From the earliest beginning of the nuclear era, governments have estab­lished, and then have relied on regulatory organizations to audit the per­formance of organizations of all sorts related to use of ionizing radiation — isotope users, miners, researchers, health professionals, and power plant operators. These regulatory organizations issue licences to operate within carefully defined rules and regulations. They usually perform detailed audit­ing and enforcement duties, especially through staff members at the loca­tion of major facilities such as power plants.

The positive value of audit staff to the plant owner/operator arises from their emphasis on safety. This emphasis helps to provide balance to the strong motivation of plant senior management, who may at times consider production as their first and overriding priority. This need for balance pro­vides the most fundamental infrastructure requirement that justifies the purchase of a nuclear plant; that is, the need for a competent review of plant safety performance before the plant is purchased, to ensure that later per­formance will meet the exacting standards required by the safety regulatory agency.

The International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group has prepared a draft proposal for an integrated process, as described in INSAG-25 (2010). This document aims at the most difficult of all safety-related actions; that is, the decision process surrounding the question of what is a sufficient level of safety. As noted in the INSAG document, the process must be flexible to adapt to the myriad of different situations under which these decisions must be made. For example, the decision process to be applied during the stage of conceptual design of a plant can be much broader and more thoroughly researched than can the process that must be applied when (purely for example) a redundant pump fails for some reason during operation and the appropriate subsequent action must be decided. The difference lies mainly in the time available for decision and action — much shorter in the second case.

The general roles of the major stakeholders in the safety management system were discussed in Section 10.2.4. Specific relationships during plant operation are much more complex, but at a higher level always consist of an operating organization overseen and audited by experienced and independent technical staff on behalf of the licensing authority. Fig. 10.8

illustrates a somewhat more detailed map of one possible set of processes involved in arriving at a safety-related decision.

To alleviate the enormous expenditure of resources involved in a step — by-step operation of the process involved in Fig. 10.8, it is usual to develop a set of symptom-based operating procedures for use by the individuals and groups who actually operate the plant controls. Properly developed and tested, these procedures can dramatically shorten the decision and action time required. Procedures must be developed through a comprehensive and interactive process such as that described in INSAG-25 (2010). They must also be periodically updated based on operating experience. The same rule must hold for equipment or design modifications that may be required periodically in a mature operating plant. Finally, if significant changes occur in the external environment of the plant (for example, a newly discovered threat) then a review may result in changes to operating procedures or equipment in order to deal with the new situation.

It should moreover be noted that effects can occur in human cells exposed to relatively high levels of radiation. These effects can be detected through specialized bioassay specimens, such as some haematological and cytogenic sampling. They may be used as biological indicators of the exposure and can help to identify and even quantify high individual exposures to radia­tion, such as those occurring in accidents. However, the presence of biologi­cal indicators of exposure does not necessarily imply that the individual had experienced or would experience health effects that could be attributed to radiation.

A nuclear emergency starts when the plant monitors indicate that some operational systems do not operate properly and the situation cannot be controlled by the corresponding safety systems adequately. Upon failure detection, the plant operator evaluates the impact of the incident on the plant and identifies the affected systems and the availability of alternative systems to control the situation. Simultaneously, the plant operator inves­tigates whether the incident could lead to the escape of radioactive material within the plant or to the environment. Based on the results of its prelimi­nary evaluation, the operator initiates the mitigation actions, decides the level of the on-site emergency plan to be activated, and notifies the situation to the emergency coordinator who is responsible for off-site emergency plan activation.

Transition from normal operation to an emergency situation is a critical step that needs to be clearly established in emergency plans; for this reason, the operators are specifically trained in the use of procedures to identify abnormal situations within the plant, activate on-site emergency plans, and implement the emergency procedures to handle the situation. Similarly, activation of the off-site emergency plans requires specific training of the authorities in charge of response and intervention. The on-site/off-site inter­face also needs careful implementation to avoid any delay or disturbance in taking the necessary countermeasures.

