The long term storage of radioactive waste: Safety and sustainability. A position paper of international experts

The purpose of the report is to reflect the currently prevailing views among experts in the field of radioactive waste storage and disposal. It is intended for use as a central and authoritative reference point for national discussions and policy papers. It is therefore potentially useful to national committees and bodies concerned with the management of radioactive waste. It may also be of value to concerned members of the public since it is written in language that should be comprehensible to the informed lay person. It was produced as a result of several meetings of experts in the first part of 2002. Since then, it has been reviewed by the international Waste Safety Standards Committee (WASSC), by the WASSC Subgroup on Principles and Criteria for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste at its meeting in October 2000 and by a technical committee convened specifically to review the paper at a meeting held in November 2002. Finally, the essential conclusions of the paper were presented to and discussed with participants to the International Conference on Issues and Trends in Radioactive Waste Management, held in Vienna in December 2002