilitated the development of workforce skills through the subcontract supply chain. He saw a tendency in the decommissioning industry to utilise oversophisticated approaches in situations where the use of simple proven technologies would suffice. He also mentioned that the availability of waste routes was very important in order for decommissioning to proceed; in this regard better alignment of the needs of waste producers and waste disposal organisations would be highly advantageous. 6

7 Balthasar Lindauer, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Mr Lindauer said the EBRD s experience suggested that the main constraints to implementing decommissioning projects were: a lack of time to undertake adequate planning, including the legal basis for decommissioning, the development of decommissioning strategies and the formulation of detailed plans and schedules in principle planning for decommissioning should take place from the outset of a project; a lack of qualified people; sub-optimal organisational arrangements, e.g. a lack of separation of responsibility for operation from responsibility for decommissioning and waste management; and lack of integration of waste management and decommissioning strategies; He noted that there were sometimes significant overlaps between decommissioning and remediation projects, e.g. abandoned fuel storage facilities with open ponds funding provided to countries from the international funding agencies, for decommissioning projects, had traditionally been in the form of grant aid, though loan financing was now also possible in principle. Countries availing of these facilities would need to implement financing arrangement, e.g. related through electricity tariffs. Timur Zhantikin, Kazakhstan Atomic Energy Commission Mr Zhantikin said that issues that could have an important impact on decommissioning included: a lack of financial and human resources (this was a significant constraint on decommissioning the BN-350 fast reactor which had been shut down in 1999); incomplete knowledge about the decommissioned facility (a knowledge management system should be developed for Kazakhstan s research reactors which are still in operation); and funding (new nuclear projects should be required to have arrangements cover decommissioning costs, e.g. through insurance arrangements, before a licence was granted). The availability of international assistance was an important factor. He saw a need for international standards on what constituted adequate decontamination of radioactively contaminated sites, e.g. uranium legacy sites and former weapons test sites and their surroundings. The latter were particularly important in Kazakhstan due to the huge areas involved (in the order of square kilometres) and the difficulty in gaining public acceptance for a particular decontamination standard, e.g. public requirements for higher levels of decontamination are leading to significant increases in cost. Kazakhstan supported the establishment of a working group that could, for example, examine different aspects of the problems constraining cleanup projects and develop practical recommendations on criteria for remediation and thus help allay public concerns about remediation activities and about the safety of decommissioning of nuclear installations. 7

8 Ynte Stockmann, European Commission Mr Stockmann noted that the following programmes use for providing Commission support relating to decommissioning and remediation to countries outside the European Union: Instrument for Nuclear Safety Cooperation (INSC) which had a budget of 524 M ( ) and was devoted to the promotion of a high level of nuclear safety, radiation protection and the application of effective safeguards in third countries. A significant proportion of the budget was being spent in project in the former Soviet Union, including in Central Asian countries. Nuclear Safety Account, administered by EBRD to support safety upgrading of facilities in East and Central Europe. Chernobyl Support Fund, administered by EBRD to support the cleanup of Chernobyl. INSC funds for the next cycle ( ) are expected to be in the order of 560 M. Current expectations are that the main priority areas for funding will be: - Sunken objects in the Artic Sea (including submarines, reactors, and solid and liquid waste) - Remediation of uranium mining and processing sites in Central Asia, i.e. to support a regional initiative launched by the UNDP and supported by the IAEA, OSCE, World Bank, EBRD and NATO. He noted that a new political framework was needed to start actual remediation activities. - Major decommissioning exercises in the EU neighbourhood, in anticipation of earlier shutdown of nuclear power plants due to post-fukushima stress tests. Mr Stockmann said that, although significant progress on improving nuclear safety and in managing complex regional radioactive waste projects had been achieved during the past 20 years, there was still much to be done particularly in the domain of remediation of former uranium mining sites. In order to face that challenge, there was a need for a new political framework (preferably involving multiple donors) to help start remediation activities in certain countries. New institutional arrangements might add value to the implementation of these projects. Chair s Closing Remarks - Tero Varjoranta, IAEA Director for Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology Mr Varjoranta said that the constraints to implementation of decommissioning and environmental remediation projects were multifaceted, covering issues in political, legal, technical, financial and transport spheres. Relevant expertise is concentrated in a small number of countries, being those States with active programmes, and therefore networking arrangements to ensure the transfer of knowledge will be very important in the future. He noted that several countries supported a suggestion by the UK Ambassador that additional efforts should be made to establish mechanisms to study current best practices in a systematic way, perhaps through the formation of a working group to analyse and report on these issues. A key conclusion of the discussion was that the Agency should explore what further steps should be taken to establish such a mechanism. 8