Defining best practice in waste minimisation

摘要

The Radioactive Substances Act 1993 requires operators to be authorised to dispose of radioactive wastes from their sites. Furthermore, the Act places a statutory duty on operators to demonstrate that they are applying the Best Practicable Means (BPM) to prevent, and where this is not practicable, minimise waste arisings and discharges. The proposed UKAEA Harwell Authorisation and recently issued AWE Authorisation have placed a series of Improvement Requirements on the operator with respect to several aspects of waste management. One of these requires the operators to review best practice in waste minimisation. RM Consultants, under contract to UKAEA Harwell and AWE, have developed a methodology that provides a basis for responding to this requirement. This paper explains the sets of Best Practice Principles which were defined and paints out that they may have wider application to other nuclear radioactive waste producers, in developing a common achievement of best practice across the industry.