Nuclear waste: how are sites monitored? 

For any type of inspec­tion of radio­act­ive waste treat­ment centres, there are a num­ber of points to check – for example, how the expos­ure of staff and third parties passing through the site is man­aged. Also, inspect­ors look at how radi­olo­gic­al zon­ing is car­ried out and how com­pli­ance with safety ele­ments is ensured. 

In the past, large install­a­tions of this type required what are known as com­pet­ent radi­ation pro­tec­tion depart­ments. Today, with new reg­u­la­tions, the term has changed slightly but the philo­sophy remains the same: all install­a­tions in which you have nuc­le­ar waste (known as basic nuc­le­ar install­a­tions), must have a com­pet­ence centre with qual­i­fied and trained personnel.

Nuc­le­ar inspect­ors look at how these centres are organ­ised, that is, their mis­sion and what aspects might be improved. An inspect­or must remain fac­tu­al when review­ing a site: if we notice some­thing wrong in the way waste is being man­aged on a site, we must say so. Sim­il­arly, if we observe good prac­tices, it is worth­while com­mu­nic­at­ing on these so that oth­er sites can learn from them.

There are three levels of action we can take fol­low­ing a vis­it. The first is cor­rect­ive action, which is what we request of the site in the case of non-com­pli­ance with reg­u­la­tions – in the form a decree. If a decree is not pre­cise enough, we bring in an addi­tion­al text, often an order or a decision taken by the Nuc­le­ar Safety Author­ity (ASN). If there is ever a devi­ation from these texts, we then ask for cor­rect­ive action.

The second is a request for addi­tion­al inform­a­tion when we find that the site is not adher­ing to good prac­tices being car­ried out else­where, by oper­at­ors of oth­er sites. In this case, we ask them to change their way of work­ing. The last level is where we make sug­ges­tions for minor improve­ments, obser­va­tions, related to slight devi­ations from reg­u­la­tions or good practice.

After a vis­it, there is a debrief­ing, which inspect­ors should always carry out. This is the time to put our cards on the table, as it were, and to announce what will be in the fol­low-up let­ter. If an inspec­tion did not go very well and we observed devi­ations, we must say so. We should not say that everything is fine in the oral feed­back and then send a 10-page report with actions to be taken. The fol­low-up report should be in line with the oral debriefing.

France hap­pens to be one of the strict­est EU Mem­ber States for when it comes to radio­act­ive waste management. 

France hap­pens to be one of the strict­est EU Mem­ber States for when it comes to radio­act­ive waste man­age­ment. To give you an idea of the philo­sophy we have adop­ted, an object that has been in a nuc­le­ar install­a­tion in which there is a risk of dis­per­sion or con­tam­in­a­tion can­not be dis­posed of in con­ven­tion­al waste channels.

In con­trast to oth­er EU Mem­ber States, there are no “release thresholds”. Ger­many, Bel­gi­um, and Spain, for example, apply the EU Dir­ect­ive – val­ues in total becquer­els, or becquer­els per gram (mass activ­ity), below which waste can be released into the nor­mal cycle. This is because the activ­ity of the radi­o­nuc­lides in the waste is con­sidered to be so low that it has no impact on human health or the envir­on­ment. That said, this changed on 14^th Feb­ru­ary 2022 with the pub­lic­a­tion of two decrees con­cern­ing recov­er­able, but slightly con­tam­in­ated, metal­lic materials.

Fol­low­ing a writ­ten report, we issue a fol­low-up let­ter (that is made pub­lic and pub­lished on the ASN web­site) and the recip­i­ent nor­mally has two months to respond and imple­ment our requests. If they choose not to do so, we then send a form­al notice. If this is ignored, we can sus­pend activ­ity on the site (some­thing that does not hap­pen very often, for­tu­nately). The last major event in France of this kind was at the Épin­al hos­pit­al in 2005–2006, where sev­er­al cohorts of patients were over­ex­posed to radio­activ­ity. Some of these patients died. This situ­ation did indeed mer­it an inspec­tion, com­plaint, leg­al action, tri­al, and conviction.

In this art­icle, we have mainly talked about waste related to nuc­le­ar oper­at­ors, because today this cat­egory rep­res­ents 95% of the waste in France. But we also have 5% of waste from small pro­du­cers, which comes from else­where. In par­tic­u­lar, there are all the research insti­tutes that use unsealed sources and liquid sources in gen­er­al. These organ­isa­tions are obliged to return any tri­ti­um and car­bon-14 waste which has under­gone peri­ods of radio­activ­ity of more than 100 days to Andra. While this cat­egory of waste rep­res­ents a small volume, it does exist.

It should also be noted that a cer­tain num­ber of entit­ies in France are author­ised to use this type of radio­act­ive source. This is the case, for example, at San­ofi Pas­teur, INRA, INSERM and forensic sci­ence labor­at­or­ies. In some cases, Andra must recu­per­ate the waste pro­duced by these organ­isa­tions, even if it is a small volume that is not very radioactive.

Finally, there is a more gen­er­al pub­lic cat­egory: all objects that con­tain radi­um must be recovered. Here, we can cite wrist­watches and clocks and oth­er small objects that con­tain radio­activ­ity, either arti­fi­cial or nat­ur­al. We’ve all seen these kinds of objects in flea mar­kets, and we may even have some in our own homes.

Interview by Isabelle Dumé