Spent nuclear fuel is removed from the reactor when it can no longer con­tribute to the fission energy process, typically after three to seven years use. The fuel, however, still contains components, uranium and plutonium, that could be reused and recycled as fuel material. As for most waste in our society, e. g. paper and glass, there is, however, an economic issue involved in the decision to recycle or not. Although the remaining uranium and plutonium can be recycled as mixed oxide fuel (MOX) in present-day light water or heavy water reactors, real benefit from recycling will only be achieved if the fuel is recycled in fast spectrum reactors, so called fourth- generation reactors, which are being developed now. There are thus two options for spent fuel management:

• regard the fuel as a waste and dispose of it in a deep geological reposi­tory after a period (>30 years) of interim storage for sufficient cooling, or

• reprocess the fuel to separate out the components that can be recycled as fuel material after a period (~10 years or less) of interim storage. The remaining waste products (HLW and ILW) will still need geological disposal.

Some countries, e. g. Canada, Finland, Germany and Sweden,[82] have chosen the direct disposal route, while other countries, e. g. France, India and Japan, have chosen the recycling route. Most countries, however, have still not decided which option to choose. As spent fuel storage for decades is a straightforward and proven technology, there is no urgent technical need to make the choice. Prolonged storage will provide time to consider the progress in fast spectrum reactors with effective recycling, and provide a better basis for making the choice. Storage times of 100 years and more are now considered in some countries. As both options will in the end require a deep geological disposal facility, it will be important to work towards the development of such a facility, not least from a political acceptability point of view.

The views on reprocessing or direct disposal have changed over time. Some countries, e. g. Germany and Sweden that in the 1980s sent fuel for reprocessing, changed their policy in the 1980s to storage and subsequent disposal. Also in the USA the position has changed over the years. Reprocessing was the main option early on and some civilian reprocessing plants were built. Since the early 1980s the main option has been direct disposal, and investigations for developing a disposal facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada were conducted up to the point that a licence applica­tion was submitted to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008. This application was later recalled in 2010. In parallel, studies were conducted on reprocessing and recycling in fast reactors. In 2009 a Blue Ribbon Committee was set up to advise the Administration on the way forward. The result of the Commission is due in 2012.

The steps for spent fuel management include interim storage, reprocess­ing and subsequent recycling of fuel material and conditioning of the remaining waste for disposal, or encapsulation of the fuel for disposal, and final disposal. As the facilities involved are normally located at different locations, transport will also be needed. Interim storage can be made in pools in the reactor facility or in separate storage facilities, containing either water pools or dry casks or vaults (Fig. 14.1). Given the trend towards longer storage times, there is also a trend towards using dry storage systems that can be built in modules as the needs arise and that will require less active operation. There is also a trend towards primarily expanding the storage capacity at the reactor sites to avoid extra transport.

Reprocessing facilities and facilities for producing MOX fuel exist today in only a few countries — France, India, Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom. These facilities need to be quite large and involve technology that is sensitive from a nuclear proliferation point of view. It can thus not be expected that they will be built in many countries. The existing facilities have served nuclear utilities in several more countries. In most cases the wastes from reprocessing, HLW, ILW and LLW, have been returned to the country of origin for storage and disposal.

So far no country has started disposal of spent fuel or high-level or intermediate-level waste in deep geological repositories. Development work is underway in several countries and good progress can be seen in Finland, France and Sweden, countries that expect to start disposal in the period 2020-25. Although the technology for disposal is fairly straightfor­ward and simple, the safety assessment poses important challenges, as the time periods to be considered are very long (from thousands to hundreds of thousands of years). Another important challenge is the public and politi­cal acceptance of disposal. Important setbacks have been experienced in many countries, which has delayed the disposal projects and led to impor­tant changes in the siting process. Experience has shown that the time needed for developing a deep geological disposal facility, including the time needed for scientific studies and siting, is at least 40 years.

More technical details of the different steps for spent fuel management are given in Section 14.4.

Uranium prices have been volatile over the past 30 years. The end of the Cold War curtailed the need for large stockpiles of military fissile materials, and the bleak prospect for civilian nuclear power during the 1990s enticed utilities to reduce their uranium inventories. So-called secondary uranium sources (reactor fuel derived from warheads, military and commercial inventories, re-enrichment of depleted uranium tails, as well as enriching at lower tail assays, reprocessed uranium and mixed oxide fuel) became increasingly available, e. g. through the 1993 agreement between the United States and the Russian Federation to convert highly enriched uranium (HEU) from nuclear warheads into low-enriched uranium for reactor fuel
(also known as the Megatonnes to Megawatt programme). Low-cost sec­ondary sources penetrating the uranium market and a general perception during the 1990s that nuclear power is a technology inevitably in decline suppressed uranium prices and mine production. Ever since 1990 annual fresh uranium production has fallen short of annual reactor requirements. Historically, low spot market prices threatened economic survival of many mines. Without clear long-term demand signals from the marketplace, the uranium industry has been reluctant to invest in new mine capacities or to pursue large-scale uranium exploration. Meanwhile, global production had progressively declined to less than 60% of reactor requirements. Clearly, uranium prices no longer reflected longer-term production capacities (Rogner, 2007).

