nuclear-news

Academic agrees with NFLA’s position on management of deadly radioactive waste.

 NFLA 9th Sept 2025, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/academic-agrees-with-nflas-position-on-management-of-deadly-rad-waste/

Following on from last weeks joint media release with Lakes against the Nuclear Dump (LAND) https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/volatile-boiling-geysers-the-latest-on-nuclear-waste-plans/, the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities were delighted to hear that the views of another senior academic chimed with our own policy on the management of high-level radioactive waste.

David K. Smythe, Emeritus Professor and former Chair of Geophysics, University of Glasgow, said he agreed with Professor Stuart Haszeldine about the danger of trying to bury High Level Waste, whether it was conditioned or not: “The waste should be kept on the surface of the earth, and immobilised beyond any possibility of re-use, until a proper long-term solution is found.”

This concept of ongoing active stewardship pending the discovery of future treatment methods, rather than disposal and abandonment in a subterranean repository, accords with the position of the NFLAs and that of the Scottish Government.

Scottish Government Policy is that Higher Activity Radioactive Waste ‘should be managed in the long-term in near-surface facilities where it can be monitored and where there is the capability of retrieving it.’

The NFLAs have a similar long-standing policy on the management of nuclear waste; this comprises a set of clear principles which we are confident have stood the test of time and remain as relevant now as when they were originally agreed in 2004

• The idea that radioactive waste can be ‘disposed’ of be rejected in favour of radioactive waste management.
• Any process or activity that involves new or additional radioactive discharges into the environment be opposed, as this is potentially harmful to the human and natural environment.
• The policy of ‘dilution and dispersion’ of radioactive materials as a component of waste management, which leads to discharges into the estuaries, seas or atmosphere or the diversion of waste to landfill, metal recycling plants and incineration, be rejected in favour of a policy of ‘concentration and containment’, storing the waste safely on-site in isolation from the environment in bespoke facilities.
• The principle of waste minimisation be supported.
• The unnecessary transport of radioactive and other hazardous wastes be opposed.
• Wastes should ideally be managed on-site where produced (or as near as possible to the site) in a facility that allows monitoring and retrieval of the wastes.

September 12, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | UK