United States

Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board

Experience Gained From Programs 

to Manage High-Level Radioactive 

Waste and Spent Nuclear Fuel in the 

United States and Other Countries

A Report to Congress

and the Secretary of Energy

April 2011

U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board

Experience Gained From Programs to Manage 

High-Level Radioactive Waste and Spent Nuclear Fuel 

in the United States and Other Countries

April 2011

U.S. Nuclear Waste 

Technical Review Board

B. John Garrick, Ph.D., P.E.; Chairman

Consultant

Laguna Beach, California

Mark D. Abkowitz, Ph.D.

Vanderbilt University

Nashville, Tennessee

Thure E. Cerling, Ph.D.

University of Utah

Salt Lake City, Utah 

George M. Hornberger, Ph.D.

Vanderbilt University 

Nashville, Tennessee

Ronald M. Latanision, Ph.D.

Exponent Corporation

Cambridge, Massachusetts

William M. Murphy, Ph.D.

California State University

Chico, California

William Howard Arnold, Ph.D., P.E.

Consultant

Macatawa, Michigan

David J. Duquette, Ph.D.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Troy, New York

Andrew C. Kadak, Ph.D.

Exponent Corporation

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Ali Mosleh, Ph.D.

University of Maryland

College Park, Maryland

Henry Petroski, Ph.D., P.E.

Duke University

Durham, North Carolina

v

vii

Contents

Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Process Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Public trust and confidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Decision-making strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Remaining questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Major summary points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Development, Assessment, and Adoption of 

Waste-Management Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Major summary points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Institutional Arrangements 

for Executing Waste-Management Programs . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Organizations.......................................... 17

Finances.............................................. 20

Major summary points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

The Technical Basis for Developing Disposal Concepts 

and Supporting a Safety Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Salt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Crystalline Rock......................................... 25

Clay................................................. 26

Unsaturated volcanic tuff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Major summary points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
viii

Substance and Adoption of Health and Safety Standards 

and Regulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Substance of the regulations ................................ 31

Adoption of regulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Major summary points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Strategies for Identifying Candidate Sites for a DeepMined Geologic Repository . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Technical filter.......................................... 35

Nontechnical filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Interdependence of the filters................................ 40

Sequencing............................................ 43

Major summary points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Site Selection for a Deep-Mined Geologic Repository . . 47

The implementer’s decision................................. 47

Political ratification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Major summary points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Approval to Construct a 

Deep-Mined Geologic Repository . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Finland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

United Kingdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Major summary points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
ix

Acknowledgments

The Board wishes to express its appreciation to the following individuals for the help and 

advice they provided in the preparation of the report.

Technical Reviewers

Enrique Biurrun: German Service Company for the Construction and Operation 

of Waste Repositories (DBE)

John Mathieson: Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (United Kingdom)

Claudio Pescatore: Nuclear Energy Agency, Organization for Economic 

Cooperation and Development

Olof Söderberg: Consultant

Gerald Ouzounian: National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management (France)

Any errors that remain are the responsibility of the Board.

Credits for Cover Photographs (from back to front, left to right)

Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Corporation: CLAB

U.S. Department of Energy: Aerial view of Yucca Mountain

French National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management: Underground Research 

Laboratory at Bure

Posiva Oy (Finland): Waste package

U.S. Department of Energy: Exploratory Studies Facility at Yucca Mountain

xi

Executive Summary

T

his report explores how 13 nations are carrying out efforts to find a permanent solution for isolating and containing high-level radioactive waste (HLW) and spent 

nuclear fuel (SNF) generated within their borders. Many forces shape how those 

efforts are designed and implemented. Some of the forces are technical, including choices 

made about what reactor technology to adopt and about what nuclear fuel cycle to pursue.

Others are social and political in nature, including how concerns about intergenerational 

equity should be addressed and what pace should be followed in implementing a long-term 

management option. Importantly, the interdependencies, both subtle and overt, between 

the technical, social, and political forces are inescapable. Because of those interdependencies, what characterizes the national programs most notably is their variety.

This report attempts to detail that variety. It builds on the information contained in the 

U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board’s (NWTRB) Survey of National Programs for 

Managing High-Level Radioactive Waste and Spent Nuclear Fuel (NWTRB 2009).

Compared with the earlier document, however, this report is more descriptive and considers the history of national programs.

Process Considerations

All national programs keenly recognize today that the long-term management of radioactive waste is a complicated socio-technical problem, with the social dimension playing an 

integral role in determining the shape and the ultimate success or failure of a project (see, 

for example, IAEA 2007). Decisions in all countries about the long-term management of 

HLW and SNF were initially made by a small group of technical experts, industry representatives, legislative leaders, and government officials. As nuclear power and nuclear 

waste (and their connection) arose in the mid-1970s as public issues, the need to broaden 

opportunities for public engagement became clear. Two patterns emerged. First, traditional 

participatory mechanisms typically were mated with those that were novel and more innovative, such as creating partnerships with potential repository host communities. Second, 

especially as difficulties arose, many national programs came to recognize the importance 

of the latter mechanisms and began to rely on them.
xii Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

Attention has been drawn during the last 20 years to one factor, variously referred to as 

social or institutional trust that appears to play an important, and perhaps even a decisive, 

role in determining the effectiveness and perhaps the legitimacy of public-engagement 

processes (Cvetkovich and Löfstadt 1999; IAEA 2007). Some national programs have come 

to merit considerable trust and confidence. Other national programs, such as the one in 

the United States implemented by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), either have lost 

public trust and confidence or seem never to have merited it at all (Carter 1987; Herzik and 

Mushkatel 1993; SEAB 1993).

In the last decade as well, attention has been drawn to what is presented as a new approach 

to making choices about the long-term management of HLW and SNF (NEA 2004a; NAS 

2003; NWMO 2005). Often referred to as “adaptive management” or “staged decisionmaking,” this approach is actually a refinement of the incremental decision strategy first 

detailed in the 1950s (Lindblom 1959). At the theoretical level, it is hard to find fault with a 

decision-making strategy that seems to promise so much. As a more practical matter, however, it is still unclear whether this strategy can be any more successful than earlier efforts 

in overcoming local and state opposition to specific siting decisions, whether it can be 

implemented, and even whether it should be implemented (Lee 1999).

Development, Assessment, and Adoption of WasteManagement Options

Over the years, national programs have explored a variety of options for the long-term 

management of HLW and SNF. These options have included the following (IRG 1978):

•	 Deep-mined geologic disposal

•	 Burying the waste in deep-sea sediments

•	 Placing the waste in deep-drilled boreholes

•	 Partitioning and transmuting the long-lived radioisotopes 

•	 Shooting the waste into space

•	 Storing the waste indefinitely either above or below ground in a retrievable fashion.

Almost universally, policy-makers have determined that disposal of HLW and SNF in a 

deep-mined geologic repository is the preferred option for protecting human health and 

the environment for thousands of years.

In some countries, such as the United States and Germany, that choice was never formally 

reconsidered. National waste-management programs in other countries, such as France 

and Canada, also initially chose the geologic disposal option but were compelled by public 

pressure to evaluate other options explicitly. Although 11 out of the 13 nations considered 

in this report are officially committed to developing deep-mined geologic repositories as 

the preferred option for the long-term management of their HLW and SNF, the pace of the 

development process varies considerably.
Executive Summary xiii

Institutional Arrangements for Executing WasteManagement Programs

Every national waste-management program must address two interrelated questions: 

Which organizations should be assigned the responsibility for executing which parts of the 

program, and how will the program be funded? The 13 countries have answered the questions in strikingly different ways.

At least two institutions are involved in executing national waste-management programs.

The implementer is responsible for developing a safety case, identifying and characterizing 

candidate sites, and designing, building, and operating the deep-mined geologic repository. The regulator determines whether the approach advanced by the implementer is 

acceptable. Very early on in some countries, such as the United States, the implementer 

and the regulator were the same organization. Now there is general agreement that the two 

institutions should be independent of each other, even if, as in Germany and Japan, they 

are housed within the same government bureaucracy (see, for example, NEA 2009).

In all 13 national waste-management programs, the regulator is a governmental organization. The current organizational form of the implementer, however, varies considerably 

across those countries. Some have opted to use a traditional government agency. In other 

countries, the implementer is a private corporation. The organizational form of the implementer in eight of the 13 the national programs examined in this report has remained the 

same. For the rest, significant changes often have occurred, typically away from government and towards hybrid or private organizational forms. For many of the significant 

shifts over time, the root cause appears to be a response to major programmatic challenges.

Both the variety and the evolutions of the implementers’ organizational forms seem to 

demand an inquiry into a question: Which form is best? A simple analysis that tries to 

associate particular forms with the completion of repository-development milestones produces no clear-cut conclusions: Of the four national programs furthest along, one has been 

implemented by a government agency (United States), one by a government-owned public 

service agency (France), and two by private corporations (Finland and Sweden). Advocates 

of particular forms have supported their choices mostly with impressionistic and unsystematic claims that have not been put to any objective test (Thomas 1993).

Two main approaches toward financing have been adopted by the 13 countries examined in 

this report. First, special funds have been set up in Canada, Finland, France, Spain, Sweden, 

Switzerland, and the United States to which waste producers or the consumers of nucleargenerated electricity contribute each year. Second, the expenses incurred by waste-management programs in China, Germany, and the United Kingdom are paid annually out of 

general government revenues. Although special funds have been established in Belgium, 

Japan, and the Republic of Korea, the expenses of their current waste-management programs 

are not covered by the funds but by general governmental revenues.

Technical Basis for Developing Disposal Concepts and

Supporting a Safety Case

In all countries, the implementer has the responsibility for designing a disposal concept 

that describes a repository system comprising natural and engineered barriers. In most 
xiv Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

countries, limitations imposed by the geology constrain which disposal concepts can be 

considered. The implementer typically ends up focusing on one particular geologic formation because of its prevalence or because other formations either are unsuitable technically 

or cannot be developed because of land-use conflicts. Once a host rock has been chosen, 

the implementer considers the hydrogeologic environment and determines what, if any, 

engineered barriers are appropriate as well as how the repository system as a whole will be 

designed. The implementer is then expected to advance its safety case, a set of arguments 

and analyses demonstrating why its proposed deep-minded geologic repository will isolate 

and contain HLW and SNF for as long as society demands. (Various standards and regulatory requirements reflect those demands.) There is broad scientific agreement that deepmined geologic repositories can be constructed in a wide variety of host-rock formations 

and hydrogeologic environments, including in salt, crystalline rock such as granite, different clay formations, and unsaturated volcanic tuff.

Substance and Adoption of Health and Safety Standards

and Regulations

Health and safety standards and regulations serve two purposes. They record society’s 

views about what constitutes acceptable risk, and they establish mechanisms for certifying 

that an implementer’s plan to develop a deep-mined geologic repository can, with some 

degree of confidence, satisfy those requirements. All of the 13 national waste-management 

programs have put in place at least a rudimentary regulatory regime.

Regulators determine what specific standards need to be met. Typically, they must decide 

on the length of the compliance period, the time over which the repository is expected to 

satisfy the protective standards. Further, they impose dose constraints or risk limits or 

some combination of the two. Increasingly national waste-management programs have 

converged on similar dose constraints and risk limits, at least for the first few thousands of 

years that a repository is expected to isolate and contain HLW and SNF. Dose constraints 

vary between 0.1 and 0.3 millisieverts per year. Risk limits vary between a probability of 

10-5 and 10-6 per year that death or serious health effects will arise over the course of the 

lifetime of an individual from exposure to radionuclides released from a repository.

Regulators originally chose compliance periods of several thousand years. The national 

programs in Belgium, France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States have 

selected compliance periods of at least 100,000 years and, in most of those cases, as much 

as 1,000,000 years. In the United Kingdom, the regulator requires the implementer to 

choose a compliance period and justify its choice.

Regulators decide how prescriptive their requirements should be. Those choices have produced considerable variation in how much direction the regulators provide. In some 

national programs, most notably the one in the United States, the rules are quite detailed, 

laying out specific requirements that the implementer must fulfill in order to get permission to construct or operate a deep-mined geologic repository. Finally, national programs 

differ in terms of how compliance with the standards is to be demonstrated and what the 

requirements for demonstration are.

National programs typically have put health and safety regulations into place after the 

implementer has begun to formulate its safety case or to identify candidate sites for a deepmined geologic repository but before specific sites have been chosen. Some interested and 
Executive Summary xv

affected parties contend that revising regulations after a final site already has been selected 

for a deep-mined geologic repository is inappropriate.

Strategies for Identifying Candidate Sites for a Deep-Mined

Geologic Repository

President Jimmy Carter’s Interagency Review Group on Nuclear Waste Management (IRG) 

observed that site-selection strategies for a deep-mined geologic repository necessarily 

involve passing candidates through what is, in effect, two distinctly different “filters.” On 

the one hand, detailed and quantitative technical requirements have to be met. On the 

other, sites could be disqualified because of considerations such as the “lack of social 

acceptance, high population density, or difficulty of access.” The two filters could be 

applied in any order. In the IRG’s view, at least, although the suite of sites eventually 

selected might be different, depending on the order in which the filters were applied, 

“equally suitable sites should emerge from either approach” (IRG: 1979, 80; 81). Over the 

years, the United States and other nations have initiated roughly two-dozen efforts to identify or to create processes for identifying potential repository sites. What is noteworthy is 

how varied those efforts have been.

Part of the variation stems from how the technical filter is constructed. In some cases, 

efforts to identify candidate sites have focused from the beginning on specific host-rock 

formations. The choice of those formations has been dictated either by constraints imposed 

by a country’s geology or land-use patterns, by a view that particular host-rock formations 

possess distinctive advantages in terms of isolating and containing HLW and SNF, or by a 

combination of these rationales. In other cases, efforts to identify candidate sites cast the 

net more broadly by enumerating generic qualifying and disqualifying conditions.

Qualifying conditions must be satisfied for a candidate site to be considered acceptable; 

disqualifying conditions eliminate a candidate site from further consideration.

Just as the construction of the technical filter introduces considerable variation in strategies for selecting candidate sites for a deep geologic repository, so does the construction of 

the nontechnical filter. Arguably this filter’s most important property relates to the power 

that a state or community can exercise. Since the early 1990s, nations outside the United 

States increasingly have constructed their nontechnical filters in ways that empower local 

jurisdictions. Many countries begin their site-selection process with a call for communities 

to volunteer.

The two filters are not independent of each other, except in some theoretical sense. The 

construction of the nontechnical one may affect the technical one in important ways. To 

begin with, applying the technical and nontechnical filters is neither purely mechanical 

nor can it typically be programmed neutrally. Further, implicit in a voluntarist approach is 

the presumption that a very wide range of geologic features and locations are suitable or 

can be made suitable. In some cases, this presumption is well-founded. In other cases, even 

after taking into account fairly general disqualifying conditions, potential disconnects may 

very well arise, so that applying both the technical and nontechnical filters yields a null set 

of potentially suitable and acceptable sites.

An additional source of variation among national programs can be traced to policies that 

govern the sequence for accepting or rejecting a candidate site. A country can adopt a 
xvi Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

“serial” policy whereby sites would be evaluated formally one by one until a suitable site 

was found. Alternatively, a “parallel” approach can be adopted in which at least two candidate sites would be characterized simultaneously and compared.

Site Selection for a Deep-Mined Geologic Repository

In all national programs, the implementer is the responsible for proposing a site to develop 

as a deep-mined geologic repository. If only one site has been fully characterized at depth, 

as is the case in the French and American programs, it will be advanced by default if the 

implementer believes it to be suitable. In most countries, political ratification at the 

national level of any choice made by the implementer also must take place.

Approval to Construct a Deep-Mined Geologic Repository

The processes involved in obtaining approval to construct a deep-mined geologic repository are as varied as the processes involved in identifying candidate sites. In most countries, a representative body, such as the legislature or the Government, makes the final 

decision. Typically, that body relies on the regulators’ advice. In some countries, however, 

the regulators make the final determination of whether the proposed repository system 

complies with established requirements.

Conclusion

In each of the 13 national programs considered in this report, the long-term management 

of HLW and SNF has proven more complicated and protracted than initially expected.

What was formerly viewed as a relatively simple technical task is now recognized as a complex socio-technical problem involving political negotiations and institutional design challenges as well as path-breaking scientific and engineering analyses. Nonetheless, several 

national programs already have made considerable progress. Sites for a deep-mined geologic repository for HLW and SNF have been selected in four countries—Finland, France, 

Sweden, and the United States. License applications to construct such a facility have been 

submitted in two of those nations (the U.S. and Sweden). Applications are likely to be submitted in the other two within the next few years.

