Nuclear waste: how are sites monitored? 

For any type of inspec­tion of radioac­tive waste treat­ment cen­tres, there are a num­ber of points to check – for exam­ple, how the expo­sure of staff and third par­ties pass­ing through the site is man­aged. Also, inspec­tors look at how radi­o­log­i­cal zon­ing is car­ried out and how com­pli­ance with safe­ty ele­ments is ensured. 

In the past, large instal­la­tions of this type required what are known as com­pe­tent radi­a­tion pro­tec­tion depart­ments. Today, with new reg­u­la­tions, the term has changed slight­ly but the phi­los­o­phy remains the same: all instal­la­tions in which you have nuclear waste (known as basic nuclear instal­la­tions), must have a com­pe­tence cen­tre with qual­i­fied and trained personnel.

Nuclear inspec­tors look at how these cen­tres are organ­ised, that is, their mis­sion and what aspects might be improved. An inspec­tor must remain fac­tu­al when review­ing a site: if we notice some­thing wrong in the way waste is being man­aged on a site, we must say so. Sim­i­lar­ly, if we observe good prac­tices, it is worth­while com­mu­ni­cat­ing on these so that oth­er sites can learn from them.

There are three lev­els of action we can take fol­low­ing a vis­it. The first is cor­rec­tive action, which is what we request of the site in the case of non-com­pli­ance with reg­u­la­tions – in the form a decree. If a decree is not pre­cise enough, we bring in an addi­tion­al text, often an order or a deci­sion tak­en by the Nuclear Safe­ty Author­i­ty (ASN). If there is ever a devi­a­tion from these texts, we then ask for cor­rec­tive action.

The sec­ond is a request for addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion when we find that the site is not adher­ing to good prac­tices being car­ried out else­where, by oper­a­tors of oth­er sites. In this case, we ask them to change their way of work­ing. The last lev­el is where we make sug­ges­tions for minor improve­ments, obser­va­tions, relat­ed to slight devi­a­tions from reg­u­la­tions or good practice.

After a vis­it, there is a debrief­ing, which inspec­tors should always car­ry out. This is the time to put our cards on the table, as it were, and to announce what will be in the fol­low-up let­ter. If an inspec­tion did not go very well and we observed devi­a­tions, we must say so. We should not say that every­thing is fine in the oral feed­back and then send a 10-page report with actions to be tak­en. The fol­low-up report should be in line with the oral debriefing.

France hap­pens to be one of the strictest EU Mem­ber States for when it comes to radioac­tive waste management. 

France hap­pens to be one of the strictest EU Mem­ber States for when it comes to radioac­tive waste man­age­ment. To give you an idea of the phi­los­o­phy we have adopt­ed, an object that has been in a nuclear instal­la­tion in which there is a risk of dis­per­sion or con­t­a­m­i­na­tion can­not be dis­posed of in con­ven­tion­al waste channels.

In con­trast to oth­er EU Mem­ber States, there are no “release thresh­olds”. Ger­many, Bel­gium, and Spain, for exam­ple, apply the EU Direc­tive – val­ues in total bec­querels, or bec­querels per gram (mass activ­i­ty), below which waste can be released into the nor­mal cycle. This is because the activ­i­ty of the radionu­clides in the waste is con­sid­ered to be so low that it has no impact on human health or the envi­ron­ment. That said, this changed on 14^th Feb­ru­ary 2022 with the pub­li­ca­tion of two decrees con­cern­ing recov­er­able, but slight­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed, metal­lic materials.

Fol­low­ing a writ­ten report, we issue a fol­low-up let­ter (that is made pub­lic and pub­lished on the ASN web­site) and the recip­i­ent nor­mal­ly has two months to respond and imple­ment our requests. If they choose not to do so, we then send a for­mal notice. If this is ignored, we can sus­pend activ­i­ty on the site (some­thing that does not hap­pen very often, for­tu­nate­ly). The last major event in France of this kind was at the Épinal hos­pi­tal in 2005–2006, where sev­er­al cohorts of patients were over­ex­posed to radioac­tiv­i­ty. Some of these patients died. This sit­u­a­tion did indeed mer­it an inspec­tion, com­plaint, legal action, tri­al, and conviction.

In this arti­cle, we have main­ly talked about waste relat­ed to nuclear oper­a­tors, because today this cat­e­go­ry rep­re­sents 95% of the waste in France. But we also have 5% of waste from small pro­duc­ers, which comes from else­where. In par­tic­u­lar, there are all the research insti­tutes that use unsealed sources and liq­uid sources in gen­er­al. These organ­i­sa­tions are oblig­ed to return any tri­tium and car­bon-14 waste which has under­gone peri­ods of radioac­tiv­i­ty of more than 100 days to Andra. While this cat­e­go­ry of waste rep­re­sents a small vol­ume, it does exist.

It should also be not­ed that a cer­tain num­ber of enti­ties in France are autho­rised to use this type of radioac­tive source. This is the case, for exam­ple, at Sanofi Pas­teur, INRA, INSERM and foren­sic sci­ence lab­o­ra­to­ries. In some cas­es, Andra must recu­per­ate the waste pro­duced by these organ­i­sa­tions, even if it is a small vol­ume that is not very radioactive.

Final­ly, there is a more gen­er­al pub­lic cat­e­go­ry: all objects that con­tain radi­um must be recov­ered. Here, we can cite wrist­watch­es and clocks and oth­er small objects that con­tain radioac­tiv­i­ty, either arti­fi­cial or nat­ur­al. We’ve all seen these kinds of objects in flea mar­kets, and we may even have some in our own homes.

Interview by Isabelle Dumé