On giving radwaste management some status

Radwaste management is receiving ever increasing attention in the nuclear industry. The reasons for this include limited allocations for burial, increasing costs of handling and disposal, increased regulatory attention, and ALARA requirements. These issues have lead to an increasing awareness of the disadvantages of running a ''dirty'' plant and a variety of sophisticated systems have been proposed to fix the problem. Instead of these technologically difficult, and sometimes very expensive fixes, this paper focuses on several relatively simple ''low tech,'' and inexpensive solutions. Much can be done with organizational alternatives and assigned responsibilities and authorities to improve the situation. Applying controls on the front end of a radiological task rather than attempting to reduce the magnitude at the back end is the only realistic method for proper radwaste management