Exchanging decommissioning information

For most of the world's nuclear power plants decommissioning is still but a distant threat. According to IAEA statistics, most of the world's operating nuclear power plants are still under 20 years of age, the average being little more than ten years. However 55 power plants have already been permanently shut down. A large number of early research and demonstration facilities and various military plants are already at some stage of decommissioning or at least awaiting decisions to that end. So decommissioning is already a current issue. The diversity of situations in various countries was clearly illustrated at the three-day international seminar jointly organized by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and the IAEA which was held in Paris on 2-4 October 1991. Although mainly devoted to decommissioning policies, it gave a fresh view of the status of the whole field. (author)