Shortly after prices hit the historical low, a series of events uncovered the long-ignored demand/supply imbalance and caused prices to rise. On the demand side, since 1990 rising plant factors of the world’s nuclear fleet added incrementally to annual reactor fuel requirements the equivalent of more than 30 GWe. A series of licence renewals for existing reactors that began around the turn of the century sent plant operators out to secure fuel for another 20 years or so. Another change was the growth of nuclear power in the developing economies of China and India, countries that had either not participated in the market to a great extent or not participated at all. While demand was picking up momentum, supply from mine output con­tinued to be underprovided. In fact, in the face of rising demand several technical mishaps at major production centres reduced global mine output and prices began to rise. Moreover, the longer-term availability of second­ary sources from military arsenals is politically determined and thus uncer­tain and the bulk of future uranium supply had to be provided by additional mine output, i. e., investment in exploration and development of new mines and mills. Given lead times of 5-10 years for new mining capacity to come on-line, in the short run production cannot increase rapidly despite rising demand. Beginning in 2004, the general demand-driven price acceleration of fossil fuels, materials and commodities further aggravated uranium prices and, by 2007, spot prices had exploded almost 20-fold.

As for almost all commodities, uranium market conditions abruptly changed with the onset of the financial and economic crises in 2008. At the close of 2009 spot prices were about 35% below their mid-2007 peak of $350/kg U. Yet compared with other commodities, the uranium market weathered the storm fairly well. Uranium is generally better protected against aberrations than other markets. For one, short-run reactor uranium requirements are relatively stable as existing nuclear power plants are usually the lowest-cost generators on the grid and global annual reactor requirements of uranium of approximately 67,000 U remained unchanged. For another, most uranium (about 85%) is supplied under long-term con­tracts, where the pricing is shielded from sudden market fluctuations. New contracts or contract renewals then tend to also reflect the current spot price situation among other demand and supply factors. Typically, average long-term multiannual contract prices have been about half the going spot market price.

What brought down spot prices — in addition to the precipitous fall of energy, material and commodity prices — were those hedge funds and investors who since 2004 have traded in uranium and who, to a certain extent, added fuel to the 2004-08 spot price rally and, as a result of the financial crisis, were forced to sell their uranium positions due to cash requirements.

The longer-run price outlook, however, depends on whether or not above-ground investment in exploration and mining capacity will be forth­coming and mobilize the below-ground uranium resources. While global uranium resources are plentiful (NEA, 2010; Rogner, 2010) and the recent prices have stimulated both exploration and investment in new mining capacity, it remains to be seen if these are sufficient to meet additional demand caused by the expected nuclear renaissance but also to compensate for the likely decline in availability of secondary sources. Therefore, consid­erable uncertainty about future uranium prices remains. In the long run, uranium prices will be capped by the possibility of reprocessing of spent fuel. Except in Japan, no new commercial reprocessing facilities have been built for decades. The existing quasi-commercially operating plants in France and the United Kingdom initially served military purposes and were adapted or rebuilt for spent fuel reprocessing in the 1960s and 1970s under fundamentally different conditions (e. g., exponential growth of nuclear power, perceived limited uranium availability, continued demands for mili­tary purposes) and expectations of future nuclear power development in which plutonium-fuelled fast breeder reactors played a central role. This future did not materialize, but reprocessing continued, often rationalized as an integral part of a nation’s nuclear waste management strategy or as a source for mixed oxide fuel (MOX) production and reuse in standard light water reactors (LWR). In any case, the expensive construction costs were quasi-stranded (sunk costs) and reprocessing services were offered interna­tionally at attractive terms. In short, the economics of reprocessing in the near future hinge upon substantially higher uranium prices (or the equiva­lent of the revival of fast breeder reactor technology). During the last decade several studies attempted to cut through the complexity of reproc­essing with its capital and operating cost depending on a mix of potential credits for recovered fissile materials, different waste volumes, interim storage requirements, high-level waste treatment and final disposal, and to determine break-even points with regard to uranium costs and once-through fuel cycles. For example, Bunn et al. (2003) concluded that ‘at a central reprocessing price of $1000/kg of heavy metal (kgHM), and with other central estimates for the key fuel cycle parameters, reprocessing and recy­cling plutonium in existing light-water reactors (LWRs) will be more expen­sive than direct disposal of spent fuel until the uranium price reaches over $360/kg of uranium metal.’ Likewise, the study The Future of Nuclear Power (Deutch and Moniz, 2003) concluded similarly, and that conclusion was repeated in the authors’ 2009 update (Deutch et al., 2009) which stated that ‘given the assumptions about uranium resource availability and new plant deployment rates, the cost of recycle is unfavorable compared to a once — through cycle, but the cost differential is small relative to the total cost of nuclear power generation’.

