While discussions about the nuclear industry’s material legacy often center on the long-term disposal of high-level waste, this focus represents merely a small fraction of the total waste that requires our attention. Eventually, the entire nuclear infrastructure, which has turned into cumbersome old machines and buildings that are too outdated to continue operating, will need to be cared for and turned into massive amounts of low- and mid-level nuclear waste. How do actors in the nuclear industry but also in diverse political arenas envision the future decommissioning of these installations?
Nuclear decommissioning illustrates that nuclear waste is not just an object waiting to be picked up and stored. Instead, it results from complex processes that transform the infrastructure, which has lost its initial purpose, into packages suitable for long-term storage. Decommissioning is, therefore, a process that must deal with the “nuclear residues,” i.e. entities in a transitional state no longer being a fit-for-purpose infrastructure and not yet having become waste. This transformation of residues into waste faces many challenges: the long-term irradiation of components and the ongoing degradation of buildings needing decommissioning require special care to avoid contaminating workers and the environment. Some nuclear installations were not designed with future decommissioning in mind, posing challenges for accessing structures and understanding materials. Additionally, as decommissioning often stretches over long time periods, the memory of the sites must be properly preserved and passed on from one generation of workers to the next.
The transformation of nuclear installations into waste is thus not a straightforward process. It gives rise to different strategies and regulatory frameworks depending on the countries and the kinds of reactors. Although some argue in favor of decommissioning as fast as possible in order to avoid the effects of material degradation and memory loss, others argue for a deferred decommissioning that would benefit from further innovations in robotics, digital twinning, and technologies of long-term disposal for the low and mid-level wastes produced by decommissioning processes. Finally, some argue in favor of entombment: instead of transforming the installations into waste to be transported elsewhere, why not reinforce their structure in order to transform them into long-term disposal sites?
This panel focuses on the technical and political issues related to nuclear decommissioning and the transformation of old and obsolete nuclear installations into storable nuclear wastes, specifically focusing on low- and mid-level wastes.