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This report presents the common views of the International Review Team established by the NEA Secretariat on behalf of the Belgian Government to perform a peer review of the SAFIR 2 report, produced by the Belgian Agency for Radioactive Waste and Enriched Fissile Materials (ONDRAF/NIRAS) to describe the research, development and demonstration activities in the Belgian programme on the disposal of high-level and long-lived radioactive wastes in a deep geological repository excavated within an argillaceous formation.

Particle accelerators have evolved over the last 50 years from simple devices to powerful machines, and will continue to have an important impact on research, technology and lifestyle. Today, they cover a wide range of applications, from television and computer displays in households to the investigation of the origin and structure of matter. It has become common practice to use them for material science and medical applications.
In recent years, requirements from new technological and research applications have emerged, giving rise to new radiation shielding aspects and problems. These proceedings review recent progress in radiation shielding of accelerator facilities, evaluate advancements and discuss further developments needed with respect to international co-operation in this field.

The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency co-operates with both the central and eastern European countries and the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union in planning and executing safety research programmes. The purpose is to build up know-how and capabilities in safety technology pertaining to their nuclear power plants. In this report, senior safety experts from Russia and Western countries review the nuclear-safety research needed to improve the safety of Russian-designed nuclear power reactors. They have selected a number of important research topics to which priority should be given. They have also identified nuclear-safety research topics that would benefit from a collaborative effort between eastern and western nuclear-safety researchers.

Analysis of the long-term safety of radioactive waste repositories, using performance assessment and other tools, is required prior to implementation. The initial stage in developing a repository safety assessment is the identification of all factors that may be relevant to the long-term safety of the repository and their combination to form scenarios. This must be done in a systematic and transparent way in order to assure the regulatory authorities that nothing important has been forgotten. This report is a review of developments in scenario methodologies based on a large body of practical experience in safety assessments. It will be of interest to radioactive waste management experts as well as to other specialists involved in the development of scenario methodologies.

This volume is the fourteenth of the series “Chemical Thermodynamics” published by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency. It is the second update of the critical reviews published, successively, in 1992 as Chemical Thermodynamics of Uranium, in 1995 as Chemical Thermodynamics of Americium, in 1999 as Chemical Thermodynamics of Technetium, in 2001 as Chemical Thermodynamics of Neptunium and Plutonium and in 2003 as the first Update on the Chemical Thermodynamics of Uranium, Neptunium, Plutonium, Americium and Technetium. A team, composed of nine internationally recognised experts, has critically reviewed all the relevant scientific literature for the above mentioned systems that has appeared since the publication of the earlier volumes. The results of this assessment, carried out following the Guidelines of the Thermochemical Database Project, have been documented in the present volume, which contains new tables of selected values for formation and reaction data and an extensive bibliography. The database system developed at the NEA Data Bank ensures consistency within the recommended data sets. This volume will be of particular interest to scientists carrying out performance assessments of deep geological disposal sites for radioactive waste.

Over the last 50 years particle accelerators have evolved from simple devices to powerful machines, and will continue to have an important impact on research, technology and lifestyle. Today, they cover a wide range of applications, from television and computer displays in households to investigating the origin and structure of matter. It has become common practice to use particle accelerators for material science and medical applications. In recent years, requirements from new technological and research applications have emerged, giving rise to new radiation shielding aspects and problems. These workshop proceedings review recent progress in radiation shielding of accelerator facilities, evaluating advancements and discussing further developments needed with respect to international co-operation in this field.

These workshop proceedings review the state of the art in radiation shielding of accelerator facilities and of irradiated targets.  They also evaluate progress made and discuss the additional developments required to meet radiation protection needs.

Particle accelerators have evolved over the last decades from simple devices to powerful machines and are having an increasingly important impact on research, technology and daily life. Today, they have a wide range of applications in many areas including material science and medical applications. In recent years, new technological and research applications have helped to define requirements while the number of accelerator facilities in operation, being commissioned, designed or planned has grown significantly. Their parameters, which include the beam energy, currents and intensities, and target composition, can vary widely, giving rise to new radiation shielding issues and challenges.

Particle accelerators must be operated in safe ways to protect operators, the public and the environment. As the design and use of these facilities evolve, so must the analytical methods used in the safety analyses. These workshop proceedings review the state of the art in radiation shielding of accelerator facilities and irradiation targets. They also evaluate progress in the development of modelling methods used to assess the effectiveness of such shielding as part of safety analyses.

Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are gaining recognition among policymakers and industry players as a promising nuclear technology. SMRs can be defined as nuclear reactors with a power output between 10 MWe and 300 MWe that incorporate by design higher modularisation, standardisation and factory-based construction levels enabling more predictable delivery models based on the economies of series. Today, more than 50 concepts are under development covering a wide range of technology approaches and maturity levels. The value proposition of the SMR technology also includes potential financing and system integration benefits. These attractive features, however, rely on a business case that requires the development of a global SMR market to become economically viable. Large-scale deployment of SMRs faces several technical, economic, regulatory and supply chain challenges and will need considerable governmental efforts and efficient international collaborative frameworks to be realised in the next decade.

Large quantities of materials arising from the decommissioning of nuclear facilities are non-radioactive per se. An additional significant share of materials is of very low-level or low-level radioactivity and can, after having undergone treatment and a clearance process, be recycled and reused in a restricted or unrestricted way. Recycle and reuse options today provide valuable solutions to minimise radioactive waste from decommissioning and at the same time maximise the recovery of valuable materials. The NEA Co-operative Programme on Decommissioning (CPD) prepared this overview on the various approaches being undertaken by international and national organisations for the management of slightly contaminated material resulting from activities in the nuclear sector. The report draws on CPD member organisations’ experiences and practices related to recycling and reuse, which were gathered through an international survey. It provides information on improvements and changes in technologies, methodologies and regulations since the 1996 report on this subject, with the conclusions and recommendations taking into account 20 years of additional experience that will be useful for current and future practitioners. Case studies are provided to illustrate significant points of interest, for example in relation to scrap metals, concrete and soil.

Most experts worldwide agree that radioactive waste disposal in engineered facilities, or repositories, located in appropriate formations deep underground, provide a suitable waste management option for protecting humans and the environment now and in the future.  These conference proceedings establish the scientific basis for stability and buffering capacity of deep geological waste management systems. The proceedings synthesise the main outcomes of the workshop and present a compilation of the related abstracts.