The information contained in this report suggests several important conclusions about 

processes used to develop a deep-mined geologic repository.

•	 It is possible to elaborate a disposal concept and to advance a safety case, including quantitative performance assessments, that is widely credibly not only to scientific and technical 

communities but also to broad segments of the general population and political leaders. It 

appears as if a deep-mined geologic repository can be developed in a number of different 

hydrogeologic environments. An open and transparent technical assessment process, 

including international peer reviews, increases public and political support.
Executive Summary xvii

•	 It is possible to find communities that are willing to host a deep-mined geologic repository. From the experience gained in countries where sites have been selected, it appears 

that some communities do so because of their familiarity with other nuclear activities; 

others do so because of the economic benefits that might accrue in the future. All of 

those communities, however, were given a meaningful say in the site-selection process.

And all of those communities came to be convinced by the respective implementers 

that the facility could be constructed and operated safely.

•	 Although national programs differ in terms of what is considered an acceptable risk and 

how to demonstrate whether a deep-mined geologic repository satisfies those standards, 

international views on these matters are converging. At least for the first few thousands 

of years after repository closure, dose constraints across countries are within a factor 

of three of each other and risk limits are within a factor of ten. Only for compliance 

periods on the order of 100,000 or 1,000,000 years has no international consensus yet 

been formed on dose constraints, risk limits, and methodology.

•	 Organizational forms differ significantly across countries, but successful ones have several characteristics in common. Nuclear industry-owned corporations have been successful in Sweden and Finland. A government agency has been successful in France.

Rather than organizational form per se, what appears to be important are organizational behaviors, such as leadership continuity, funding stability, and the capacity to 

inspire public trust and confidence over long periods of time.

Today, more than a half-century after electricity was first produced by splitting the atom, 

the beneficiaries of that energy source have committed themselves to finding ways to manage the radioactive wastes thereby created in a technically defensible and socially acceptable way. That commitment should be a source for optimism, not only for the generation 

that produced the wastes, but for succeeding generations as well.

1

Introduction

T

he philosopher Hans Jonas has posed what may be the central ethical issue of our age 

when he tells his readers: “In your present choices, include the future wholeness of 

Man among the objects of your will” (Jonas 1973, 35-36). This modern-day injunction captures one aspect of the difficult decisions that are required for managing radioactive waste.

Since the early 1950s, more than three-dozen countries have generated electricity by harnessing the energy that holds together the nuclei of heavy elements, such as uranium and 

plutonium. Although the benefits of the energy produced to societies are substantial, the 

creation of different radioactive waste streams is an inevitable by-product of these efforts.

This report focuses on the experience gained in 13 national programs for managing two of 

the streams: high-level radioactive waste (HLW) and spent nuclear fuel (SNF).

1

Initially, the long-term management of HLW and SNF received relatively little attention from 

national policy-makers (OTA 1985).

2

 HLW produced both as a consequence of a country’s 

defense program and as a consequence of reprocessing a country’s commercial SNF was 

stored at first as liquids in tanks. Although it is unclear how the material ultimately would 

have been managed, this option was considered a satisfactory final solution, especially for 

waste that had already been produced (AEC 1968 and U.S. Congress 1963).

Perpetual in-tank storage of liquid HLW, however, was soon seen as an unrealistic option.

In 1955, the National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) Advisory Committee on Waste Disposal 

began a study intended to examine other options that might be more effective in isolating 

and containing HLW over the long-term. Although the writers of the study were careful to 

1 In some countries, HLW and SNF also are produced as result of nuclear-weapons and nuclear-propulsion 

programs and as a result of experimental and research reactor programs. Typically, the requirements for 

the long-term disposition of those wastes are no different from the requirements for disposing of commercially generated waste. No further distinction will be made in this report among the various sources 

of high-activity radioactive waste.

2The discussion in this section focuses on the early days of radioactive waste management policy-making 

in the United States. A similar tale, however, could be told of the development of policies in the other 

countries that had generated radioactive waste by the end of the 1960s including the United Kingdom, 

France, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
2 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

note the need for further research, they stated categorically that they “... were convinced 

that radioactive waste could be disposed of safely in a variety of ways and in a number of 

sites in the United States.” Further, they observed that “... disposal in salt is the most 

promising method for the near future ...” (NAS 1957 3, 6). In retrospect, it appears that the 

NAS report instilled a sense of complacency in the minds of people dealing with radioactive waste management. The Academy’s imprimatur left the impression that a “solution” 

could readily be found once it was needed. And, in fact, nearly a decade would pass before 

work started to implement the option of disposing of waste in a deep-mined geologic 

repository. Full development of such a facility to the operational stage has proven to be 

more problematic than many anticipated.

The difficulties of implementing a plan notwithstanding, the need for satisfactory options 

for managing HLW and SNF for the long term has not diminished. International and 

regional organizations, for instance, have highlighted the importance of developing 

approaches for the long-term management of HLW and SNF. Agreements, such as the Joint 

Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste 

Management, administered by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and legislation, such as the draft directive proposed by the European Commission, call for the nearterm adoption of policies and program to address this issue.

In the sections that follow, this report explores how 13 nations are carrying out efforts to 

find a permanent solution for isolating and containing HLW and SNF generated within 

their borders.

3

 Many forces shape how those efforts are designed and implemented. Some 

of the forces are technical, including choices made about what reactor technology to adopt 

and about what nuclear fuel cycle to pursue. Others are social and political in nature, 

including how concerns about intergenerational equity should be addressed and at what 

pace the long-term management option should be implemented. Importantly, the interdependencies, both subtle and overt, among the technical, social, and political forces are 

inescapable. Because of those interactions, what characterizes the national programs most 

notably is their variety.

This report attempts to describe that variety. It builds on the information contained in 

the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board’s (NWTRB) Survey of National 

Programs for Managing High-Level Radioactive Waste and Spent Nuclear Fuel (NWTRB 

2009).

4

 Unlike the earlier document, this report is more descriptive and considers the 

history of national programs. 5

3The countries are the United States, Belgium, Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, the 

Republic of Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. This report focuses entirely 

on the efforts of those countries to develop programs for the long-term management of HLW and SNF.

It does not consider directly associated activities such as long-term storage, transportation of radioactive 

waste, and initiatives to reprocess SNF or recycle the reprocessed products.

4The reader is advised to refer to this Board report for more-detailed information about each national 

program.

5The discussion that follows includes illustrations drawn from various national programs. The illustrations were chosen to represent the range of approaches taken by the 13 countries; they are not meant to 

be exhaustive.
3

Process 

Considerations

All national programs keenly recognize today that the long-term management of 

radioactive waste is a complicated socio-technical problem, with the social dimension playing an integral role in determining the shape and the ultimate success 

or failure of a project (see, for example, IAEA 2007). National programs increasingly pay 

attention to issues such as public trust and confidence, transparency, stakeholder engagement, active participation in decision-making processes, and voluntarism.

6

 Therefore, it is 

appropriate that this report begins with a discussion of the experience gained by national 

programs in devising processes, for it will be those processes that will come into play as 

countries either make key programmatic decisions in the future or debate whether to reexamine decisions made in the past. In the sections that follow this one, some of these key 

programmatic decisions are identified and discussed.

Engagement

Decisions in all countries about the long-term management of HLW and SNF were made 

initially by a small group of technical experts, industry representatives, legislative leaders, 

and government officials. When nuclear power and nuclear waste (and their connection) 

arose in the mid-1970s as issues for the broader public, the need to broaden opportunities 

for engagement became clear. In response, Belgium, Spain, the United States, Sweden, and 

Finland were among the first to pass legislation establishing frameworks in which 

radioactive waste management would be governed. Other countries followed suit. When 

they started to implement the new laws, however, national programs were forced to wrestle 

with thorny issues (NEA 2004b): Among these were: Should communities, the general 

6At least one international organization, the Nuclear Energy Agency’s (NEA) Forum on Stakeholder Confidence, was established solely to provide a venue to discuss these issues.
4 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

public, or representative non-governmental organizations be involved in the decisionmaking process? And if so, how should they be involved? 7

Two patterns emerged as these questions were answered. First, traditional participatory 

mechanisms typically were mated with novel and more innovative ones. Second, especially 

as difficulties arose, many national programs came to recognize the importance the latter 

mechanisms and began to rely on them. For example, in the United States, participation 

frequently takes place 

under the umbrella of the 

Administrative 

Procedures Act and the 

National Environmental 

Policy Act. Agencies publish proposals and request 

public comment on them.

Although the agencies are 

required to explain how 

they responded to all of 

the comments, they have 

broad discretion to accept 

or reject any of the input 

received. Yet, as with 

other nuclear facilities, a 

highly participatory adjudicatory process has to 

play out before a deepmined geologic repository 

can be licensed. In 

Canada, the traditional 

mechanism of holding a public hearing on a proposed option for waste management failed 

to establish social acceptance for the approach (CEAA 1998). Subsequently, the Nuclear 

Waste Management Organization (NWMO) intensively and proactively engaged the public 

to secure acceptance of another waste management option (NWMO 2005).

In Sweden during the 1970s and early 1980s, the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste 

Management Company (SKB) used an approach to finding a suitable location for a repository that was similar to the one that had been used earlier to identify and propose sites for 

nuclear power plants. That proved unsuccessful, so starting in the 1990s, SKB encouraged 

communities to ask tough questions about what was being proposed (Sundqvist 2002). It 

also established a continuous presence in several communities and strongly supported a 

so-called “stretching” process in at least one of them.

8

 National programs in Belgium and 

the United Kingdom envision the creation of partnerships between those responsible for 

7 Because all but one of the 13 countries are pluralistic democracies, these questions could not be easily 

dismissed or branded as illegitimate.

8 Stretching involves the municipality developing and posing sharply focused questions to the body 

responsible for developing a deep-mined geologic repository and ensuring that the answers are responsive 

and specific.

ANDRA personnel explain the French repository design to members of the public. Source: ANDRA.
Process Considerations 5

implementing national programs for the long-term management of HLW and SNF and the 

communities that might be willing to host a deep-mined geologic repository (NEA 2010).

9

It is worthy of note that the various engagement efforts conducted so far have altered the 

technical approaches adopted by national programs in some instances but not in others.

For instance, in France, engagement with interested and affected publics highlighted the 

importance of designing a deep-mined geologic repository so that it would be reversible, 

thereby triggering a number of technical changes. In contrast, although the Swedish 

approach to disposing of HLW and SNF, KBS-3, has morphed over time, none of the technical changes were the result of input from communities that might serve as hosts for a 

deep-mined geologic repository. Instead, serious engagement seems to have served other 

functions, one of which is to increase public trust and confidence both in the local communities and at the national level.

Public trust and confidence

Attention has been drawn during the last twenty years to one factor, variously referred to 

as social or institutional trust, which appears to play an important, and perhaps even a 

decisive, role in determining the effectiveness, and perhaps the legitimacy, of publicengagement processes (Cvetkovich and Löfstadt 1999; IAEA 2007). Some national programs have come to merit considerable trust and confidence. In Sweden, for instance, the 

nuclear regulators enjoy broadly based social trust. Communities considering whether to 

host a deep-mined geologic repository express confidence in the regulators’ judgments and 

are willing to base their decisions on those judgments (Ähagen et al. 2006). The national 

program in Finland has not had to confront a deficit of social trust. Other national programs, however, such as the one in the United States implemented by DOE, either have lost 

public trust and confidence or seem never to have merited it at all (Carter 1987; Herzlik 

and Mushkatel 1993). In France, a lack of social trust led to a moratorium on site-selection 

in 1990 (Barth 2009).

So critical is the development of social trust that several national programs have explored 

the issue specifically and, as indicated by reference to published reports below, have concluded that, absent widespread social trust, efforts to implement a long-term radioactive 

waste management approach are likely to confront significant, if not overwhelming, obstacles. In the United States, a Task Force advising the Secretary of Energy observed (SEAB 

1993, 39):

The legacy of distrust created by the Department’s history and culture will continue 

for a long time to color public reaction to its radioactive waste management efforts.

Only a sustained commitment by successive Secretaries of Energy can overcome it.

In Canada, a report by NWMO reached essentially the same conclusion (NWMO 2005, 75):

Many examples have been brought forward of incidents in which the industry and/or 

government have acted in what is perceived to be a self-interested and secretive manner. For these participants, this is a key area in which trust must be built before proceeding with any approach for the long term management of used nuclear fuel.

9At the moment, the partnership in Belgium is addressing the management of low- and intermediate-level 

waste. The West Cumbria Partnership in the United Kingdom involves local governments interacting 

with the national government. The implementer is just observing the process.
6 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

Similarly in the United Kingdom, an advisory group appointed by Government, the 

Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM), noted (CoRWM 2006, 14): 

There is also a high degree of historical distrust of the nuclear industry and those 

charged with developing waste management facilities, which has led to a breakdown of 

previous attempts to implement a policy.

In Canada and the United Kingdom, where waste-management programs are attempting 

to rebuild social trust, the initial signs seem positive. Sustaining trust appears to be a key 

consideration in decisions now being made. Research has shown, however, that recovering 

trust once it has been lost can be challenging (see, for example, Kasperson et al. 1992).

Organizations that are not trusted have little “slack.” What might have been forgiven were 

the agency considered trustworthy is often viewed as compelling evidence that the 

organization has not changed its ways fundamentally. Moreover, the context in which 

choices are made can make a difference. As a study by the IAEA recognizes, the situation 

changes once national programs go beyond their generic stages and confront the question 

of selecting candidate sites for a deep-mined geologic repository. Social trust, which might 

be established early on, may be harder to maintain as the programs mature or site-specific 

proposals are made (IAEA 2007).

10

Decision-making strategies

In the last decade, attention has been drawn to what is presented as a new approach to 

making choices about the long-term management of HLW and SNF (NEA 2004a; NAS 

2003; NWMO 2005). Often referred to as “adaptive management” or “staged decisionmaking,” this approach is actually a refinement of the incremental decision strategy first 

detailed in the 1950s (Lindblom: 1959). Rather than decisive choices being made at the 

front end of the process, decisions are made in a stepwise fashion. At predetermined 

decision points, the work of national waste-management programs is reviewed and 

evaluated systematically by all interested and affected parties, and an explicit choice is 

made about whether to proceed along the program’s proposed path or to reconsider what is 

to be done. A premium is placed on “organizational learning, flexibility, reversibility, 

auditability, transparency, integrity, and responsiveness” (NAS 2003, 124). National 

programs in Canada, France, Japan, Sweden, and Switzerland explicitly make this 

approach a centerpiece of their strategy for the long-term management of HLW and SNF.

Other programs do not reject this approach but view it as nothing new, maintaining that 

they already have incorporated the strategy at least implicitly. 11

At the theoretical level, it is hard to find fault with a decision-making strategy that seems 

to promise so much. As a more practical matter, however, it is still unclear whether it can 

be any more successful than earlier efforts in overcoming local and state opposition to 

specific siting decisions, whether it can be implemented, and even whether it should be 

implemented (Lee 1999). The many tensions between theory and practice are well 

10For a discussion of why it may be hard to implement recommendations to foster public trust and confidence, see SEAB: 1993, 61.

11 It is unclear what Germany’s position is. That country’s Safety Requirements Governing the Disposal of 

Heat-Generating Radioactive Waste calls for “stepwise optimization.” Yet only one license is likely to be 

issued by the regulators, covering authorization to construct a deep-mined geologic repository, to receive 

and possess waste, and to decommission the facility.
Process Considerations 7

understood and often are acknowledged by the strategy’s advocates, but two of them bear 

repeating here.

•	 In theory, advocates of a staged strategy contend that it fosters public acceptance by 

making national programs more responsive, even to the point of abandoning a project 

after substantial investments in it have been made. In practice, however, the approach 

detailed by Lindblom works best when there is fundamental agreement on outcomes at 

the start (Thompson and Tuden 1959).

•	 In theory, under a staged approach, those responsible for carrying out national wastemanagement programs openly acknowledge errors and uncertainties and make 

adjustments to correct mistakes. In practice, it is not unheard of that organizations 

cover up errors rather than acknowledge them. But even assuming a completely openminded bureaucracy, discovering and rectifying mistakes is especially difficult when 

it comes to evaluating the performance of complex systems such as a deep-mined geologic repository (Vaughn 1996).

Perhaps the most important contribution that the proponents of such a structured and 

staged strategy have made is to identify a set of aspirations and objectives that national 

programs should strive to meet. It is by no means clear that a staged decision-making 

strategy is the only, or even the best, way to do so.

Remaining questions

Although there seems to be a general consensus about the importance of process considerations in the long-term management of HLW and SNF, questions remain about how to 

design processes that are effective given each nation’s political culture. For example, 

•	 Why will some communities volunteer to host a deep-mined geologic repository while 

others in the same country will not?

