Radioactive Waste Management at CERN
Radioactive waste minimisation is applied during the design, operation and decommissioning of CERN’s accelerators and experiments. HSE-RP pursues innovative scientific studies in order to develop tools for the assessment and demonstration to Host State authorities if installed equipment & material are radioactive or not. This requires extensive simulations and computing resources and tools (e.g. FLUKA, Actiwiz) which are corroborated by a large number of measurements and samples on the field.
Radioactive waste management section
CERN’s Radiation Protection group (HSE-RP) has a dedicated section for Radioactive Waste Management (HSE-RP-RWM). The section advises and assists the CERN Departments, LHC experiments and the other HSE-RP Sections in matters of radioactive waste management, such as minimisation, sorting, and packaging.
HSE-RP-RWM receives, processes, and stores radioactive waste produced in CERN’s facilities until its elimination, which is done in compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and requirements of the final repositories in the Host States.
The section is responsible for procuring, installing and operating the Radioactive Waste Treatment Centre and interim-Storage facilities (RWTCS). In order to anticipate temporary storage needs and plan elimination campaigns, it coordinates and monitors the forecasts of radioactive waste production with the help from CERN’s Departments, the LHC experiments and other HSE-RP sections.
Together with the other HSE-RP sections, such as characterization and metrology, HSE-RP-RWM explores, monitors, develops, and opens new radioactive waste elimination pathways in the Hosts States.
The section regularly reports the stored, eliminated and forecasted radioactive waste inventory (volume, radiotoxicity, costs) to the CERN management, competent Host States’ agencies and authorities.
Radioactive waste programme
HSE-RP-RW manages a programme aimed at creating an industrialised process capable of increasing the disposal capacity. The programme is structured along four main axes.
- Integrating radioactive waste management in the lifecycle of CERN’s facilities, in order to reduce the radioactive waste production, to reduce the mid- and long-term costs for radioactive waste disposal and to ensure the best possible anticipation of the radioactive waste produced in CERN’s facilities.
- Developing and operating the Radioactive Waste Treatment Centre and interim-storage facilities (RWTCS), suitable for the families, classes, and volumes of radioactive waste produced, while complying with the applicable regulations as well as the requirements of the final repositories in the Host States.
- Developing sustainable elimination pathways for all the radioactive waste families and classes as required by the RP-RS tripartite agreement (in French only) and decisions there under.
- Defining the short, medium and long-term elimination objectives, taking into account the schedule for opening the new pathways, the forecasted waste production, the interim-storage capacity and resources.
For any information about the radioactive waste programme, please contact rwm-reception@cern.ch.
Declaration and disposal of radioactive waste
Prior to the declaration of waste, please ensure that the waste is respecting the “waste acceptance criteria” (CADRA – EDMS no. 1364231) and the annexes therein.
In order to dispose of radioactive waste, please proceed in the following way:
- The owner must ensure that the waste is registered in TREC by the following functions
- in the buffer zone, “Deposit waste”;
- outside of the buffer zones, “Declare waste”.
- A notification is automatically sent to HSE-RP for a radiological check and, once validated, the transport request is automatically generated.
The ownership of the waste is transferred from the original department to HSE once the waste has arrived at the radioactive waste reception facility and has been accepted by HSE-RP-RW. The change of ownership is formalized by the existence in TREC of the acceptance of waste by HSE-RP-RWM (RW Check).
Sorting correctly: it will save time, effort and money
All radioactive waste must be correctly sorted at the source. If not here’s what happens for incinerable waste.
Radioactive waste forecast
The amount of radioactive waste that CERN forecasts to produce in the short and medium-term is a key parameter in the Radioactive Waste Management Programme for planning the waste storage, adapting the elimination and resources planning and for reporting to the authorities.
Every year, HSE-RP-RWM launches the RW forecast exercise in the second quarter, contacting the RW producers, the Radiation Safety Officers (RSO) and the Radiation Protection Responsible persons (RPR) to declare, verify and update the radioactive waste of a significant volume or radiological hazard expected in the next five years.
The yearly RW forecast exercise and the results are centralized in a dedicated website.