Radioactive waste management involves dealing safely with the waste from processes involving radioactivity. This waste comes from a number of sources, ranging from paper towels used in hospitals, to nitric acid solution formed from reprocessing nuclear fuel.
Most radioactive waste is currently stored safely on major sites under licence from the Health and Safety Executive's Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, and is subject to strict regulatory control.
As radioactive waste management is a devolved matter the devolved administrations for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have responsibility for developing their own policies. For more information on policies in those devolved administrations, see the following links:
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority was established under the Energy Act 2004 and is responsible for the decommissioning and clean-up of the civil public sector nuclear sites. It is sponsored by the DECC and for some aspects of its functions in Scotland it is responsible to Scottish Ministers.
Radioactive waste categories
Solid radioactive waste is divided into three categories according to its radioactivity content and the heat it produces, as:
- High level waste (HLW) is waste in which the temperature may rise significantly as a result of its radioactivity, so this factor has to be taken into account in the design of storage or disposal facilities.
- Intermediate level waste (ILW) has lower levels of radioactivity than HLW and does not generate sufficient heat for this to be taken into account in the design of storage or disposal facilities.
- Low level waste (LLW) has a much lower potential hazard than other categories. LLW makes up more than 90 per cent of the UK’s radioactive waste legacy by volume but contains less than 0.1 percent of the total radioactivity.
The 2010 Radioactive Waste Inventory was published on 22 March 2011. The inventory describes the stocks of radioactive waste and radioactive materials held in the UK at 1 April 2010. It also predicts wastes and materials that could arise from the operation and decommissioning of current facilities in the future.