Basic policy for rational measures of radioactive waste processing and disposal; Results of studies for acceleration of waste processing

Nakagawa, Akinori ; Oyokawa, Atsushi; Murakami, Masashi  ; Yoshida, Yukihiko; Sasaki, Toshiki ; Okada, Shota; Nakata, Hisakazu ; Sugaya, Toshikatsu; Sakai, Akihiro ; Sakamoto, Yoshiaki 

Radioactive wastes generated from R&D activities have been stored in Japan Atomic Energy Agency. In order to reduce the risk of taking long time to process legacy wastes, countermeasures for acceleration of waste processing and disposal were studied. Work analysis of waste processing showed bottleneck processes, such as evaluation of radioactivity concentration, segregation of hazardous and combustibles materials. Concerning evaluation of radioactivity concentration, a radiological characterization method using a scaling factor and a nondestructive gamma-ray measurement should be developed. The number of radionuclides that are to be selected for the safety assessment of the trench type disposal facility can decrease using artificial barriers. Hazardous materials, will be identified using records and nondestructive inspection. The waste identified as hazardous will be unpacked and segregated. Preliminary calculations of waste acceptance criteria of hazardous material concentrations were conducted based on environmental standards in groundwater. The total volume of the combustibles will be evaluated using nondestructive inspection. The waste that does not comply with the waste acceptance criteria should be mixed with low combustible material waste such as dismantling concrete waste in order to satisfy the waste acceptance criteria on a disposal facility average. It was estimated that segregation throughput of compressed waste should be increased about 5 times more than conventional method by applying the countermeasures. Further study and technology development will be conducted to realize the plan.