•	 Although adaptive staged management may be the most promising decision-making 

strategies for the long-term management of HLW and SNF, it is unclear how to design 

an approach that that can address issues such as possible disconnects between the 

need for mid-course corrections when evidence suggests that they may be required 

and the capability of institutions to make those changes.

There is no one recipe that can be chosen to ensure a successful process. Better understanding of processes, however, may lead to improved approaches (e.g., Chilvers and Burgess 2008; 

Cotton 2009) and adjustments also may be needed through time (e.g., Krutlia et al. 2010).

Research on such issues has not been extensive, and much more knowledge is needed. The 

words of Jacob (1990, 164) remain true today: “While vast resources have been expended on 

developing complex and sophisticated technologies, the equally sophisticated political processes and institutions required to develop a credible and legitimate strategy for nuclear 

waste management have not yet been developed.” More research also is needed on beliefs and 

perceptions and their linkage to behavior. For example, open questions remain about precautionary attitudes (e.g., Sjoberg 2009) and the connections among such factors as economic 

benefits, risk perception, and trust (e.g., Chung and Kim 2009).
8 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

Major summary points

•	 Two clear patterns describe how the participatory process has evolved in many 

nations. First, traditional mechanisms for public participation have been supplemented by novel and more innovative ones. Second, the more difficulty a program has 

encountered in the past, the more that national programs have come to recognize the 

importance of and to rely on active mechanisms for public engagement.

•	 Most existing siting processes now being implemented or contemplated by national 

waste-management programs involve some delegation of decision-making power to 

interested and affected outside parties.

•	 Although increased public involvement has affected key technical choices made by 

some national waste-management programs, it has had little effect on others.

•	 Some programs have undertaken significant actions to rebuild public trust and confidence, but, in many of those cases, the programs have not yet been put to the test; it 

remains to be seen how successful national programs will be in recovering lost trust.

•	 A staged decision-making strategy may offer the most promise for developing a deepmined geologic repository, but it is unclear how well it can be implemented.
9

Development, 

Assessment, and 

Adoption of WasteManagement Options

Over the years, national programs have explored a variety of options for the longterm management of HLW and SNF. These options have included the following 

(IRG 1978): 

•	 Deep-mined geologic disposal

•	 Burying the waste in deep-sea sediments

•	 Placing the waste in deep-drilled boreholes

•	 Partitioning and transmuting the long-lived radioisotopes

•	 Shooting the waste into space

•	 Storing the waste indefinitely either above or below ground in a retrievable fashion.

Almost universally, policy-makers have determined that disposal of HLW and SNF in a 

deep-mined geologic repository is the preferred option for protecting human health and 

the environment for thousands of years.

12 As one international group put it, the option 

“... provides a unique level and duration of protection ... It takes advantage of the capabilities of both the local geology and the engineered materials to fulfill specific safety functions in a complementary fashion, providing multiple and diverse barriers ...” (NEA 2008b 

7, 14). In virtually all countries, the choice of disposal in a deep-mined geologic repository 

originally was reached implicitly by accepting a technical consensus that began to form 

12Neither Belgium nor Spain has officially adopted this option. The current Government in Scotland also 

is opposed to it, although previous Governments have supported the option of geologic disposal.
10 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

more than 50 years ago 

with the publication of the 

NAS report.

In some countries, that 

choice was never formally 

reconsidered.

13 For 

example, by 1977, the first 

so-called KBS report 

suggested that vitrified 

HLW should be placed in a 

deep-mined geologic 

repository. That report, 

however, also outlined the 

possibility of depositing 

SNF in such a facility. As 

Sweden gradually shifted 

to a strategy of direct disposal of SNF, SKB developed two conceptual plans culminating in 

the adoption of KBS-3 (SKB 1978a, 1978b, 1983). During that period, some details were 

finalized: The copper option was chosen for the waste package instead of ceramic; vertical 

emplacement of the waste packages was picked over horizontal emplacement; and 

bentonite rather than a mixture of bentonite and quartz sand was selected as the buffer.

But one element of the conceptual plans has remained constant: A deep-mined geologic 

repository would be developed in the crystalline rock that is so prevalent in Sweden.

The Germans began in 1965 to construct an underground laboratory at Asse in Lower 

Saxony to determine whether salt might be a suitable host formation for disposing of HLW.

By the early-1970s, the federal government selected that rock type. In 1973, a siting process 

was launched for the Integrated Waste Management Center, where a repository for HLW 

and long-lived intermediate-level waste would be co-located with a reprocessing facility. A 

site close to the community of Gorleben, also in Lower Saxony, was chosen four years later 

(Hocke and Renn 2010).

14

In the United States between 1965 and 1967, researchers from Oak Ridge National 

Laboratory carried out studies at the inactive Carey Salt Mine outside of Lyons, Kansas.

Their work helped confirm the optimism expressed in the NAS report about the suitability 

of salt as a host rock. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1970 officially selected disposal in a deep-mined geologic repository as the sole option for the long-term management of HLW (AEC 1970). Disposal in a deep-mined geologic repository was more firmly 

established in law with the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) in 1982.

National waste-management programs in Canada and France also initially chose the geologic disposal option but were compelled by public pressure to reconsider other options 

explicitly. In 1978, the Governments of Canada and Ontario announced the creation of a 

13The passage of environmental impact legislation has affected how waste-management options are chosen. Although the option of disposal in a deep-mined geologic repository was, for all practical purposes, 

selected in the United States in 1970, it was not until 1980 that the environmental assessments necessary 

to support that choice were completed (DOE 1980).

14 In Germany, perhaps more than any other country, the fate of national program for managing HLW and 

SNF is closely tied to the ongoing debate over the future of nuclear power.

Conceptual view of the Swedish deep-mined geologic repository. Source: SKB
Development, Assessment, and Adoption of Waste-Management Options 11

program to dispose of radioactive wastes from nuclear power reactors in a deep-mined 

geologic repository developed in intrusive igneous rock. To establish the technical basis for 

this program, the Whiteshell underground laboratory was built near the town of Pinawa in 

Manitoba, and experiments were conducted there for more than a decade.

In 1994, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) submitted a comprehensive 

Environmental Impact Statement based on the concept of placing SNF in corrosion-resistant 

copper containers at a depth of between 500 and1,000 meters in plutonic rock located in the 

Canadian Shield (AECL 1994). After extensive public hearings, the Government-appointed 

Seaborn Panel issued its findings evaluating the concept (CEAA 1998).

•	 Broad public support is necessary in Canada to ensure the acceptability of a concept 

for managing nuclear fuel wastes.

•	 Safety is a key part, but only one part, of acceptability. Safety must be viewed from two 

complementary perspectives: technical and social.

•	 From a technical perspective, the safety of the AECL concept has been on balance 

adequately demonstrated for a conceptual stage of development, but from a social perspective, it has not.

•	 As it stands, the AECL concept for deep geological disposal has not been demonstrated to have broad public support. The concept in its current form does not have 

the required level of acceptability to be adopted as Canada’s approach for managing 

nuclear fuel wastes.

When the Canadian Government subsequently accepted the findings and recommendations of the Seaborn Panel, in effect it threw out the waste-management option that had 

been the basis of Canada’s waste-management program for 20 years.

Starting from scratch NWMO reviewed more than a dozen waste-management options 

and decided to analyze three of them in-depth:

•	 Deep geologic disposal in the Canadian Shield

•	 Storage at nuclear reactor sites

•	 Centralized storage above or below ground.

In the end, NWMO recommended to Government a fourth option, what it termed “a technical method and a management system” (NWMO 2005). This option had the following 

features:

•	 Ultimate centralized containment and isolation of used nuclear fuel in an appropriate 

geologic formation

•	 Phased and adaptive decision-making

•	 Optional shallow storage at the central storage site prior to placement in the repository

•	 Continuous monitoring

•	 Provision for retrievability

•	 Citizen engagement.
12 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

In 2007, Government adopted NWMO’s recommendations and accepted the Adaptive 

Phased Management approach as the best option for the long-term management of 

nuclear-fuel waste.

The French waste-management program underwent a similar crisis in public confidence 

and also was forced to re-examine its choice of waste-management options. By the mid1980s, the Government had identified four specific sites—in clay, crystalline rock, schist, 

and salt—where a repository might be developed. Some test boreholes were drilled, and 

analyses were undertaken to determine how to optimize the waste isolation system, “... 

taking into account the overall characteristics of the particular host rock” (Carter 1987, 

323). The four sites were selected based on technical judgments on their merit, and their 

selection did not involve much participation either by the public at large or by the local 

authorities. Subsequently, intense local opposition emerged at all four sites, and the Prime 

Minister called a halt to the site-selection process in February 1990.

Parliament passed new legislation governing radioactive waste in December 1991. The 

Research in Radioactive Waste Management Act reopened the question of what wastemanagement option should be adopted. It laid out in clear terms major areas of research, 

which were to be carried out by the National Radioactive Waste Management Agency 

(ANDRA). They were: 15

•	 Partition and transmutation 

•	 Waste packaging and effects of long-term surface storage

•	 The feasibility of reversible and non-reversible deep-mined geologic disposal through 

studies conducted in underground research laboratories.

The Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Science and Technology Options (OPECST) 

held three days of public hearings on radioactive waste management in early 2005. The 

hearings covered partitioning and transmutation, deep-mined geologic disposal, and longterm interim storage. The hearings were conducted to inform a report that was prepared by 

OPECST and released later that year (OPECST 2005).

Following a national public debate, and taking it into account, the Sustainable 

Management of Radioactive Materials and Waste Act was submitted to and passed by 

Parliament in 2006. The Act selected phased deep geologic disposal as the preferred option 

for managing HLW and dictated that a deep-mined geologic repository be developed at a 

site to be chosen by 2015. However, in anticipation of the deployment of fast reactors, the 

research then under way into partitioning and transmutation of long-lived radioactive elements would be continued.

The situation in the United Kingdom is a bit different and more complicated. That country 

envisioned reprocessing all of its SNF. Just as in the United States, some thought was given 

to storing the liquid HLW in tanks for an indefinite period. That waste-management 

option, however, was abandoned in 1976 when a Royal Commission on Environmental 

Pollution severely criticized it. By then, Government concluded that developing a repository for vitrified HLW was too onerous and decided to concentrate on managing the longlived intermediate-level waste from reprocessing. Over the next few years, attempts were 

made to obtain from local communities “planning permission” to drill surface boreholes 

15An amendment to the Act was passed in early 1998 to allow funding for a fourth major research area, the 

evaluation of interim storage options.
Development, Assessment, and Adoption of Waste-Management Options 13

to determine whether sites selected by the Institute of Geological Sciences might be suitable for developing a deep-mined geologic repository. Planning permission was granted at 

one of the sites, and a Public Inquiry was launched at another one. By 1981, Government 

had come to view developing a deep-mined geologic repository as politically infeasible and 

had concluded that long-term surface storage of solidified HLW, not disposal, should 

become the nation’s preferred waste-management option.

Not until the late 1980s did the United Kingdom venture back into the realm of geologic 

disposal of HLW and SNF. Industry-owned UK Nirex Limited applied for planning permission to construct a Rock Characterization Facility near the reprocessing site at 

Sellafield in West Cumbria. The facility would have permitted characterization of the rocks 

to determine whether they are suitable for a deep-mined geologic repository for long-lived 

intermediate-level waste. After a Public Inquiry at which strong opposition to the facility 

was voiced, the local government refused planning permission. This decision was confirmed at the national level in 1997.

Unlike the similar situation two decades previously, Government realized that it could not 

avoid addressing the question of long-term management of HLW and SNF. To do so, it 

launched the Managing Radioactive Waste Safely consultation program in 2001. As part of 

the program, CoRWM was asked in 2003 to make recommendations on what options the 

country should adopt.

CoRWM began its evaluation by identifying waste management options that had been suggested in the past. The list included the following: 

•	 Interim or indefinite storage on or below the surface

•	 Near-surface disposal, a few meters or tens of meters below ground

•	 Deep disposal, with the surrounding geology providing a further barrier

•	 Phased deep disposal, with storage and monitoring for a period

•	 Direct injection of liquid wastes into rock strata

•	 Disposal at sea

•	 Subseabed disposal

•	 Disposal in ice sheets

•	 Disposal in subduction zones

•	 Disposal in space, into high orbit, or propelled into the Sun

•	 Dilution and dispersal of radioactivity in the environment

•	 Partitioning of wastes and transmutation of radionuclides

•	 Burning of plutonium and uranium in reactors

CoRWM then developed a set of screening criteria to narrow the list. It used two rounds of 

public-engagement meetings to inform its assessment of the options. The shortlist for 

detailed evaluation contained only three options, which, in CoRWM’s view, could be 

implemented in principle to manage the country’s entire inventory of HLW and SNF: 

interim storage, geological disposal, and phased geological disposal. In 2006, CoRWM 

made its recommendations (CoRWM 2006). Several months later, Government responded 
14 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

by accepting geological disposal coupled with safe and secure interim storage as the way 

forward for the long-term management of the United Kingdom’s higher activity wastes 

and designated the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) as the responsible organization (UKG 2006).

Although 11 out of the 13 nations considered in this report are officially committed to 

developing deep-mined geologic repositories as the preferred option for the long-term 

Table 1

Status of the repository-development 

programs for HLW and SNF

Country Status

United States License application for a repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada was submitted 

to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in June, 2008. Subsequently, the 

Administration sought to withdraw the application and to defund the project. No 

final decisions have been made.

Belgium Geologic disposal has not been officially adopted as the country’s preferred 

long-term waste management option, although investigations have been conducted 

in clay. Start of repository operations is anticipated in the 2040 time frame.

Canada Engagement with the public determined the criteria that will be used to select 

candidate sites for a repository. Eight communities in two Provinces have 

expressed an interest in hosting a repository. No date has been for the start of 

repository operations.

China Preliminary site investigations are under way at Beishan in the Gobi Desert. Start 

of repository operations is anticipated in the 2050 time frame.

Finland A site at Olkiluoto near the community of Eurajoki has been selected for a 

repository. Site investigations and construction are under way. Start of repository 

operations is anticipated in the 2020 time frame.

France A site in the Meuse/Haute-Marne region has been selected for a repository. Site 

investigations are underway. Authorization to construct the repository is 

anticipated in 2017. Start of repository operations is anticipated in the 2025 time 

frame.

Germany After a hiatus of 10 years, Government has announced that site investigations at 

Gorleben would resume. No date for the start of repository operations has been 

set.

Japan Generic investigations have been conducted in crystalline rock. In 2002, the 

Government sought volunteer communities to explore the feasibility of 

constructing a final repository for HLW. To date, no community has agreed to 

volunteer. No date has been set for the start of repository operations.

Republic of Korea The repository development process for HLW and SNF has not begun.

Spain Geologic disposal has not been officially adopted as the country’s preferred 

option for long-term waste-management.

Sweden A site in the municipality of Östhammar has been selected based on site 

investigations. A license application to construct a repository was submitted in 

March 2011. Start of repository operations is anticipated in the 2023 time frame.

Switzerland The first of three phases of the site-selection process has begun. Start of 

repository operations is anticipated no sooner than 2040.

United Kingdom Two communities in West Cumbria are discussing with Government the possibility 

of participating formally in the site-selection process for a repository. Start of 

repository operations is anticipated in the 2040 time frame.
Development, Assessment, and Adoption of Waste-Management Options 15

management of their HLW and SNF, the pace of the development process varies 

considerably. For some national waste-management programs, moving forward 

expeditiously is the best way to address concerns about intergenerational equity. Those 

countries typically have made firm decisions about whether to reprocess their SNF.

Nations projecting a longer time horizon believe that many of their citizens still have not 

accepted that deep-mined geologic repositories are an appropriate strategy for permanent 

disposal of HLW and SNF and that they therefore must plan for an extended period prior 

to development of a repository during which technical work and public engagement will 

continue (Table 1).

Major summary points

•	 A broad consensus has emerged over the last 50 years that properly sited and designed 

deep-mined geologic repositories can isolate and contain HLW and SNF for many 

thousands of years, thereby adequately protecting human health and the environment.

•	 Countries whose waste-management programs have been challenged and disrupted, 

have subsequently conducted an explicit and transparent evaluation of options to 

inform a national decision on whether to adopt disposal in deep-mined geologic 

repositories as the preferred approach. In all cases, that option was selected.

•	 The pace at which national repositories are being developed varies considerably.

Factors affecting the development schedule include public and political acceptance, 

attitudes toward nuclear power, views on intergenerational equity, and a desire not to 

foreclose the possibility of extracting additional energy from SNF.

