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
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