Second progress report on research and development for TRU waste disposal in Japan; Repository design, safety assessment and means of implementation in the generic phase

Japan Atomic Energy Agency; Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan*

In order to promote the establishment of a regulatory framework and the implementation of TRU waste disposal, the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan (FEPC) and the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute (now JAEA) collaborated and published a progress report in Japanese (hereafter TRU-2) in September 2005. The report here is an English version of TRU-2 and has been published to widely inform overseas researchers and engineers of the contents of TRU-2. In this report, the characteristics of TRU waste generated from the nuclear fuel cycle in Japan and its disposal concept are shown. The design of the TRU waste disposal facility was evaluated and safety assessments were carried out to show that safety could be validated by comparing with regulatory guidelines in overseas performance assessment reports. Alternative technologies were developed to deal with various geological environments and to improve safety margins in addition to evaluating other disposal concepts. Furthermore, optimisation through co-location disposal of TRU waste and high level radioactive waste was investigated, and an example layout of a co-location disposal concept was evaluated. Based on these evaluation results, future issues and outstanding items on research and development for TRU waste disposal are summarised.