17

Institutional 

Arrangements for 

Executing WasteManagement 

Programs

E

very national waste-management program must address two interrelated questions: 

Which organizations should be assigned the responsibility for executing which 

parts of the program, and how will the program be funded? The 13 countries have 

answered those questions in strikingly different ways. 16

Organizations

At least two institutions are involved in executing national waste-management programs: 

the implementer and the regulator. The implementer is responsible for developing a safety 

case, identifying and characterizing candidate sites, and designing, building, and 

operating the deep-mined geologic repository. The current organizational form of the 

implementer varies considerably across the countries.

Some nations have opted to use a traditional government agency. In the United States, at 

the same time that geologic disposal was selected as the preferred waste-management 

option, the AEC also deliberated over what type of organization should develop and 

operate a deep-mined geologic repository. Only the tiny Division of Industrial 

Participation voiced any objections to the decision that the responsibilities should belong 

16The Detailed Tables in NWTRB 2009 provide additional information about the organizations that are 

part of each national waste-management program.
18 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

to the federal government.

17 In Germany and the Republic of Korea as well, the 

implementer of the waste-management program is a government agency.

18 France 

considers its implementer to be a government-owned public service agency. In the United 

Kingdom, the NDA, a non-departmental public body under the purview of the 

Department of Energy and Climate Change, is the implementer.

In other countries, the implementer is a private corporation. Beginning in 1973, SKB, 

jointly owned by the nuclear power producers, took charge of efforts to develop an 

approach for disposing of, at first, HLW, and now, SNF.

19 In Canada and in Finland, the 

implementers, NWMO and Posiva Oy respectively, are organized and tasked in much the 

same way.

20 In still other countries, the implementers are hybrid organizations.

Government-owned corporations are the implementers in Belgium, China, and Spain. In 

two nations, the implementing organization takes on idiosyncratic forms, combining in 

varying degrees public and private characteristics. In Japan, a private non-profit 

corporation, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NUMO), was established by 

the owners of nuclear power plants and is supervised by the Ministry of Economy, Trade, 

and Industry. In Switzerland, a private/public consortium of radioactive waste producers, 

the National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste (NAGRA), includes the 

owners of nuclear power plants and the Federal State.

The organizational form of the implementer in seven of the 13 the national programs 

examined in this report has remained the same (Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, 

Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States). In France, for example, the Atomic Energy 

Commission (CEA) was responsible for the first research undertaken to develop a deepmined geologic repository. Because of concerns about waste management efforts being 

overwhelmed within the large CEA, ANDRA was established in 1979 as a separate unit 

within the CEA. As will be discussed below, ANDRA encountered difficulties when it tried 

to initiate site investigations. That experience led in 1991 to Parliament’s passage of the 

Research in Radioactive Waste Management Act, one provision of which called for ANDRA 

to be removed from the CEA and made into a government-owned public service agency.

17The Division of Industrial Participation was a unit within the AEC, charged with expanding commercial 

opportunities for the private sector. Its limited influence made it no match for the Reactor Development 

Division, which championed the option of having a government agency be responsible for developing a 

deep-mined geologic repository.

18 In Germany, the 4th Amendment to the Atomic Energy Act of 1976, which assigned the task of waste 

disposal to the Federal Government, stipulated that the Government could make use of third parties to 

discharge those duties. Toward this end, the Government created the German Service Company for the 

Construction and Operation of Waste Repositories (DBE) and entered into an exclusive contract with it.

DBE is currently 25 percent state-owned with the balance owned by German nuclear utilities, although 

state ownership will double shortly. In Korea, the Radioactive Waste Management Company was created 

by Parliament in 2008. It has been described as an “umbrella organization set up to resolve South Korea's 

waste management issues and waste disposition, and particularly to forge a national consensus on highlevel wastes” (WANO 2010). No further information is available about this implementer’s organizational 

form. Until it has been established and begins operations, responsibilities for waste management are 

vested in a government agency.

19When SKB was formed in 1973, the Swedish State, through its ownership of utilities, was the major 

nuclear-electricity generator at the time. SKB initially focused on the supply of fuel to the nuclear power 

plants. By the mid-1970s, the company’s focus had shifted to nuclear waste management.

20 Some of the Canadian, Finnish, and Swedish utilities that own the implementers are partly 

government-owned.
Institutional Arrangements for Executing Waste-Management Programs 19

In Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom, government agencies were the initial 

implementers, perhaps the result of a legacy dating from the time when nuclear energy 

policy was deemed so exceptional that it had to remain under tight government control.

Significant shifts over time, however, have taken place, typically away from government 

and towards hybrid or private organizational forms. These changes appear to have a 

common root cause, namely, a response to major programmatic challenges.

AECL was established in 1950 as a federal Crown corporation with the responsibility for 

managing Canada’s nuclear energy program (including radioactive waste management), 

conducting research and development, and carrying out a number of commercial 

operations, such as the promotion of the CANDU reactor. The rejection of AECL’s 

conceptual disposal plan in 1998 led Government to revise the structure of its wastemanagement program. The subsequent passage of the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act in 2002 

transferred responsibility to NWMO, which is jointly owned by the three nuclear utilities 

that have generated SNF.

The Japanese Government first placed efforts to develop a deep-mined geologic repository 

in the hands of the country’s Atomic Energy Commission. But the waste-management 

program developed slowly. Concerned that the absence of a repository could impede the 

construction of additional nuclear power plants, Parliament passed the Final Disposal of 

Specific Radioactive Wastes Act in 2000, which established NUMO.

In the United Kingdom, responsibility for developing a deep-mined geologic repository 

was initially given to the Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). Its inability to get planning 

permission from a number of communities to characterize sites in the mid-to-late 1970s 

led to the creation of the Nuclear Industry Radioactive Waste Executive and then to UK 

Nirex. As noted previously, the failed attempt in the late 1990s to obtain planning 

permission for the Sellafield Rock Characterization Facility forced Government to 

reconsider its waste-management efforts, culminating in the adoption of the Managing 

Radioactive Waste Safely program. In 2005, ownership of UK Nirex was transferred from 

the nuclear industry to the government of the United Kingdom and, in 2007, UK Nirex 

was disbanded and its staff transferred to the NDA. Within the NDA, the Radioactive 

Waste Management Directorate has primary responsibility for developing a deep-mined 

geologic repository. Its conversion into a “site licensing company” is under way.

Both the variety and the evolutions of the implementers’ organizational form seem to 

demand an inquiry into the question: Which form is best? A simple analysis that tries to 

associate particular forms with the completion of repository-development milestones 

produces no clear-cut conclusions: Of the four national programs furthest along, one has 

been implemented by a government agency (United States), one by a government-owned 

public service agency (France), and two by private corporations (Finland and Sweden).

In 1982, when Congress passed the NWPA, it also commissioned a study to identify an 

appropriate organizational form for the American implementer. The Advisory Panel on 

Alternative Means for Financing and Managing Radioactive Waste Facilities, among other 

things, evaluated four arrangements (AM FM: 1984). It ended up endorsing a FEDCORP, 

that is, a government-owned corporation structured to operate more like a private 

enterprise than a government agency. The panelists reached that conclusion based on the 

weights they gave to the lengthy lists of pros and cons associated with each arrangement.

Both DOE and the U.S. nuclear industry, using their own weights, held that the status quo
20 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

should be maintained (see, for example, Harrington 1985).

21 In 2001, Congress asked the 

DOE to follow up on the earlier evaluation. DOE evaluated three arrangements and 

developed a lengthy list of pros and cons associated with each arrangement. Ultimately, 

DOE was not prepared to choose among the alternatives and concluded that they should 

be studied further once a decision on the Yucca Mountain site had been made (DOE 2001).

Combining the experience gained by 13 national programs with the more detailed analyses 

undertaken in connection with the U.S. program suggests that the answer to the question 

posed above is that it depends. Some interested and affected parties will care strongly that 

the implementer is responsive to their views; others will want the implementer to focus on 

meeting schedules or minimizing expenditures. Each country seems to find its own 

particular way to resolve these value-based conflicts. In the final analysis, what may be 

most critical is not organizational form per se but organizational behaviors.

In all 13 national waste-management programs, the regulator is a government 

organization. The regulator determines whether the approach advanced by the 

implementer is acceptable. Very early on in some countries such as the United States, the 

implementer and the regulator were the same organization. Now there is general 

agreement that the two institutions should be independent of each other, even if, as in 

Germany and Japan, they are housed within the same government bureaucracy (see, for 

example, NEA 2009). In some countries, such as the United Kingdom and the United 

States, multiple regulators have authority over the development of deep-mined geologic 

repositories.

In six of the 13 nations, independent oversight organizations have been created. Some of 

them, including NWTRB, the National Review Board in France (CNE), the Nuclear Waste 

Management Commission in Germany, and the Nuclear Safety Commission in 

Switzerland, limit their oversight to technical matters. Others, including the National 

Council for Nuclear Waste in Sweden and the reconstituted CoRWM in the United 

Kingdom, have a broader mandate and provide oversight on non-technical matters as well 

as technical ones. All of these oversight organizations reach conclusions about how well 

the implementer is carrying out its responsibilities and make recommendations for 

improvement to some government body or bodies. Typically, they lack the power to 

enforce their recommendations, although in some countries the presumption is that their 

advice will be accepted (see, for example, U.S. Congress 1987).

Finances

Developing and operating a deep-mined geologic repository is a decades-long undertaking.

That period can stretch out even further if a nation decides to close the facility only after 

an extended monitoring program. Ensuring adequate funding for such a lengthy program 

can present substantial challenges. Credible cost estimates have to be calculated and then 

periodically updated as new information emerges. Mechanisms have to be put into place to 

21The AM-FM study, which is the most systematic one to date, still advances impressionistic claims that 

are only tenuously based on evidence. See Thomas 1993.
Institutional Arrangements for Executing Waste-Management Programs 21

collect the needed revenue, to make certain that it is spent only for its intended purpose, 

and to undertake long-term planning to develop a deep-mined geologic repository.

22

Two main approaches toward financing have been adopted by the 13 countries examined 

in this report. First, special funds have been set up in Canada, Finland, France, Spain, 

Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States to which waste producers or the consumers of 

nuclear-generated electricity contribute each year. Second, the expenses incurred by wastemanagement programs in China, Germany, and the United Kingdom are paid annually 

out of general government revenues. Although special funds have been established in 

Belgium, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, the expenses of their current wastemanagement programs are not covered by the funds but by general government revenues.

23

Although the total system life-cycle costs of developing, operating, and decommissioning a 

deep-mined geologic repository are estimated by a government agency in all countries but 

Finland and France, national waste-management programs that have established special 

funds have done so in different ways. In Canada, NWMO proposed a rather complex 

formula for determining the annual contributions from the three nuclear utilities and 

AECL (NWMO 2007). Government approved the formula in 2009. Each contributor 

deposits its payments in separate, segregated trust funds. Approximately $60 million 

(Canadian) is collected annually. Each year in Finland, generators pay the difference 

between the estimated fund target liability incurred to date and the amount that they had 

previously paid (Finnish Energy Industries 2007). Payments can be in securities. Excess 

payments can be recovered. The fund is controlled and administered by the Ministry of 

Trade and Industry.

Nuclear waste generators in France establish reserves to cover the full costs of long-term 

management of their wastes (ANDRA 2009). These reserves are held separately within 

each company. Every three years, each generator transmits to an independent government 

commission a report describing how the costs were estimated and the choices adopted for 

the composition and management of the reserves. The commission, composed of 

parliamentarians and individuals appointed by Parliament and the Government, has the 

authority to require additional contributions if it concludes that a generator’s payments are 

insufficient. In Sweden, the holders of a license to operate a facility that generates 

radioactive waste must pay a fee to the State. The fee, which is now set by Government 

every third year, is calculated on a per-kilowatt-hour basis. Owners of facilities that no 

longer operate must pay special fees for the uncovered costs of managing their SNF. If the 

fund is insufficient, the generators must provide a guarantee to make up any deficit 

(Kärnavfallsfonden 2010). The accumulated funds are managed by a government authority.

In Switzerland, approximately 35 percent of the anticipated total system life-cycle costs 

already has been paid for and spent. Another 17 percent is the costs to be incurred by the 

generators between 2008 and the time that their facilities are decommissioned. The 

remaining 48 percent will be covered by contributions to the fund (SFOE 2009).

22 In France and the United States, the total cost is divided between the generators/consumers of nuclear 

electricity and the government, which has to pay to manage waste from defense nuclear programs. In the 

United Kingdom, the government will pay the costs of disposing of waste from defense nuclear programs 

and waste from the older operating and decommissioned nuclear power plants. The costs of managing 

waste from new-build nuclear power plants must be paid by their owners.

23 In Germany and Belgium, the waste producers reimburse the government. 
22 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

In the United States, DOE is required to prepare an annual estimate of the total system 

life-cycle costs of developing, operating, and closing a deep-mined geologic repository for 

SNF and HLW. Based on that estimate, it has to recommend to Congress whether the 

legislatively dictated fee of 1 mill/kilowatt-hour24 of nuclear-generated electricity that 

utilities contribute to the Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF) should be revised. Although called a 

trust fund, the monies held in the NWF as a practical matter are not segregated. Thus they 

effectively pay for other government programs. Moreover, because Congress appropriates 

money to develop a repository strictly on an annual basis, DOE has to cope with widely 

varying budgets and often does not have direct access to the funds that have accumulated.

Major summary points

•	 Implementers of waste-management programs take on a variety of institutional forms.

In general, there does not seem to be any connection between institutional form and 

“progress” toward constructing and operating a deep-mined geologic repository.

•	 The choice of organizational form for the implementer depends in each country on 

how value-based conflicts are resolved. There does not seem to be “one best way” that 

can be universally applied.

•	 The costs of some national programs are paid from general government revenues. Other 

national programs have devised formulas and procedures for determining how much 

money should be collected from waste generators based on estimates of the total system 

life-cycle cost. In most countries, those funds are deposited into segregated accounts.

24One mill equals $0.001.
23

Technical Basis for 

Developing Disposal 

Concepts and 

Supporting a Safety 

Case

I

n all countries, the implementer has the responsibility for developing a disposal concept 

that describes a repository system comprising natural and engineered barriers. In most 

countries, limitations imposed by the geology constrain which disposal concepts can be 

considered. The implementer typically ends up focusing on one particular geologic formation because of its prevalence or because other formations either are unsuitable technically 

or cannot be developed because of land-use conflicts. Once a host rock has been chosen, 

the implementer considers the hydrogeologic environment and determines what, if any, 

engineered barriers are appropriate as well as how the repository system as a whole will be 

designed.

25 The implementer then is expected to advance its safety case, a set of arguments 

and analyses demonstrating why the proposed deep-minded geologic repository will isolate and contain HLW and SNF for as long as society demands.

26 (Various standards and 

regulatory requirements reflect those demands.) There is broad scientific agreement that 

deep-mined geologic repositories can be constructed in a wide variety of host-rock formations and hydrogeologic environments, including in salt, crystalline rock such as crystalline rock, different clay formations, and unsaturated volcanic tuff.

27 A brief discussion of 

the work to evaluate each host-rock type for permanent disposal of HLW and SNF follows.

25A more technically defensible approach would be to focus on the total hydrogeologic environment rather 

than rock type.

26The viability of any disposal concept ultimately will depend on finding an appropriate site and characterizing the site in sufficient detail.

27An excellent resource for understanding the development of disposal concepts is NEA 2008a.
24 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

Salt

Disposal of HLW and SNF in salt has been explored in detail in several countries for more 

than a one-half of a century. When the NAS first proposed developing such a repository, it 

was noted that “... the great advantage is that no water can pass through salt. Fractures are 

self-sealing ...” (NAS: 1957, 4-5; Appendix F). Those two properties have been at the core of 

the salt disposal concept adopted, for example, by the German waste-management 

program.

28

Disposal concept

As originally articulated, the salt disposal concept appears to be extremely elegant in its 

simplicity. Put in the simplest terms, if the salt is there, water flow, the predominant 

mechanism for transporting radionuclides to the biosphere, is not occurring at rates of 

concern for waste disposal. It is then just a matter of carving out drifts in the formation.

Waste is lowered and emplaced into the drifts, most likely in boreholes. The shafts leading 

to the repository, the drifts themselves, and the boreholes then are sealed with crushed and 

compacted salt.

Under lithostatic pressure exerted by the layers of rock above the repository, the salt flows 

slowly, closing around emplaced disposal packages and healing any fractures or voids that 

may have formed during the construction phase. Waste packages are not considered longterm barriers for isolating and containing HLW and SNF because localized brine 

inclusions could cause them to fail. Even so, because the environment in the repository 

would evolve over several hundred years from being oxidizing to become reducing, the 

waste would remain in a relatively insoluble form.

