DEV. GUIDELINES MANG. NPP WASTE

At the time of this project, the guidelines and rules used in the field of radioactive waste management in the Russian Federation essentially concerned the collection and temporary storage of the waste at the place of waste generation. The treatment/conditioning, transportation and final disposal of radioactive waste and also the dismantling of shut down plants were mostly not addressed. In addition, the recommendations of international organisations active in the field of radioactive waste management, like IAEA, had generally been ignored.

This situation was beginning to change, and the Russian Organisations involved in Radioactive Waste Management were starting to give due consideration to the long term management of radioactive waste. At the governmental level, the role and responsibilities in the management of radioactive waste had been redefined and new laws concerning the use of atomic energy and the management of radioactive waste were in the final stage of approval. A Federal Action Program in the field of radioactive waste and spent nuclear materials had also been established for the period 1995-2005.
Important sources of Radioactive Waste in Russia were the Nuclear Power Plants. As for other radioactive waste, the former practice for NPP Waste Management was essentially limited to the temporary storage of the raw waste in storage facilities located at the NPP sites without much concern for the future. Several plans for waste treatment/conditioning had been proposed and in some cases had been implemented at particular NPP's, but this was essentially done at local level, without national coordination and without well-defined long term objectives.

In the 1993 TACIS Nuclear Safety programme, it was decided to include a project (see R4.07/93 "Development of guidelines for management of NPP Radwaste in Russia" – Contract 24307) to provide the Russian organisations responsible for the management of radioactive waste with appropriate practical guidelines which should facilitate the implementation of coherent and integrated practices in all the stages of the NPP waste management.

The aim of the present contract was to engage an independent consultant to prepare the Terms of Reference for contracting the project R4.07/93.

The objective of the contract was to prepare the technical Terms of Reference (ToR) required for contracting of the project R4.07/93 "Development of guidelines for management of NPP Radwaste in Russia".

The work required from the Consultant included:

• Collection of the detailed project information and agreement with the Russian project Beneficiaries and partners;
• Write the Terms of Reference, considering the guidelines given below.

Considering the fact that very important quantities of radioactive waste were stored in non-conditioned form at the different power plants in Russia, creating an unsafe and difficult to control situation, the guidelines to be proposed should essentially concern the first steps of the waste management, i.e. the collection, sorting, (pre-)treatment, conditioning, packaging and interim storage. The guidelines should allow the Russian responsible organisations to define and to implement in a relatively short delay the structures, facilities and equipment necessary to transform the large quantities of raw waste accumulated at the NPP's into limited quantities of well-defined, conditioned waste packages suitable for long term storage and for final disposal. Guidelines were also to be established for the dismantling of definitively shut-down NPP's and for the management of the resulting waste.
For both the operational waste and the decommissioning waste, the main problems arose from the important quantities of low and intermediate level waste for which solutions were urgently required. The relatively low volumes of high level waste and of spent fuel were not to be considered in the project.

In the management of radioactive waste, one of the fundamental principles is the minimization of the waste quantities, in the first instance at the source, and also in all the successive steps of the management scheme. Therefore the guidelines were also expected to address, with particular emphasis, the following issues:

• definition of exemption levels;
• sorting and recycling;
• decontamination techniques;
• low level activity measurement techniques;
• volume reduction in the treatment and conditioning steps.

The developed guidelines were to be based on western experience and practice. They were to be in accordance with the recommendations of the recognized international organizations dealing with radioactive waste management, taking into account the particular Russian situation with regard to waste quantities and characteristics, specificity of each production site and existing or planned waste treatment facilities. They were also to take account of the Russian regulatory structure and of the new laws regarding radioactive waste which are now being implemented.

The contract was signed in June 1995 and was completed by October the same year. The Terms of Reference ("Development of Guidelines for the Management of NPP Radwaste in the Russian Federation") were completed. The tender procedure (Tender ref: NUCRUS 93407) was launched and the evaluation of the bids took place in September 1996. The project R4.07/93 was successfully contracted in December 1996 (see Contract 24307).