Long-term Radioactive Waste Management: Challenges and Approaches to Regulatory Decision Making

摘要

In the case of radioactive waste management, the disposal system has to have a conservative, passively stable design with adequately built-in control and intervention mechanisms. The approach suggested is dynamic, adaptive, even experimental in its instruments but not in its ultimate goal, i. e., the passive protection of present and future generations and environments. In 1999 IAEA peer discussions, senior regulators "agreed that regulatory bodies need to accept the value of being learning organizations". So the Decide-Announce-Defend decision model should be replaced by something like Propose-Learn-Share-Decide (PLSD). Proudly or sadly: The regulatory bodies ensuring continuity have to take the lead over the ENTIRE programme (respecting the causality principle), incl. goal and programme control, concept and project management issues (e. g., in case of delays), and key economic aspects. This, in turn, presupposes adequate resources, extensive reviewing, appropriate anticipatory research in diverse technical, non-technical and institutional fields as well as a continuous international and intergenerational knowledge transfer.