It is possible to analyze disposal of HLW and SNF in salt generically to determine whether 

it is an appropriate host rock for a deep-mined geologic repository. Those generic studies 

would have to address questions about the effects of heat on brine migration and whether 

pressures become too great when hydrogen is generated as small amounts of water contact 

the waste. Moreover, extensive underground exploration of salt beds or domes would be 

required to determine whether a particular site might be suitable for a deep-mined 

geologic repository. But at least some participants in the German program believe that an 

undisturbed deep-mined geologic repository in salt will have zero release of radionuclides 

to the biosphere for at least one million years (Krone et al. 2008).

29

Safety case

The safety case for disposing of HLW and SNF in salt involves a demonstration that the 

undisturbed geologic barrier would perform as anticipated and that engineered barriers 

(mainly shaft, drift, and borehole seals) would prevent brine inflow through the man-made 

penetrations of the salt barrier, thereby ensuring that any movement of dissolved 

radionuclides along those pathways will be minimal.

Sophisticated modeling work has been carried out to support the proposition that a 

disturbed salt repository holding non-heat-generating waste will isolate and contain 

28A very similar concept was used by DOE in developing the disposal concept for defense-origin transuranic 

waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.

29This position is consistent with the safety analysis carried out at WIPP in that the hypothetical releases 

are dominated by the human intrusion scenario. “Natural” releases are calculated to be minuscule 

(Westinghouse 1995).
Technical Basis for Developing Disposal Concepts and Supporting a Safety Case 25

radioactive waste for long periods of time (EPA 2006). Additional modeling appears to 

support the proposition for heat-generating waste as well, although that claim has not been 

subjected to a formal empirical or regulatory test. Toward that end, experiments also have 

been conducted to understand the compaction behavior of crushed salt. Investigations 

have been carried out to thermally simulate disposal in drifts of waste packages containing 

SNF. Based on these studies, experts from the German program argue that the engineered 

elements of the repository it contemplates using (other than the waste packages) would 

function reliably (Müller-Hoeppe et al. 2008). So far however, no country has advanced a 

comprehensive safety case for disposing of HLW and SNF in salt.

Crystalline rock

The KBS-3 plan developed by the Swedish program, supplemented by work carried out by 

the Canadian and Finnish programs, has resulted in a well-articulated crystalline rock 

disposal concept. The viability of this disposal concept depends on finding a site where the 

acidity and the oxidation-reduction potential of the groundwater enveloping the 

crystalline rock formation fall into an appropriate range. In that case, according to the 

laws of thermodynamics, elemental copper would not react with the groundwater and thus 

waste packages made of that material will contain the SNF virtually forever. Sites that have 

few fractures add an extra layer of protection.

Disposal concept

KBS-3 envisions a repository system composed of multiple compatible natural and 

engineered barriers. Groundwater in Swedish crystalline basement rock possesses the 

requisite chemical and electrochemical properties. The crystalline rock, however, is not 

impenetrable. Fractures 

permit groundwater to 

flow within the typical 

formation, although the 

flow usually is quite slow, 

thereby limiting release of 

radionuclides to the 

environment.

To reduce further the 

release of radionuclides, 

engineered barriers are 

critical elements of the 

KBS-3 plan. Rings of 

bentonite clay and sand are 

used to line the boreholes 

where the packages will be 

emplaced. This material 

further limits exposure of the 

copper canisters that contain the SNF to the groundwater. The bentonite also protects the 

canisters in the event of small movements in the rock and delays the spread of radionuclides 

that might escape from the waste package. The repository is designed so that the drifts can be 

backfilled with bentonite. The waste package features a canister, which is constructed from 

The KBS-3 method of disposing spent nuclear fuel. Source: SKB.
26 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

five-centimeter thick copper. In addition to being corrosion-resistant in the repository’s 

environment, the canister can withstand some of the mechanical forces caused by the 

movement of the rock (Hedin 2008). Inside the copper canister is a nodular cast-iron insert 

to increase the mechanical strength of the waste package.

Safety case

The safety case for the crystalline rock disposal concept depends most importantly on 

groundwater having favorable chemical properties, including acidity, oxidation-reduction 

potential, and dissolved solutes. All alternative corrosion mechanisms to the one 

articulated in the disposal concept have to be investigated to ensure that copper will 

remain in its elemental state. Bentonite has to be shown to limit advective transport under 

the chemical, thermal, mechanical, and hydrologic conditions expected to be present in 

the deep-mined geologic repository. Techniques for flawlessly welding lids on to the waste 

package must be demonstrated.

SKB has studied these issues. It has constructed laboratories to test the properties of 

bentonite under a wide range of conditions. It also has built a laboratory to investigate 

methods for welding and inspecting canister lids at an industrial scale. It has undertaken 

preliminary work to investigate the claim that new mechanisms have been identified by 

which copper might corrode in the basement rock. An extensive review of this particular 

issue, however, by the oversight body largely concluded that the claim was not technically 

supported (Swedish National Council for Nuclear Waste 2009). A report, however, to the 

Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM) suggests that this controversy has not yet been 

put entirely to rest (Macdonald and Sharifi-Asi 2011).

The KBS-3 plan has been subjected to rigorous national and international peer-review (see, 

for example, NEA 2001). SSM and the National Council for Nuclear Waste have regularly 

evaluated SKB’s plans to address outstanding technical issues. Neither organization has 

found flaws with the disposal concept that would require its abandonment or radical 

revision (see, for example, Swedish National Council for Nuclear Waste 2008). Confidence 

in the concept is increased because intact copper nodules, millions of years old, have been 

found enclosed in the same type of formations that might someday host a deep-mined 

geologic repository.

All information obtained through its research program was analyzed by SKB as it prepared 

a license application, which was submitted to the authorities in March 2011. As part of that 

application, SKB carried out a quantitative postclosure safety analysis of the proposed 

facility, primarily by estimating the possible dispersion of radionuclides and how those 

releases would be distributed in time for a representative selection of future potential 

scenario sequences.

Clay

A repository mined out of a layer of clay or clay-like materials may be an effective approach 

to isolating and containing HLW and SNF because the rock has three important 

properties. First, water typically moves very slowly through clay. Second, clay can have a 

high sorption capacity for radionuclides. Third, any fissures or fracture planes in the rock 

close by themselves over the course of time. Three countries are actively investigating the 

possibility of developing a deep-mined geologic repository in clay formations found within 
Technical Basis for Developing Disposal Concepts and Supporting a Safety Case 27

their borders: Belgium (boom clay); France (argillite); and Switzerland (opalinus clay).

Although some important differences exist among the three countries’ disposal concepts 

and the types of waste they will dispose of, the similarities in the disposal concepts are 

more substantial. For the purposes of the discussion below, Switzerland’s national program 

is described (NAGRA 2002).

Disposal concept

The absence of significant advective groundwater flow in the clay means that radionuclides 

would move out of the engineered barriers and the undisturbed rock at a very slow rate.

Any such movement would thus be controlled by diffusion, which suggests that only the 

most mobile and longest-lived radionuclides can reach the edge of the clay formation. Rock 

units surrounding the formation where a repository might be built, which also are rich in 

clay, would further slow the release of radionuclides to the biosphere. Chemical conditions 

in clay would be reducing, thereby maintaining the constituents of SNF in a low-solubility 

state.

Engineered barriers would be designed to work with the natural ones. The waste package 

would be constructed from steel and expected to prevent the inflow of water for several 

thousands of years. When the packages start to corrode, the resulting corrosion products 

might hydrolyze to create more acidic and aggressive near-field environments. The 

packages would be emplaced horizontally, and the drifts would be backfilled with 

bentonite. As with the crystalline rock disposal concept, the bentonite would retard the 

radionuclides and ensure that their transport is only by diffusion.

A separate but co-located, pilot facility would be constructed after a site for a deep-mined 

geologic repository is selected. Representative volumes of waste would be disposed of in 

this facility. Monitoring would take place to validate long-term predictions of how the host 

rock is evolving as well as to identify possible early indications of safety barrier failures.

Safety case

Like the German waste-management program, the Swiss program is intended to 

demonstrate that there will be zero releases for at least a million years if the host rock is 

undisturbed (NAGRA 2002). Only if there is significant climate change, borehole 

penetration of the repository, or deep groundwater extraction at the site would there be 

any release to the biosphere. Work to enhance the technical basis for the clay safety case 

continues, especially for repository performance under disturbed conditions. The 

following are some of the key uncertainties being explored:

•	 Solubility limits and sorption coefficients

•	 Rate at which the clay is resaturated

•	 Impact of heat on the performance of the bentonite buffer

•	 Gas generation by steel canister corrosion.

In creating its safety case, the waste-management program in Switzerland explicitly 

develops multiple lines of argument, including the use of alternative indicators that are 

complementary to those of dose and risk; natural analogues; and conservative 

performance assessments. Preliminary safety assessments using both deterministic and 

probabilistic methodologies have been carried out. Based on those assessments, the Swiss 
28 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

government has accepted the safety case advanced by NAGRA. The safety case also has 

been peer reviewed by an international team assembled by the NEA (NEA 2004c). The 

safety case also forms the basis for the Sectoral Plan, which currently guides efforts to 

identify suitable sites (SFOE 2008).

Unsaturated volcanic tuff

The United States is the only country that has developed a safety case for disposing of 

HLW and SNF in a deep-mined geologic repository located in unsaturated volcanic tuff.

That safety case was developed by DOE in parallel with the characterization of a specific 

site located at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The safety case rests on two main pillars. First, 

engineered barriers minimize the amount of water that can come in contact with the HLW 

and SNF. Second, transport 

of radionuclides to the 

biosphere is limited by the 

amount of water leaving the 

drifts (Abraham 2002).

Disposal concept

Very little precipitation falls 

on Yucca Mountain. A large 

fraction of what does returns 

to the atmosphere by 

evaporation, plant 

transpiration, and run-off; 

only a small amount of water 

infiltrates below the root 

zone, and even less seeps into 

the repository drifts. The 

location of the proposed 

repository lies in the 

unsaturated zone, where the 

environment is oxidizing, so 

the constituents of SNF would react with oxygen and become more mobile. To limit the 

release of radionuclides, corrosion-resistant titanium drip shields would be installed to 

divert the water that enters the drifts, thereby protecting the waste packages that lie 

underneath. The packages themselves would be fabricated with an outer layer of a nickelbased material, Alloy 22, and an inner layer of stainless steel. The packages would degrade 

very slowly in repository environments because of this corrosion-resistant alloy. Any 

radionuclides that escaped would move slowly because significant advective transport is 

unlikely.

Safety case

Relying on this disposal concept, DOE issued a final environmental impact statement 

(DOE 2002). That assessment was one of the reasons that Congress approved the selection 

of the Yucca Mountain site (U.S. Congress 2002). In June 2008, DOE submitted a license 

View of Yucca Mountain from Busted Butte. Source: DOE.
Technical Basis for Developing Disposal Concepts and Supporting a Safety Case 29

application to NRC based on a Total System Performance Assessment, which is grounded 

on more than 30 years of site-specific scientific and technical investigations.

Nonetheless, questions remain about the safety case for unsaturated volcanic tuff. Nearly 

300 issues have been raised by supporters and opponents participating in the licensing 

hearing convened by the NRC. Moreover, the NWTRB, which is not a party to those 

hearings, has noted that there is only a poor understanding of how fast water moves in the 

unsaturated zone (NWTRB 2008, 30-31). It also has suggested that deliquescence-induced 

localized corrosion could lead to more-rapid waste package degradation than DOE 

maintains (NWTRB 2008, 25-28). These issues might eventually be resolved in the course 

of that hearing process. For the moment, at least, that hearing process has been suspended.

Table 2 presents a summary of the information contained in this section.

Table 2

Safety cases for disposing of HLW and SNF

in a deep-mined geologic repository

Host 

Rock

Countries

Adopting 

Safety Case

Foundations of Safety Case

Salt Germany Presence of salt implies the absence of flowing water.

Fractures are self-sealing.

High thermal conductivity and high acceptable design 

temperatures permit the construction of a small-footprint 

repository.

Crystalline 

rock

Sweden, Finland Near-neutral, reducing groundwater thermodynamically 

precludes corrosion of elemental copper.

Bentonite clay limits water contact with the waste package and 

retards the release of any radionuclides.

Clay Belgium, France, 

Switzerland

Water typically moves very slowly through clays.

Clay can have a high sorption capacity for radionuclides.

Any fissures or fracture planes present in the rock close by 

themselves over time. 

Simplified design has no or small requirements for 

engineered barriers.

Unsaturated 

volcanic tuff

United States Under current climatic conditions, limited amounts of rain fall on 

Yucca Mountain.

Engineered barriers prevent the release of radionuclides to the 

natural system for a long time and release radionuclides slowly 

after penetration.

Transport of radionuclides to the biosphere is limited by the 

amount of water leaving the drifts.
30 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

Major summary points

•	 Disposal concepts currently under consideration vary depending on the host rock 

within which the repository would be constructed.

•	 In all national programs, the disposal concept relies on both natural and engineered 

barriers. Concepts differ markedly in how much each barrier contributes to waste 

isolation and containment.

•	 Some disposal concepts, such as the KBS-3 approach to developing a repository in 

crystalline rock, are supported directly by fundamental physical principles. Others are 

supported by detailed modeling and analyses.
31

Substance and 

Adoption of Health 

and Safety Standards 

and Regulations

Health and safety regulations serve two purposes. They record society’s views about 

what constitutes acceptable risk, and they establish mechanisms for certifying 

that an implementer’s plan to develop a deep-mined geologic repository can, with 

a high degree of confidence, satisfy those requirements. All of the 13 national wastemanagement programs have put in place at least a rudimentary regulatory regime.

Substance of the regulations

As nations adopted geologic disposal as their preferred option for the long-term 

management of HLW and SNF, the question soon arose about what standards should 

govern that choice. Many of those involved argued that it is not the responsibility of the 

nuclear community to “purify” the earth by reducing the population’s total exposure to 

radioactive materials. Thus they promoted the position that a repository need not sequester 

waste beyond the time when it becomes less hazardous than the uranium ore from which it 

was derived (see, for example, the discussion in NAS 1983). This simple approach has been 

replaced by more-sophisticated standards that focus on four specific issues.

30

First, the regulators must decide on the length of the compliance period, the time over 

which the repository is expected to satisfy the protective standards. Regulators originally 

chose compliance periods of several thousand years. Now national programs in Belgium, 

France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States have selected compliance 

30 See Table 7 and the Detailed Tables in NWTRB 2009 for a more complete description of the regulations 

that have been adopted to date.
32 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

periods of at least 100,000 years and, in most of those cases, as much as 1,000,000 years. In 

the United Kingdom, the regulator requires the implementer to choose a compliance 

period and justify its choice.

Second, regulators impose dose constraints or risk limits or some combination of the two.

Increasingly national waste-management programs have converged on similar dose 

constraints and risk limits, at least for the first few thousands of years that a repository is 

expected to isolate and contain HLW and SNF. Dose constraints vary between 0.1 and 0.3 

millisieverts per year. Risk limits vary between a probability of 10-5 and 10-6 per year that 

death or serious health effects will arise over the course of the lifetime of an individual 

from exposure to radionuclides released from a repository. Beyond the first few thousand 

years, dose constraints may be also much as 1 millisievert per year and risk limits may be 

as low as 10-3 per year for some scenarios.

Third, the regulators decide how prescriptive their requirements should be. Those choices 

have produced considerable variation in how much direction the regulators provide. In 

some national programs, most notably the one in the United States, the rules are quite 

detailed, laying out specific requirements that the implementer must fulfill in order to get 

permission to construct or operate a deep-mined geologic repository. Among the specifics 

called for are the following (NRC 2001).

•	 Information that must be contained in an application to construct a repository

•	 Technical criteria for conducting preclosure and postclosure performance analyses, 

testing designs, and carrying out monitoring

•	 Requirements for evaluating the consequences of inadvertent human intrusion into a 

repository

•	 Types of institutional controls over the repository.

One of the ways that regulators defend the imposition of prescriptive requirements is by 

maintaining that they reduce the implementers’ uncertainty.

In other national programs, such as the ones in Canada and Germany, the regulators 

simply require the implementer to provide information and to perform analyses in 

whatever manner it chooses. For example, the implementer is told that “... a 

comprehensive safety case [must] be documented for all operating states of the final 

repository ...” and that it must provide “... analysis and representation of the robustness of 

the final repository system ... [along] with the reasons why this assessment is to be trusted 

...” (BMU 2010, 11-12). One of the ways that regulators defend the imposition of nonprescriptive requirements is by maintaining that they increase the implementers’ 

flexibility.

