System understanding as a scientific foundation in radioactive waste disposal, legacy site and decommissioning programmes

Ongoing national programmes and International forums have in recent decades developed and enhanced
methods and strategies in how to address the characterisation of potentially suitable sites for
radioactive waste repositories. Siting processes, site selection and site investigation programmes
have been conducted for near surface and geological repositories and plans for construction are in
progress or have already been implemented. Lessons learned from these national and international
programmes are available and results are published. In this paper we synthesise the methods and our
lessons learned in how to plan, conduct, and achieve site understanding. Effective site
understanding should incorporate a multi-disciplinary and integrated view of geosphere and biosphere
information for a site, together with the designed parts of a repository or installation that
constitute the total system. We argue that this integrated approach, following a staged program of
repository developmen...

Source: Journal of Radiological Protection - June 1, 2021 Category: Physics Authors: Tobias Lindborg, Ari T K Ikonen, Ulrik Kautsky and Graham Smith Source Type: research