Tag Archives: United Nations Joint Convention on the Safe Management of Spent Nuclear Fuel

The Enormous Task of Nuclear Waste Storage

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“The Koeberg spent fuel pool storage capacity in South Africa  is currently over 90% full. (These) pools will reach (their) capacity by April 2020,” Eskom, the South African utility, told Reuters in a statement on Nov. 25, 2019.  Koeberg produces about 32 tonnes of spent fuel a year. Fuel assemblies, which contain radioactive materials including uranium and plutonium that can remain dangerous for thousands of years, are cooled for a decade under water in spent fuel pools.

Fuel Pool at Koeberg, South Africa

In 2016,  Eskom paid an estimated 200 million rand ($13.60 million) for an initial batch of seven reinforced dry storage casks from U.S. energy company Holtec International to help keep Koeberg running beyond 2018.  Eskom now has nine new unused casks on site, each with an individual capacity of 32 spent fuel assemblies, with another five expected to be delivered soon.

Holtec Cask

The 14 casks should ensure there is sufficient storage in the spent fuel pool until 2024, Eskom said, ahead of a tender for an extra 30 casks….Anti-nuclear lobby group Earthlife Africa said South Africa could not afford the social, environmental and economic costs associated with nuclear waste.  “We have a ticking bomb with high-level waste and fuel rods at Koeberg,” said Makoma Lekalakala, Earthlife Africa’s director.

Wendell Roelf, Waste storage at Africa’s only nuclear plant brimming, Reuters, Nov. 25, 2019

Russia Improves Nuclear Waste Management

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Russia has introduced an automated system for the accounting and control of its radioactive substances and waste that encompasses more than 2000 organizations. The system follows an order by state nuclear corporation Rosatom, 113 subsidiaries of which account for 96% of the country’s radioactive substances and waste.  The system automates the collection and monitoring of the availability, production, transmission, receipt, processing, conditioning, siting and deregistration of radioactive substances and waste, as well as their changes in status, properties and location….Full implementation of the system is scheduled for late 2015…[T]he system is needed for the implementation of a Russian government decree on the procedure for state registration and control of radioactive waste.”The new solution enables a high level of quality control in the movement of radioactive substances and waste and provides complete data for assessment of the financial responsibility for handling them,.”

In June 2011, the Russian legislature passed the Radioactive Waste Management Law developing a unified state radioactive waste management system that brought Russia into compliance with the United Nations Joint Convention on the Safe Management of Spent Nuclear Fuel ( adopted in 1997 entered into force in 2001). In April 2012, the state-run national operator for radioactive waste, NO RAO, was created to manage this process.

Plans for disposal of low- and intermediate-level wastes are to be in place by 2018. It is expected to establish repositories for 300,000 cubic metres of low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste, and an underground research laboratory in Nizhnekansky granitoid massif at Zheleznogorsk near Krasnoyarsk for study into the feasibility of disposal of solid high-level radioactive waste and solid medium-level long-lived wastes by 2021. A decision on final high-level radioactive waste repository is expected by 2025.

Excerpts from Russia makes progress with radwaste data management, World Nuclear News, Feb. 23, 2015