[en] Traditionally safety assessments of repositories with long-lived nuclear waste have used a stylised biosphere and usually only addressed pathways to humans. However, new regulations, e.g. in Sweden, require that also effects on the environment should be evaluated. This means that important pathways not leading to exposure to humans needs to be considered because they may affect other biota than humans. Moreover, the predictions over long time periods required, often 1000-100000 years, can shift an initially high accumulating, but abiotic environment to a highly exposured biotic environment due to land-rise, climate changes etc. In the last three safety assessments of radioactive waste facilities, the Swedish nuclear fuel and waste management company (SKB) has used an ecosystem approach to address these issues. The ecosystem approach, which earlier has been used for other substances, such as PCBs and PAHs, includes site-specific dispersal modelling, strictly based on mass-balance. Methods from systems ecology have been used, which have the advantage to constrict the mass-flow within the ecosystem as well as the flows over the system borders. The models are based on natural processes such as total photosynthesis, decomposition and material transfer with carbon (i.e. food) and extrinsic drivers are insolation, nutrient supply and water transport. Since the models are founded on fundamental processes, they can be scaled to future ecosystems describing successions e.g. from estuaries, lakes, mires to farmland. Our conclusion is that these methods probably are the only way to address radiation effects on the environment as well as humans. Moreover, the models are independent on whether the hazard substance is a radio-nuclide or another pollutant, thus it enables to overbridge and maybe unify ecotoxicological and radio-ecological issues. (author)