Fourth, national programs differ in how compliance with the standards is to be 

demonstrated and what the requirements for demonstration are. In the Finnish, French, and 

German programs, a small set of scenarios is defined, and the implementer is required to 

evaluate deterministically how its proposed deep-mined geologic repository would perform.

The regulators in the United States believe that the appropriate compliance methodology is a 

probabilistic performance assessment. Finally, the regulators in some countries, including 

Sweden and France, call for mixed approaches in which quantitative methods are used to 

evaluate performance early in the compliance period and more-qualitative methods are 
Substance and Adoption of Health and Safety Standards and Regulations 33

applied to later time periods. The Canadian regulators leave the choice of methodology 

completely up to the implementer.

Adoption of regulations

All national programs that have adopted specific regulations for the long-term 

management of HLW and SNF have done so in similar ways. Traditional mechanisms for 

public involvement are used. Most typically, the regulators themselves prepare a draft of 

the rules they want to adopt. Rarely will other interested and affected parties have the right 

to comment while the draft is being prepared.

31 Once it is completed, the regulators 

generally will release the proposed requirements for public comment. In some cases, the 

regulators convene open meetings where parties can ask the regulators questions and 

provide recommendations directly.

Regulators review the public input and determine what changes, if any, need to be made to 

the draft rules. Sometimes they also will prepare a document that explains why some 

suggestions were accepted and others were not. Once a final rule is published, it will take 

effect after a short period passes. In some countries, parties that disagree with the 

regulators’ determinations can appeal to the courts. In the United States, this tactic tends 

to be used more often than not. Although courts may overturn or remand regulations to 

their authors, the judiciary usually defers to the regulators’ expert judgment as long as 

there is a reasoned basis for it.

National programs typically have put health and safety regulations into place after the 

implementer has begun to formulate its safety case or to identify candidate sites for a deepmined geologic repository but before specific sites have been chosen. Some interested and 

affected parties may contend that revising regulations after a final site has been selected is 

inappropriate if the change process is not well explained and supported.

What transpired in the United States provides an instructive example of this dynamic. In 

response to Congress’ passage of the 1992 Energy Policy Act, the Environmental Protection 

Agency and NRC issued Yucca Mountain-specific standards and regulations in the mid2000s. Both agencies maintained that the new rules reflected the state-of-the art.

32 The State 

of Nevada, an opponent of the repository, claimed that the switch in approach was 

deliberately designed to aid in the licensing of the facility. In particular, the State argued that 

new technical information had come to light that, under one provision in the old—but not 

the new— rules, would have required the Secretary of Energy to disqualify the site (Miller 

1996).

33 For some, this argument was made more persuasive because of DOE’s deep 

involvement in the interagency process that reviewed the rules as the regulators were 

developing them (EPA 2005). Of course, sorting out motivations is never easy. For that 

reason, trust and confidence in the regulators may be compromised for at least some 

interested and affected parties if the process for changing rules is not completely transparent.

31 In the United States, regulators sometimes will publish an “Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” 

to solicit the views of interested and affected parties before the release of a draft regulation.

32The approach was recommended by NAS (NAS 1995).

33The provision involves limits of groundwater travel time from the repository to the accessible 

environment.
34 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

Major summary points

•	 National programs have adopted comparable health and safety standards and 

regulations. Some differences, however, exist both in the level of acceptable dose or 

risk and in the compliance period. The length of the compliance period typically has 

become much longer as the rules have evolved.

•	 A major difference between the regulatory process in the United States compared to 

most other countries is the requirement that a quantitative, probabilistic assessment of 

compliance with the standard must be presented. Compared to most other nations, the 

regulatory regime in the United States is very prescriptive.

•	 The process and rationale used to modify requirements can affect the public’s trust 

and confidence in the regulator, especially once a site has been chosen for a deepmined geologic repository.
35

Strategies for 

Identifying Candidate 

Sites for a Deep-Mined 

Geologic Repository

P

resident Jimmy Carter’s Interagency Review Group on Nuclear Waste Management 

(IRG) observed that site-selection strategies for a deep-mined geologic repository 

necessarily involve passing candidates through what is, in effect, two distinctly 

different “filters.” On the one hand, detailed and quantitative technical requirements have 

to be met. On the other, sites could be disqualified because of considerations such as the 

“... lack of social acceptance, high population density, or difficulty of access.” The two 

filters could be applied in any order. In the IRG’s view, at least, although the suite of sites 

eventually selected might be different, depending on the order in which the filters were 

applied, “... equally suitable sites should emerge from either approach ...” (IRG 1979 80; 

81).

34 Over the years, the United States and other nations have initiated roughly two-dozen 

efforts to identify or to create processes for identifying potential repository sites. What is 

noteworthy is how varied those efforts have been.

Technical filter

Part of the variation stems from how the technical filter is constructed. In some cases, efforts 

to identify candidate sites have focused from the beginning on specific host-rock formations.

The choice of those formations has been dictated either by constraints imposed by a 

country’s geology or land-use patterns, by a view that particular host-rock formations 

possess distinctive advantages in terms of isolating and containing HLW and SNF, or by a 

34As the IRG recognized, and as will be noted below, there is no unambiguous boundary that differentiates 

a “technical” from a “nontechnical” filter. At the margins, some overlap and interdependence may, even 

must, exist.
36 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

combination of these 

rationales. In Sweden and 

Finland, efforts were 

concentrated exclusively on 

the granitic formations of 

the Baltic Shield, which 

underlies the vast majority of 

both countries (Sundqvist 

2002). In their early attempts 

to identify a candidate site, 

the United States and 

Germany looked only at 

locations in salt formations.

The United States 

investigated sites near Lyons, 

Kansas, and in the Permian 

Basin in the southwest. The 

Germans chose a site at 

Gorleben. Because of the 

political turbulence surrounding the development of nuclear power, however, investigations 

at that site were suspended for 10 years. Those studies have been resumed recently (BfS 2010).

The Swiss initially looked at sites in both crystalline rock and clay. Now only clay sites are 

being considered (SFOE 2008).

In other cases, efforts to identify candidate sites cast the net more broadly by enumerating 

generic qualifying and disqualifying conditions.

35 Qualifying conditions must be satisfied 

for a candidate site to be considered acceptable; disqualifying conditions eliminate a 

candidate sites from further consideration. In France, qualifying conditions included the 

depth of the repository horizon, the thickness of the host formation, the absence of natural 

resources, and present and future hydrogeologic flow patterns. In the United States, before 

the passage in 1987 of the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act (NWPAA), both 

qualifying and disqualifying conditions for the preliminary screening of potential sites 

were elaborated on in considerable detail (DOE 1984). The Canadians have advanced six 

“safety factors” that are likely to be used to evaluate candidate sites (NWMO 2009). In the 

Japanese screening approach, sites within a 15 km radius of the center of Quaternary 

volcanoes are rejected (NUMO 2004). Exclusionary screening criteria eliminate locations 

in England and Wales that are close to natural resources, such as fossil fuels and fresh 

water, as well as those within deep karstic formations and known source rocks for thermal 

springs (UKG 2008). In Germany, the AkEnd working group proposed seven qualifying 

conditions, which then were used to eliminate from consideration host-rock formations in 

five regions (AkEnd 2002).

36 Table 3 summarizes how the technical filter has been 

constructed in the two-dozen siting initiatives undertaken to date.

35 Importantly, to date, no country uses a whole-system performance assessment to select the initial suite 

of candidate sites. At subsequent stages in the site-selection process, however, more holistic and systemic 

approaches are brought to bear.

36The recommendations advanced by AkEnd group were never adopted by the German Federal 

Government. Subsequently, the German Geological Survey concluded that crystalline rock formations in 

Germany were not suitable for development as a deep-mined geologic repository.

Determining the suitability of granite as a host rock. Source: SKB. 
Strategies for Identifying Candidate Sites for a Deep-Mined Geologic Repository 37

Table 3

Technical filter

Country Focus on Hostrock Formation

Qualifying and 

Disqualifying 

Conditions Formally 

Adopted to Structure 

the Site-Selection 

Process

United States

AEC: Lyons Salt None

ERDA: Permian Basin Salt None

IRG Recommended that NRC establish 

siting criteria.

DOE: NWPA DOE established detailed siting 

criteria.

DOE: WIPP Salt None

DOE: NWPAA Tuff DOE established new siting 

criteria.

Belgium Clay None

Canada

AECL Crystalline rock None

NWMO Proposed general siting criteria.*

China Crystalline rock National Nuclear Safety 

Administration established 

general siting criteria.

Finland Crystalline rock Radiation and Nuclear Safety 

Authority (STUK) established 

general siting criteria.

France

CEA No siting criteria established.

ANDRA Crystalline rock and clay Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) 

established general criteria.

Germany

Gorleben (1970s) Salt None

AkEnd Proposed specific siting criteria.

Gorleben (2010) Salt None

*

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has issued guidance on siting a deep-mined geologic repository for 

HLW and SNF. 

Technical filter

Country Focus on Hostrock Formation

Qualifying and 

Disqualifying 

Conditions Formally 

Adopted to Structure 

the Site-Selection 

Process

Japan NUMO proposed general siting 

criteria.

Republic of Korea No decision made. No decision made.

Spain No decision made. No decision made.

Sweden

SKB: Pre-1992 Crystalline rock None

SKB: Post-1992 Crystalline rock None

Switzerland

SFOE: Pre-2005 Crystalline rock and clay None

SFOE: Post-2005 Clay General siting criteria 

established.

United Kingdom

UKAEA: 1970s None

NIREX: Late 1980s Wide variety of 

sedimentary and igneous 

rocks

None

NDA Wide variety of 

sedimentary and igneous 

rocks

Siting criteria advanced as 

Government policy.
38 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

Nontechnical filter

Just as the construction of the technical filter introduces considerable variation in 

strategies for selecting candidate sites for a deep geologic repository, so does the 

construction of the nontechnical one. Arguably this filter’s most important property 

relates to the power that a state or a community can exercise. In particular, the experience 

in the United States illustrates that the power need not be formalized in order to be 

effective. In 1971, the AEC proposed a site near Lyons, Kansas. Neither the state nor the 

local community—both of which opposed the selection—was given any explicit power to 

object. Nonetheless, opposition by the state contributed to a decision not to develop the 

site. Two years later, the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) 

sought to investigate sites in the Salina Basin, which runs through Michigan, New York, 

and Ohio. Although the governors of those states did not have any formal authority, their 

opposition was sufficient to prevent any site investigations (Carter 1978).

Based on this experience, the IRG advanced the idea of “consultation and concurrence” in 

its recommendations to President Carter. Although this concept was never interpreted by 

the administration as offering a state the formal power to reject a site, as a practical matter, 

it did precisely that. In the IRG’s draft report to the President, it observed that “...a state 

would be in agreement with each step of the [repository development] process before the 

next activity ...” would begin (IRG 1979, 88). Later, “consultation and concurrence” 

evolved into the less potent concept of “consultation and cooperation,” a formulation that 

was adopted in the 1982 NWPA. That legislation gave a state formal veto power over the 

selection of a site by the President, but the state veto could be overridden by a resolution 

approved by both houses of Congress. In the NWPAA, Congress mandated that only the 

Yucca Mountain site could be characterized, although it left unchanged Nevada’s power to 

veto the President’s recommendation, subject to an override by Congress.

Since the early 1990s, nations other than the United States increasingly have constructed 

their nontechnical filters in ways that significantly empower local jurisdictions. In Sweden, 

in the 1980s, SKB unilaterally identified potential sites and attempted to drill boreholes to 

test whether the sites are suitable for a deep-mined geologic repository. Subsequently, 

however, the implementer reconciled itself to the fact that the local communities have 

formal veto authority over the siting of infrastructure projects. Consequently, in the early 

1990s, SKB issued a call for volunteers to host a repository. A number of communities 

responded positively, knowing that they held veto power over the final selection of a site.

(Although the veto can be overridden by the national government, both political tradition 

and the legal constraints imposed make this an unlikely event.) A similar situation exists 

in Finland.

In France, districts and communities near Bure volunteered to host an underground 

research laboratory, knowing that it might become the forerunner to a repository. In 

Switzerland, now that technically suitable regions have been identified, cantonal 

commissions are being established to participate in decisions leading to the selection of at 

least two candidate sites. Although the presumption is that efforts will be made to resolve 

any conflicts that may arise, the final decision will rest with the Federal Council, subject to 

a possible national referendum.

37 Newly adopted processes for identifying candidate sites 

37Before the process was changed in 2003, the referendum was held only in the canton where a repository 

might be sited.
Strategies for Identifying Candidate Sites for a Deep-Mined Geologic Repository 39

in England and Wales in the United Kingdom, Japan, and Canada all require localities to 

volunteer even before paper studies of the local geology can be conducted.

Experience both in the United States and in other nations suggests that communities 

already hosting nuclear facilities or communities where benefits might make a significant 

economic or social difference may be especially receptive to being considered as a 

candidate repository site.

38 In Sweden and Finland, candidate sites were identified in 

communities where nuclear power plants operate. In Britain, borough and county councils 

in West Cumbria, where the Sellafield nuclear facilities are located, expressed an early 

interest in being considered a potential repository site. The state of Lower Saxony in 

Germany welcomed investigations of the Gorleben site. In the United States, the city of 

Carlsbad, New Mexico, aggressively sought to be considered as the location for WIPP as a 

means of bringing employment to the community.

39

Focusing primarily on the nontechnical filter does not necessarily eliminate the frictions 

associated with identifying candidate sites for a deep geologic repository.

40 In Japan, the 

situation is very much in limbo. In 2002, Government launched a voluntary process. The 

mayor of the Toyo township in the Kochi Prefecture southwest of Tokyo announced that 

he would respond positively to NUMO’s open solicitation. Opposition arose immediately 

within the local community and from governors of nearby prefectures. Ultimately the 

mayor was soundly defeated in an election that served as a referendum on participation in 

the site-selection process. No other community has stepped forward since. The Japanese 

government is now suggesting that alternatives to a voluntary approach may have to be 

considered. In the United States, although two of the three candidate sites identified for the 

first repository under the NWPA were “nuclear communities,” governors of the two states 

where they were located announced their intense opposition, and both made clear that 

they would exercise a veto if the site in their site were chosen for development.

41

Table 4 summarizes how the nontechnical filter has been constructed in the two-dozen 

siting initiatives.

Interdependence of the filters

The two filters are not independent of each other, except in some abstract or theoretical 

sense. The construction of the nontechnical one may affect the technical one in important 

ways. To begin with, applying the technical and nontechnical filters is not purely 

mechanical nor can it typically be programmed neutrally. In the United States, to consider 

just one example, the technical content of the 1984 siting guidelines (10 CFR 960) was 

constrained by language in the NWPA and was profoundly influenced by an 

38These communities always make clear that their continued interest depends on being convinced that a 

repository would operate safely.

39Only defense-origin transuranic waste can be disposed of at WIPP under present regulations and agreements. However, because that facility is the only operating deep-mined geologic repository, its story may 

be instructive for efforts to site a facility for HLW and SNF.

40Many analysts and commentators, for instance, point to the success of the siting process in Sweden and 

argue that it should be emulated elsewhere. Although the process may work well in Sweden, the Swedish model has not (yet) been successfully replicated in any of the other countries that have consciously 

adopted it (IAEA 2007).

41The Japanese and the American examples illustrate the so-called “donut effect,” in which a local community willing to host a deep geologic repository can be blocked by officials representing governments at 

the state or regional level.
40 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

Table 4

Nontechnical filter

Country

Early State 

or Local 

Involvement

in the 

Process

Volunteer

Nuclear 

Community

Benefits 

Package

United 

States

AEC: 

Lyons

None No No None

ERDA: 

Permian 

Basin

None No No None

IRG Non-site specific 

process.

Proposed consultation and 

concurrence.

Not applicable Not 

applicable.

DOE: 

NWPA

None No Two nuclear 

communities were 

among the three 

final sites 

selected.

Benefits 

package 

could be 

negotiated.

DOE: 

WIPP

Informal Carlsbad community 

expressed willingness to 

host facility. New Mexico 

did not object.

No Benefits 

package 

received.

DOE: 

NWPAA

None No Yes Benefits 

package 

could be 

negotiated.

Belgium No decision 

made.

No decision made. No decision 

made.

No decision 

made.

Canada

AECL Non-site specific 

process.

Not applicable. Not applicable. Not 

applicable.

NWMO Extensive Yes No decision 

made.

No decision 

made.

China No decision 

made.

