This Conference has covered many important and interesting topics and while I will not comment on all of them, I have selected a few on which I would like to make some remarks. Firstly, I should emphasize that all types of radioactive waste need to be managed safely, whether they are permitted discharges of radioactive liquid and gaseous effluents to the environment from nuclear installations, radioactive residues that remain in the environment from past practices, such as uranium mining and milling, or solid radioactive waste proper . Although from time to time we need to concentrate attention on particular types of waste, we should not completely lose sight of this holistic approach. Having said this, I would like to focus on an issue that, as this conference has demonstrated, and as we have always known, deserves particular attention, namely high level waste disposal. At an international conference on geological disposal held by the US Government in Denver last year, I attempted to summarize the issue confronting us.
Nuclear power is a clean and sustainable source of energy.
And in view of the expected increase in electricity demand in the next few decades, we need to ensure that it continues to be a viable option. Yet nuclear energy development has reached a standstill in many regions of the world because of public concern about safety, primarily the safe management of high level wastes. The first significant quantities of fuel were removed from civil reactors in the second half of the 1970s. Since nearly thirty years have elapsed for the heat and radioactivity of the high level waste to decay, countries with nuclear power programmes should by now be making progress towards solutions for dealing with high level wastes. The solution generally proposed is the use of deep geological repositories comprised of natural barriers and an engineered system designed to provide primary physical and chemical containment of the waste.