The UK’s report has been delivered at the 8th Review Meeting of the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna.
Mark Foy, the Chief Executive and Chief Nuclear Inspector of the Office for Nuclear Regulation, presented the piece of work alongside Jo Nettleton, Chief Regulator at the Environment Agency and Clive Nixon, Group Chief Nuclear Strategy Officer, at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
The UK delegation highlighted and proposed current and future decommissioning priorities for the country, which include the:
- Continued remediation at Sellafield, specifically retrievals of radioactive waste inventory from high hazard legacy ponds and silos;
- Implementation of the strategy for safely managing Magnox fuel not reprocessed at Sellafield;
- Implementation and management of site-specific strategies for decommissioning of Magnox reactor sites; and,
- Maintaining progress with voluntary siting for a Geological Disposal Facility.
Several areas of good practice were highlighted in the UK’s presentation including ONR’s industry-wide themed inspections, the UK’s pro-innovation approach to regulating artificial intelligence and the establishment of both the Nuclear Skills Executive Council and Nuclear Skills Taskforce to address future skills and capability needs across the sector.
The use of robotics at Dounreay, ONR’s openness and transparency policy, deployment of divers in the Pile Fuel Storage Pond, the new UK-wide policy framework for managing radioactive substances and nuclear decommissioning, and ONR’s delicensing of the Imperial College Reactor Centre were also noted as UK areas of good performance.
The Joint Convention has been hosted by the IAEA since 2001 and seeks to achieve and maintain a high level of worldwide safety in spent fuel and radioactive waste management.
At each review meeting, national reports are delivered setting out compliance with the obligations of the Joint Convention, before discussion and debate as part of a peer review process.
An overall summary report will be published by the IAEA at the end of the convention.