No decision made. No decision 

made.

No decision 

made.

Finland Yes Did not veto selection.

France

CEA No No No No

ANDRA Yes Volunteers were sought to 

host an underground 

research laboratory.

No Benefits 

package was 

received.

Germany

Gorleben 

(1970s)

Yes. Yes No Benefits 

package 

received.

AkEnd Non-site specific 

process.

Not applicable. Not applicable. Not 

applicable.

Gorleben 

(2010)

Yes Yes No Benefits 

package is 

available.

Nontechnical filter

Country

Early State 

or Local 

Involvement

in the 

Process

Volunteer

Nuclear 

Community

Benefits 

Package

Japan Yes Volunteer unsuccessfully 

sought for the last eight 

years

No decision 

made.

Benefits 

package is 

available.

Republic of 

Korea

No decision 

made.

No decision made. No decision 

made.

No decision 

made.

Spain No decision 

made.

No decision made. No decision 

made.

No decision 

made.

Sweden

SKB: Pre1992No No No No

SKB: 

Post-1992

Yes Originally eight 

communities volunteered for 

feasibility studies to 

evaluate whether they 

would be prepared to host 

a repository. Two of the 

communities volunteered to 

host a repository

Yes Benefits 

package was 

negotiated in 

which the 

community 

not selected 

to host a 

repository 

would receive 

three-quarters 

of the total.

Switzerland

SFOE: 

Pre-2005

No No No No

SFOE: 

Post-2005

Communities will 

be consulted as 

part of Phase I of 

the Sectoral Plan.

No decision 

made.

No decision 

made.

United 

Kingdom

UKAEA: 

1970s

No No No decision 

made.

No

NIREX: 

Late 

1980s

No No Yes No

NDA Yes Borough and county 

councils located near the 

Sellafield site have 

expressed an interest in 

possibly hosting a 

repository.

Yes Benefits 

package is 

available.
Strategies for Identifying Candidate Sites for a Deep-Mined Geologic Repository 41

administrative rulemaking process, in which states sought to include guidelines that 

would lead to the disqualification of sites within their borders.

42 In addition, using those 

guidelines to narrow the nine potential sites to five sites, which would be evaluated, to 

three sites, which would be characterized, revealed how difficult it can be to implement 

even an ostensibly objective and technical process (DOE 1986a; Merkhofer and Keeney 

1987). The evaluation of the qualifying and disqualifying conditions was open, perhaps 

unavoidably, to considerable interpretative flexibility. Moreover, by focusing on selective 

and discrete attributes of a candidate site, the performance of the total repository system 

never received appropriate attention.

Further, implicit in a voluntarist approach is the presumption that a very wide range of 

geologic features and locations are suitable or can be made suitable. In some cases, this 

presumption is well-founded. In both Sweden and Finland, the Baltic Shield is so pervasive 

that sites throughout both countries likely could be found to develop a repository.

Similarly, in the United States, the salt formations of the Salina and Permian Basins are so 

extensive that many locations could be considered. In other cases, even after taking into 

account fairly general disqualifying conditions, potential disconnects may very well arise, 

so that applying both the technical and the nontechnical filters yields a null set of 

potentially suitable and acceptable sites. For many countries, including the United States 

under the NWPA and Switzerland, applying the technical filter rigorously at the start is 

viewed as a prerequisite for creating a credible process for identifying candidate sites for a 

deep geologic repository. Yet, in the former instance, Congress halted characterization of 

any site other than Yucca Mountain. In the latter one, the final outcome is still to be 

determined.

Sequencing

An additional source of variation among national programs can be traced to policies that 

govern the sequence for accepting or rejecting a candidate site. In the United States, a 

“serial” policy was at first adopted. Sites would be evaluated formally one by one until a 

suitable site was found. The Carter Administration, however, proposed a “parallel” 

approach, in which at least two candidate sites would be characterized simultaneously and 

compared. This recommendation was ratified in the NWPA. Several years later, Congress 

returned to a serial policy with the passage of the NWPAA, which singled out Yucca 

Mountain in Nevada as the sole site to be characterized. Although several sites were 

informally considered in Germany during the 1960s and 1970s, the Gorleben site was the 

only one investigated seriously. Despite a clear call for communities to volunteer, the 

government in the United Kingdom has received an expression of interest from only one 

group of local governments. Thus, the opportunity to compare candidate sites may never 

materialize. Conversely, the Swiss mandate the parallel characterization and comparison 

of at least two sites. In Sweden and Finland, sites in two and four municipalities 

respectively were investigated in comparable detail.

43 In France, more than 30 sites were 

studied before 1990. Legislation passed in 1991 required the comparison of a clay site and a 

42 See, for example, comments on the proposed 10 CFR 960 from the State of Nevada suggesting that oxidizing conditions should disqualify a proposed site and comments from the State of Mississippi seeking to 

limit the ability of DOE to site a repository in salt domes.

43 In Sweden, the two detailed investigations had been preceded by feasibility studies in eight communities, 

resulting in the identification a total of eight sites in five communities as having the potential for detailed 

investigation.
42 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

Table 5

Processes for selecting candidate sites for a deep-mined 

geologic repository

Country Application of 

the Filters Challenges Encountered Outcome Serial or Parallel Evaluation of Sites

United States

AEC: Lyons Technical filter was applied. State opposition led to Congress to deny appropriations. Site was abandoned. Serial

ERDA: Permian 

Basin

Technical filter was applied. State opposition arose. Sites were never investigated. Serial

IRG Asserted that order in which the filters 

were applied did not matter.

Proposals were generally accepted. Most proposals were incorporated into the NWPA. A parallel approach was proposed.

DOE: NWPA Technical filter was applied. Costs of site characterization rose; political opposition from 

final three candidate states intensified.

Congress amended the NWPA to allow only the Yucca Mountain site to 

be characterized.

Parallel

DOE: WIPP Nontechnical filter was applied once 

the AEC had identified salt as a 

favorable generic host-rock formation. 

Local community supported the selection of the site, 

overcoming opposition from the Carter Administration.

WIPP began accepting waste from the DOE defense complex in 1999. Serial

DOE: NWPAA Nontechnical filter was applied. State of Nevada opposed the selection of Yucca Mountain. Administration moved to withdraw license application in 2010. Litigation 

is ongoing at the NRC and in the courts.

Serial

Belgium No decision made. Not applicable. Not applicable. No decision made.

Canada

AECL Technical filter was applied first. Disposal concept was deemed socially unacceptable. National waste-management program was reconstituted. No decision made.

NWMO General siting criteria are used to 

identify areas that might be suitable; 

eight volunteer communities have 

expressed an interest in hosting a 

repository.

Adaptive Phased Management approach generally 

accepted.

Siting process has been initiated. Depends on the number of volunteers.

China Technical filter was applied. No challenges have emerged to date. Process is continuing. No decision made.

Finland Technical filter was applied; 

negotiations with communities took 

place.

Few challenges were encountered to date. Site at Eurajoki is being developed for a repository. Parallel

France

CEA Technical filter was applied first. Political opposition arose. Sites were never investigated. Serial

ANDRA Nontechnical filter was applied. Few challenges were encountered to date. Underground research laboratory established in Meuse/Haute-Marne 

region; nearby a repository is being developed.

Parallel in theory; serial in practice.
Strategies for Identifying Candidate Sites for a Deep-Mined Geologic Repository 43

Processes for selecting candidate sites for a deep-mined 

geologic repository

Country Application of 

the Filters Challenges Encountered Outcome Serial or Parallel Evaluation of Sites

Germany

Gorleben (1970s) Technical filter was applied to select salt as the 

generic host rock. State of Lower Saxony 

proposed the specific site.

Although the local state was initially supportive, 

difficulties arose at the national level following 

the 1998 federal election.

Site investigations were suspended for 10 years. Serial

AkEnd Proposed a set of site-selection criteria to winnow 

down the number of potential sites; negotiations 

with communities would follow.

Political support for proposal never developed. Proposal was never adopted as national policy. Parallel

Gorleben (2010) Application of technical filter was resumed in 

October 2010.

Political opposition has arisen, but it is too early 

to know how intense and sustained it will be. 

Both the Federal and Lower Saxony governments 

support the construction of a deep-mined 

geologic repository at Gorleben.

Unclear Serial

Republic of Korea No decision made. Not applicable Not applicable No decision made.

Spain No decision made. Not applicable Not applicable No decision made.

Sweden

SKB: Pre-1992 Technical filter applied. Political opposition arose. Sites were never investigated. No decision made.

SKB: Post-1992 Nationwide search held for a community that 

would allow site investigations.

Many communities volunteered in the initial 

round. Two communities remained in contention 

until the end of the process.

Site in Östhammer is being developed for a repository. Parallel

Switzerland

SFOE: Pre-2005 Technical filter applied. Criticism arose that there was no comparison of 

sites.

Government accepted the disposal concept, but required site 

comparisons.

Serial

SFOE: Post-2005 Technical filter being applied to be followed by 

the application of the nontechnical filter.

Few challenges have been encountered to date. Unclear Parallel in theory.

United Kingdom

UKAEA: 1970s Technical filter to be applied first. Planning permission was difficult to obtain.

Nirex: Late 

1980s

Technical filter to be applied first. Planning permission was denied.

NDA General siting criteria will be used to identify 

areas that might be suitable.

No overt opposition to process. Two adjacent communities have expressed an interest in 

participating in the Managing Radioactive Waste Safely process.

Depends on the number of volunteers communities.

Table 5, continued
44 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

crystalline rock site. Finding an appropriate site in crystalline rock was not possible, so an 

actual clay site was ultimately contrasted with a hypothetical crystalline rock site. Finally, 

in several countries, including Canada, Belgium, China, and Britain, no explicit decision 

has been made about using a serial or a parallel approach.

Table 5 summarizes how the filters have been or are being applied by the 13 nations 

considered in this report.

Major summary points

•	 National programs must balance specificity and generality in constructing technical 

filters. More-specific qualifying and disqualifying conditions reduce the number of 

potential candidate sites but provide explicit guidance on a technical basis for their 

selection. General qualifying and disqualifying conditions allow more sites to be 

considered but typically provide only a generic technical basis for their selection.

•	 Many national programs seek to identify a suite of candidate sites so that they can 

be compared. This objective has not always been met. No country to date has fully 

characterized at depth more than one site.

•	 Although the process for identifying candidate sites appears clear and accountable, in 

practice it has proven to be cumbersome. The overwhelming majority of efforts have 

not succeeded. In many cases, the underlying cause of failure has been an inability to 

integrate the application of the technical and nontechnical filters, the most important 

of which is public support or opposition.
45

Site Selection for a 

Deep-Mined Geologic 

Repository

I

n all national programs, the implementer is responsible for proposing a site for 

development as a deep-mined geologic repository. In some cases, political ratification at 

the national level of that decision also must take place.

The implementer’s decision

If only one site has been fully characterized at depth, as is the case in the French and 

American programs, it will be proposed by default if the implementer believes it to be 

suitable. Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom, which have adopted, at least in 

principle, a parallel approach to identifying candidate sites, have not specified how the 

implementer will choose among multiple suitable sites. The implementer in Switzerland 

has been given only the most general instructions for making its decision (SFOE 2008, 64).

[The implementer shall] select the site for repository construction from the sites that 

have been integrated into the Sectoral Plan as an interim result. To be able to make and 

justify this selection, the level of knowledge for the different sites has to sufficient to 

allow a comparison to be carried out... The results—together with the evaluation of 

further aspects in accordance with the conceptual part of the Sectoral Plan—lead to an 

overall evaluation for site selection by the [implementer].

Implementers in Finland and Sweden, however, did decide among several candidate sites.

Moreover, in the United States, before Congress only permitted the characterization of 

Yucca Mountain, DOE narrowed candidate sites from nine to five to three.
46 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

Finland

Posiva Oy used the environmental impact assessment process to document its choice of 

Olkiluoto site in Eurajoki over Romuvaara in Kuhmo, Hästholmen in Loviisa, and Kivetty 

in Äänekoski (Posiva Oy 1999). The assessment considered the following eight criteria.

•	 Long-term safety

•	 Constructability

•	 Possibilities to expand the repository

•	 Operation of the final disposal facility

•	 Social acceptance

•	 Land use and environmental loading

•	 Infrastructure

•	 Costs.

Although the four sites 

have different geologic 

properties, they did not 

differ appreciably in terms 

of their long-term ability 

to isolate and contain SNF.

Nor did the sites differ 

substantially in the 

geotechnical work needed 

to build the facility, the 

ease how it could be 

expanded, infrastructure 

requirements, or costs.

Because Eurajoki and 

Loviisa host nuclear power 

plants, their residents were 

less fearful of the 

transport of SNF through 

their communities and 

were more generally 

accepting of a repository.

Developing a deep-mined 

geologic repository in 

Kuhmo and Äänekoski 

would significantly transform heavily forested areas. In the final analysis, Posiva chose the 

Eurajoki site over the Lovissa one based on economic and development considerations 

rather than for technical reasons.

Sweden

In 2009, SKB compared a site at Forsmark in Östhammar with a site at Laxemar in 

Oskarshamn (SKB 2009). Both communities strongly support the placing of a deep-mined 

SKB informs the mayors from two candidate municipalities of its site-selection decision. Source: SKB. 
Site Selection for a Deep-Mined Geologic Repository 47

geologic repository within their boundaries. SKB thus could focus its decision-making 

solely on the following technical factors:

•	 Safety-related site characteristics

•	 Technology for execution, i.e. the prospects for carrying out the project as robustly 

and efficiently as possible

•	 Occupational health and environmental impact

•	 Societal resources.

SKB did not accord these considerations equal weight. “In the event the analyses do not 

show a clear difference between the sites, the site that offers the best prospects for longterm safety is selected ...” (SKB 2009, 57).

SKB ultimately chose the Östhammar site because it possessed superior characteristics in 

comparison to the site at Oscarshamn. According to SKB, important differences in the 

permeability of fractures in the bedrock and somewhat smaller differences in the projected 

future composition of the groundwater created significant differences in the safety 

assessments of the two sites. Further, significant future reduction in the salinity of the 

groundwater at either site could result in degradation of the bentonite, raising the 

possibility of sulphide-induced corrosion of the copper waste packages. Because 

groundwater flow is considerably lower at Östhammar, fewer packages would be damaged.

At the margins, Östhammar also was preferred because constructing a repository would 

be easier, and the environmental impacts would be lower. No political ratification of SKB’s 

decision to base its license application on the site located in Östhammar was required.

United States

Under the NWPA, DOE was required to recommend to the President a suite of sites for 

detailed characterization. After a long and contentious public process, DOE issued sitesuitability guidelines (DOE: 1984). It prepared environmental assessments for five 

potential sites. The analyses contained a common chapter that presented rankings of each 

site in relation to the guidelines. Initial attempts to aggregate the rankings were sharply 

criticized by the NAS (Parker 1985a). DOE then decided to use a decision-aiding 

methodology, multiattribute decision analysis (MUA), in the hope of obtaining greater 

agreement on how the five sites would be down-selected to three (DOE 1986a [published 

report]). A second peer-review by the NAS strongly supported the use of the methodology 

but declined to address the ultimate ranking or recommendation of specific sites for 

characterization (Parker 1985b). Simultaneously with the release of the MUA report, the 

Secretary of Energy determined that Yucca Mountain, a salt site in Texas, and a basalt site 

in Washington would be investigated (DOE 1986b).

The three sites chosen by the Secretary were not the top three identified by the MUA.

Considerable public controversy arose, with some parties accusing DOE of manipulating 

the technique to produce pre-ordained outcomes. In response, DOE stated that the MUA 

was a “decision-aiding” not a “decision-making” methodology. For example, the 

methodology did not capture considerations, such as geologic diversity, that the 

implementer might consider crucial. Of equal importance was the exclusion from the 

MUA of other considerations, including the degree of local opposition to a repository, risk 

perceptions associated with transportation of HLW and SNF, geographic equity, and 
48 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

licensability (Merkhofer and Keeny 1987). In short, even the most sophisticated 

methodology for selecting a site for a deep-mined geologic repository is unlikely to 

produce agreement if local or state governments believe that the choice is being imposed 

on them.

Political ratification

Canada

Under the Canadian approach of Adaptive Phased Management, volunteer communities 

are being sought to host a deep-mined geologic repository. If more than one locality 

accepts and if the technical suitability of the sites is established, a public-engagement 

program would be launched to consult with interested and affected parties. Safety 

evaluations and site-specific designs would be prepared. Environmental impact 

assessments would be developed. Once the Federal Minister of the Environment approves 

the impact assessments, NWMO would be allowed to apply to the regulators for a Site 

Preparation License.

