logo ASN
 
 
Home page  
   This chapter deals in a general way with management of objects and sites after they have been used for an activity involving radioactive materials, when their owner intends to abandon them or wishes to alter their utilisation.  
Operators constructing a graphite assembly in a reactor
Annual report 2008
home > Overview > Chapter 16 - Radioactive waste and polluted sites
 

Radioactive waste and polluted sites


chapter 16

 
PDF Download this chapter
 

Print

there is as yet no final management solution, the PNGMDR defines the objectives to be met. Decree 2008-357 of 16 April 2008, implementing the 28 June 2006 Act, clarifies the requirements concerning the PNGMDR.

Clean-out of polluted sites consists in rehabilitating those sites on which a nuclear activity took place and which may potentially have led to contamination of the environment or on which radiological pollution has been observed due either to handling of radioactive materials (possibly some time in the past), or the utilisation of naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM), albeit with no intention to exploit their radioactive properties.


This chapter deals in a general way with management of objects and sites after they have been used for an activity involving radioactive materials, when their owner intends to abandon them or wishes to alter their utilisation.

This chapter looks at how radioactive waste is managed for activities still in operation and how past or confirmed pollution (polluted sites) is managed in order to guarantee protection of the environment and the public.

Some installations intended for the disposal of radioactive waste intentionally concentrate the radioactivity in a single place, but their primary goal must nonetheless be to guarantee the protection of the public and the surrounding environment.

Radioactive waste is radioactive materials for which no subsequent use is planned or envisaged. It may stem from nuclear activities or may be produced by non-nuclear activities in which the radioactivity naturally contained in the materials, notused for their radioactive or fissile properties, may have been concentrated by the processes employed.

The management of radioactive waste is governed by the 28 June 2006 Act on the sustainable management of radioactive materials and waste. This Act defines a roadmap for management of all radioactive waste, in particular by requiring the updating every 3 years of a French National Radioactive Materials and Waste Management Plan (PNGMDR). The purpose of the PNGMDR is to produce an inventory of the existing management methods for radioactive materials and waste, to identify the foreseeable needs for storage or disposal facilities, to clarify the necessary capacity of these installations, the length of the storage periods and, for the radioactive waste for which

 
Copyright © 2009 ASN. All rights reserved