They represent considerable achievement, demonstrated technology and flexibility of options. The European nuclear industry has consistently identified concepts for nuclear waste management and steadily brought these from the initial ideas, through research and design stages, to pilot plant and finally to full scale commercial operation. For example, there are half a dozen low and intermediate level waste repositories in operation in Western Europe. There is every reason to think that this will also be the case with the final disposal of encapsulated spent fuel and other high level long-lived wastes. International cooperation is commonplace and the first industrial operation for final disposal is set to commence around 2010 on a pilot scale in Sweden.
Utilities have the options of direct disposal after interim storage, or of reprocessing.
If we examine the reprocessing route we again see substantial achievement in Europe with operational plants for a range of fuels including LWR , FBR and Magnox. Civil reprocessing experience stretches back more than 35 years and includes industrial scale recycling of both uranium and plutonium. Operational experience extends over 16 years and the plants have a current capacity of 2500 glass canisters per year. Interim vitrified waste storage experience covers a similar period and there are currently six operational stores with another four under construction. The reprocessing option for back-end management represents demonstrated and available technology.