Finland

Under the Nuclear Energy Act, an application for a decision-in-principle must be 

submitted before a site for a deep-mined geologic repository can be approved. The 

application was filed in 1999 and included statements from the four municipalities under 

consideration as well as statements from surrounding municipalities. All of the statements 

were strongly supportive. In addition, the regulator performed preliminary safety 

assessments. A public hearing then was held. Following the hearing, the Council of State 

rendered the decision-in-principle in 2000 agreeing to the selection of the site in Eurajoki.

The decision-in-principle was confirmed by the Parliament the following year.

France

Although only locations in the Meuse/Haute-Marne region have been studied, a site there 

for a deep-mined geologic repository cannot be selected simply by default. The 1991 

legislation required that public hearings be held on the progress made in each of the four 

research areas being pursued by ANDRA (OPECST 2005). Subsequently, the Parliament 

took up the issue and in 2006 passed the Sustainable Management of Radioactive Materials 

and Waste Act. Among other things, the law authorizes additional studies directed toward 

selecting a site in the vicinity of the village of Bure. By 2005, ANDRA had designated a 250 

km2

 area “transposition zone” within which it believed a deep-mined geologic repository 

could be constructed. Recently ANDRA identified a 30 km2

 area where it will propose to 

construct the repository’s underground works. Discussions are ongoing with the local 

communities to determine where the repository’s surface facilities would be built.

Parliament will reach a decision about the site in 2016 after an organized public debate.

Japan

Because no volunteer community has come forward yet, NUMO has not outlined in detail 

how it intends to select a site for a deep-mined geologic repository if several candidate 

locations are deemed suitable. The expectation, however, is that an environmental impact 

assessments would be prepared. Under the Final Disposal of Specific Radioactive Wastes 
Site Selection for a Deep-Mined Geologic Repository 49

Act, after the Cabinet consents to NUMO’s recommendation, the Minister of Economy, 

Trade, and Industry would need to give formal approval.

Switzerland

Site selection is Stage Three of the Sectoral Plan. In that stage, NAGRA would investigate 

candidate sites in greater detail. With the involvement of the siting region, socioeconomic 

impacts would be studied. Any benefits package that must be provided would be 

negotiated and made transparent. Stage Three culminates in the preparation of a general 

license to construct the deep-mined geologic repository and an environmental impact 

assessment. The Federal Council would determine whether the general license should be 

approved; if it is, the Council’s decision would have to be ratified by the Parliament. A 

national referendum may be called, the outcome of which could overturn the 

parliamentary action.

United Kingdom

Under the Managing Radioactive Waste Safely program, decision-making bodies in local 

communities would decide whether to proceed to each step in the site-selection process.

That determination would be made based on the technical investigations carried out by the 

British Geological Society as well as the outcome of negotiations over a benefits package.

Government would make the final decision about which technically suitable site to choose 

if more than one locality agrees to host a deep-mined geologic repository, or it would 

affirm (or reject) the selection of a site if only one community reaches the end of the 

process.

United States

Although only the site at Yucca Mountain has been characterized, the NWPA still requires 

that a political process be followed before the site can be officially selected. That process 

unfolded in 2002. At the beginning of the year, the Secretary of Energy recommended to 

President George W. Bush that Yucca Mountain be approved for development of a deepmined geologic repository. The President approved this recommendation the next day and 

notified Congress. Under the law, the Governor of Nevada had 90 days to veto the selection 

of the site, which he did. Congress held hearings during the spring and passed a Joint 

Resolution that overrode the Nevada veto and officially selected Yucca Mountain as the site 

of a deep-mined geologic repository (U.S. Congress 2002).

Major summary points

•	 Selecting a site for a deep-mined geologic repository is likely to be less controversial in 

countries that rely on a voluntarist approach for identifying candidate sites.

•	 Although the implementer is always responsible for proposing where a deep-mined 

geologic repository might be located, in most countries, some form of political 

ratification is required at the national level before a site for a deep-mined geologic 

repository can be selected.

51

Approval to 

Construct a DeepMined Geologic 

Repository

T

he processes involved in obtaining approval to construct a deep-mined geologic 

repository are as varied as the processes involved in identifying candidate sites. In 

most countries, a representative body, such as the legislature or the Government, 

makes the final decision. Typically, that body relies on the regulators’ advice. In some 

countries, however, the regulators make the final determination of whether the proposed 

repository system complies with established requirements. The discussion below of 

arrangements established in several countries describes the range of variation.

Canada

Under the current law, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) would become 

involved only when an application for a Site Preparation License is submitted, although the 

regulators expect to provide comments to NWMO and the public during the siting 

process. It is entirely up to the implementer to determine the appropriate methodology for 

demonstrating that dose constraints and risk limits can be met. Scoping assessments, 

bounding assessments, and realistic calculations are all methodologies that the regulator 

finds acceptable. The assessments can be either deterministic or probabilistic (CSNC 2006).

Under the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, the CNSC must hold public hearings before 

making its decision. Beyond that requirement, the regulators’ decision-making process is 

both completely internal and final.
52 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

Finland

STUK has been actively involved in the process that will likely culminate in the submittal 

of a license application by Posiva in the next few years. It reviewed Posiva’s preliminary 

safety assessments in 1996, 2006, and 2008 as well as the implementer’s siting program in 

2001. STUK also has conducted periodic evaluations of the implementer’s research and 

development plans.

STUK requires that Posiva demonstrate the long-term safety of a deep-mined geologic 

repository by means of a safety analysis. That analysis must address expected evolutions 

and unlikely disruptive events. Numerical calculations may be complemented by 

qualitative expert judgment whenever the quantitative analyses are not feasible or are too 

uncertain. The safety assessment may be either deterministic or probabilistic.

Uncertainties and their importance to safety are assessed in separate analyses (Finnish 

Council of State 2008). No requirements for public involvement in the regulators’ 

deliberations have been established. STUK only makes recommendations to Government, 

which holds the final authority to issue a license.

France

According to the 2006 Radioactive Materials and Waste Planning Act, following the public 

debate and selection of a site, ANDRA will prepare and submit a license application to 

construct a deep-mined geologic repository. The application will be reviewed by ASN and 

the CNE. ASN will be aided in its review by a technical support organization, the Institute 

for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety. The ASN requires ANDRA to demonstrate 

compliance through the deterministic evaluation of several nominal and disruptive 

scenarios. In addition, deterministic sensitivity calculations are used to evaluate the effect 

of uncertainty on repository performance.

The passage of the Transparency and Nuclear Security Act in 2006 gave new powers to 

communities near nuclear power and fuel cycle plants. Local information committees 

(CLIS) were given the right to obtain information on the operation and management of 

those facilities. Armed with that information, the CLIS also will comment on ANDRA’s 

license application, as will the municipalities, districts, and regions affected by the 

repository project.

The views of ASN, CNE, and the CLIS are sent to OPECST, which, in turn, conveys them 

to the relevant committees of the National Assembly and the Senate. Subsequently, 

Government must table a bill prescribing relevant reversibility conditions. Once that law is 

passed, the license application may be granted by State Council decree after another public 

debate is held. The application cannot be granted if the satisfaction of the reversibility 

decree “is not guaranteed.”

Germany

The implementer, the Federal Office of Radiation Protection, would submit an 

application—including a safety evaluation and an environmental assessment—to the 

licensing authority of the Land (State) where the proposed repository would be located.
Approval to Construct a Deep-Mined Geologic Repository 53

The safety evaluation would use deterministic calculations. These calculations would rely 

on realistic models that use, for example, median values of input parameters. The Nuclear 

Licensing Procedures Ordinance specifies how the public can be involved. Relevant 

technical documents must be made available and interested parties have the right to raise 

objections in writing. The Länder (States) would hold the initial authority for Plan 

Approval, the procedure that governs whether such a deep-mined geologic repository can 

be constructed. The federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, and 

Nuclear Safety, however, has the right to instruct the Plan Approval Authority to issue a 

license. Decisions by the Länder can be appealed in court by both the applicant and 

opponents to the facility.

Sweden

Permits issued under two pieces of legislation, the Nuclear Activities Act and the 

Environmental Code, are required before a deep-mined geologic repository can be 

constructed.

44 Both laws require SKB to prepare a safety evaluation and an environmental 

assessment. The evaluation can be developed using a variety of methodologies; both 

deterministic and probabilistic approaches are acceptable.

SSM will process the license application and submits its views to Government. Based on 

this advice, Government can grant a license under the Nuclear Activities Act, although the 

regulator can subsequently attach specific conditions to that license. At roughly the same 

time, an Environmental Court also reviews the application, holds a public hearing, and 

issues a statement of comment for both the Government and the host-community. Based 

on the statement of comment, Government decides whether to declare the proposed deepmined geologic repository “permissible” under the Environmental Code. If the project is 

permissible, the Environmental Court then will grant a license and specify conditions.

Although the expectation is that Government will handle the two different proceedings in 

some coordinated manner, it is possible SSM and the Environmental Court might reach 

different conclusions because their underlying mandates are not identical.

Public participation is secured in various ways. The host community provides important 

input when it takes an official position in support of or in opposition to the repository.

Although SSM relies mostly on written statements from interested and affected parties, it 

can hold hearings if it so chooses. The proceedings of the Environmental Court are open, 

and interested and affected parties can attend and make statements.

United Kingdom

The disposal of HLW and SNF in a deep-mined geologic repository is currently regulated 

by the Environment Agency under the Radioactive Substances Act of 1993.

45 Depending 

on the enactment of new legislation that is currently under consideration, two potential 

routes for reaching a regulatory determination on authorizing a deep-mined geologic 

repository are conceivable. Under a procedure based solely on a “process of agreement,” the 

regulator would provide advice during the period that the implementer is developing the 

facility. However, regulatory control would start after repository construction but before 

waste emplacement. Under a staged regulatory process, control would begin as soon as 

44 See, National Council for Nuclear Waste 2007 for a good discussion of the licensing process.

45The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate will regulate operational activities at a repository.
54 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

underground investigations start (Environment Agency 2009). At various steps along the 

repository development process, the regulators would issue permits and licenses. Although 

guidance has been issued, no decision has been made about what the implementer must do 

to demonstrate compliance with established dose constraints or risk limits.

Although it is expected that the implementer would engage in continual dialogue with 

potential host communities, the regulator also would be involved. Proactive efforts would be 

devised to engage interested and affected parties. Ultimately, the final decision would rest 

with the regulators, who have broad discretion to accept or reject outside input in order not 

to “... compromise [their] regulatory independence” (Environment Agency 2009, 36).

United States

NRC has erected an elaborate structure for determining whether a license to construct a 

deep-mined geologic repository should be issued. Not only has NRC established highly 

prescriptive technical requirements, but it also has set forth an intricate process that 

formally begins once a license application has been submitted. Yet the process in the 

United States probably offers more opportunities than any other country for interested and 

affected parties to participate meaningfully in regulatory decision-making.

The regulatory staff first determines whether the application contains sufficient 

information to permit a meaningful review (NRC 1989). It then begins to evaluate the 

safety claims advanced by DOE. In particular, it scrutinizes the technical basis for the 

safety assessment, which must include calculating the long-term performance of the deepmined geologic repository using a probabilistic methodology.

46

In parallel, an independent licensing board conducts an adjudicatory hearing. The hearing 

format gives admitted parties the right to advance contentions that document 

disagreements with DOE’s claims. Further, the format allows those parties to present 

witnesses, to carry out discovery of documents held by other parties, and to cross-examine 

witnesses called by other participants. The licensing board is required to base its decision 

on whether a license should be granted solely on the information brought forward at the 

hearing. The board’s decision can be appealed to the full Commission and to the courts.

Major summary points

•	 In most national programs, the regulatory requirements for determining whether the 

construction of a deep-mined geologic repository should be permitted are typically 

not prescriptive. The United States is an exception to this general rule.

•	 Final decisions about permitting the construction of a deep-mined geologic repository 

can be made by Government or by the regulators, depending on country-specific 

circumstances.

•	 National waste-management programs offer varying opportunities for interested and 

affected parties to influence the regulatory process.

46 It was at this point in the process that NRC’s consideration of the Yucca Mountain license application 

was suspended. It is unclear whether or when the proceedings will resume. Therefore, the discussion that 

follows reflects only the process that has been put in place.
55

Conclusion 

I

n each of the 13 national programs considered in this report, the long-term management 

of HLW and SNF has proven more complicated and protracted than initially expected.

What was formerly viewed as a relatively simple technical task is now recognized as a 

complex socio-technical problem involving political negotiations and institutional design 

challenges as well as path-breaking scientific and technical analyses. Nonetheless, several 

national programs already have made considerable progress. Sites for a deep-mined geologic repository for HLW and SNF have been selected in four countries—Finland, France, 

Sweden, and the United States. License applications to construct such a facility have been 

submitted in two of those nations (the U.S. and Sweden). Applications are likely to be submitted in the other two within the next few years.

The information contained in this report suggests several important conclusions about 

processes used to develop a deep-mined geologic repository.

•	 It is possible to elaborate a disposal concept and to advance a safety case, including 

quantitative performance assessments, that is widely credibly not only to scientific and 

technical communities but also to broad segments of the general population and political leaders. It appears as if a deep-mined geologic repository can be developed in a 

number of different hydrogeologic environments. An open and transparent technical 

assessment process, including international peer reviews, increases public and political 

support.

•	 It is possible to find communities that are willing to host a deep-mined geologic repository. From the experience gained in countries where sites have been selected, it appears 

that some communities do so because of their familiarity with other nuclear activities; 

others do so because of the economic benefits that might accrue in the future. All of 

those communities, however, were given a meaningful say in the site-selection process.

And all of those communities came to be convinced by the respective implementers 

that the facility could be operated safely.

47

47 In Federal systems, such as those found in Japan and the United States, it may be necessary to secure 

the approval of a politically superior state or prefecture. This requirement may complicate any voluntary 

process.
56 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

•	 Although national programs differ in terms of what is considered an acceptable risk and 

how to demonstrate whether a deep-mined geologic repository satisfies those standards, 

international views on these matters are converging. At least for the first few thousands 

of years after repository closure, dose constraints across countries are within a factor 

of three of each other and risk limits are within a factor of ten. Only for compliance 

periods on the order of 100,000 or 1,000,000 years has no international consensus yet 

been formed on dose constraints, risk limits, and methodology.

•	 Organizational forms differ significantly across countries, but successful ones have 

several characteristics in common. Nuclear industry-owned corporations have been 

successful in Sweden and Finland. A government agency has been successful in 

France. Rather than organizational form per se, what appears to be important are 

organizational behaviors, such as leadership continuity, funding stability, and the 

capacity to inspire public trust and confidence over long periods of time.

Today, more than a half-century after electricity was first produced by splitting the atom, 

the beneficiaries of that energy source have committed themselves to finding ways to 

manage the radioactive wastes thereby created in a technically defensible and socially 

acceptable way. That commitment should be a source for optimism, not only for the 

generation that produced the wastes, but for succeeding generations as well.
57

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65

Acronym List

AEC Atomic Energy Commission (United States)

AECL Atomic Energy of Canada Limited

ANDRA National Radioactive Waste Management Agency (France)

ASN Nuclear Safety Authority (France)

CEA Atomic Energy Commission (France)

CLI Local Information Committees (France)

CNE National Review Board (France)

CNSC Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission

CoRWM Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (United Kingdom)

DBE German Service Company for the Construction and Operation of Waste 

Repositories

DOE Department of Energy (United States)

ERDA Energy Research and Development Authority (United States)

HLW high-level radioactive waste

IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency (United Nations)

IRG Interagency Review Group on Nuclear Waste Management (United 

States)

MUA multiattribute utility analysis

NAGRA National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste (Switzerland)

NAS National Academy of Sciences (United States)

NDA Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (United Kingdom)
66 Experience Gained From Programs to Manage HLW and SNF in the United States and Other Countries

NEA Nuclear Energy Agency (Organization for Economic Cooperation and 

Development)

NRC Nuclear Regulatory Commission (United States)

NWF Nuclear Waste Fund (United States)

NUMO Nuclear Waste Management Organization (Japan)

NWMO Nuclear Waste Management Organization (Canada)

NWPA Nuclear Waste Policy Act (United States)

NWPAA Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act (United States)

NWTRB Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (United States)

OPECST Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Science and Technology 

Options (France)

SKB Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company

SNF spent nuclear fuel

STUK Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (Finland)

SSM Radiation Safety Authority (Sweden)

UKAEA United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

WIPP Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (United States)

United States

Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board

2300 Clarendon Boulevard 

Suite 1300

Arlington, VA 22201

(703) 235-4473

www.nwtrb.gov