Transparency of the Total System Performance Assessment through the Development of the FEAS Program

Transparency on the total system performance assessment (TSPA) is the key issue to enhance the public acceptance for a permanent high level radioactive repository. Throughout the lessons accumulated in international projects, it turns out to be important to translate technical languages to more understandable ones. One of the key consolidated statements of the RISCOM project was 'the public should know you have a model, which is clear to everybody about value judgments, facts, uncertainties and questions'. In fact, the final assessment is the integration of identifying and clarifying facts, expert judgment, uncertainties, value judgment, level of significance, and open questions, which cannot be easily understood. Traditionally, the study on features, events, and processes (FEPs) and associated scenarios has been regarded as the starting point to open the communicative discussion on TSPA such as what to evaluate, how to evaluate and how to translate outcomes into more friendly language that many stakeholders can easily understand and react with. However, in most cases, it is difficult for stakeholders outside the performance assessment field to assess the details on the story of the safety assessment; scenario and technical background of it. Fortunately, the advent of the internet era opens up the possibility of two way communication from the beginning of the performance assessment so that every stake bolder can exchange their keen opinions on the safety issues. To achieve it, KAERI develops the systematic approach from the FEPs to Assessment method flow chart, through the formation of integrated FEPs corresponding to the elements in the RES matrix. All information is integrated into the web based program named FEAS (FEp to Assessment through Scenario development) under development in KAERI. In parallel, two independent systems are also under development, the web based quality assurance system and the performance assessment input database. Throughout the next phase R and D starting from the year 2003, these three systems will be consolidated into one unified system so that all the stakeholders can easily learn 'what are the stories of the radionuclide migration from a repository to a biosphere and their associated consequences and what are the real datasets used for the study'