Software development to support decommissioning and waste management strategic planning

One of the components of the UKAEA's mission is to care for and, at the appropriate time, safely dismantle its radioactive facilities which are no longer in use. To assist in the development of an optimised strategy, AEA Technology was commissioned to produce decision support software. This paper describes the background to the development of the software, its key features and current status, and the lessons learnt during the development. The software, known as UKAEA SPS (Strategic Planning System), is a unique support software package that has been developed to assist in the planning of decommissioning and radioactive waste management. SPS models linked decommissioning and waste management strategies covering all of UKAEA's nuclear liabilities. It has been developed around the database package ACCESS, and runs on Pentium PCs; however, it has many of the features of project planning systems. Its principal outputs are costs, timings and utilisation data for the waste stores, processing facilities, transport and disposal operations displayed at any level of aggregation. This allows programme managers to see easily the effects of changing key parameters in a strategy under development. (author)