The crux of the matter of all things concerning the nuclear fuel cycle is contained in the last part of the conclusion: nuclear fuel cycle costs have been and will continue to be a small cost component in total nuclear gen­erating costs. The actual fuel costs per MWh are a function of the front-end costs, capacity factor and burn-up (number of MWh per unit of mass gener­ated from the fuel) and the overall spent fuel management strategy (once — through or reprocessing and reuse). A very recent study estimated the once-through fuel cycle cost for LWRs at $8.67/MWh or some 10% to 14% of total generating costs (Rothwell, 2010).

The cost components for spent fuel management, disposal and decom­missioning are accumulated in escrow funds (or equivalent schemes) as the plant operates and account for approximately 10% of total O&M costs (or approximately $1/MWh). However, these components can vary widely depending on reactor technology, regulatory requirements and the time frame over which these must be accumulated.

The lifetime fuel requirements (in terms of volume) of nuclear power plants are relatively small (compared with fossil generation) and so are the amounts of spent fuel and waste. But spent fuel is radioactive and must be kept isolated from the environment. Most countries require spent fuel to be stored at the plant site for an interim period until its radioactive inven­tory is greatly reduced and the fuel can eventually be transferred to a permanent repository outside the plant site. If spent fuel is accumulated over many years or the entire plant life, sufficient storage capacity must be provided.

Part 2 of the PA 2008 empowers the Secretary of State to publish NPS, fol­lowing Parliamentary scrutiny, in relation to specified descriptions of devel­opment. The introduction of NPS is part of the strategy to expedite planning timeframes. By formalising government policy in advance in an overarching document, NPS are meant to avoid policy disputes being raised further down the line in respect of specific project applications. In November 2009, the UK government published a draft overarching NPS for energy (EN-1) and a draft NPS specific to nuclear power generation (EN-6) which, at the time of publication, are still in draft form. The consideration of environ­mental impacts figures prominently in both draft NPS and certain core areas have been specifically highlighted in the context of nuclear develop­ment such as flood risk, water quality and resources, coastal change and biodiversity and geological conservation (EN-6, p. 27). These impacts will need to be addressed by applicants in their environmental assessments and the IPC is obliged to ensure that they have been adequately factored into their decision-making. Another way in which environmental impacts have been taken into account in the draft nuclear NPS is in the siting of new power stations. Part 5 of the NPS identifies 10 potentially suitable sites for new development. The assessment criteria included a consideration of certain environmental impacts, and the sites were chosen following consul­tation with the UK environment agencies.

Principle 3 of the INSAG document on NPP siting described in Section 18.3 addresses the study of the feasibility of an emergency plan in the site selected. Emergency planning, the last barrier to protect the health and safety of the population, has a considerable relevance. In the IAEA safety guide already quoted (IAEA, 2002b) the site-related aspects of nuclear emergencies are introduced: ‘There should be no adverse site conditions which could hinder the sheltering or evacuation of the population in the region or the ingress or egress of external services needed to deal with an emergency.’ Sheltering in people’s own houses is the most elementary way to protect people; to make sheltering effective some basic procedures have to be put in place. Electricity and sufficient water and food should be avail­able; special population groups such as residents in hospitals and prisons will also demand special services.

Poorly developed transport and communications networks or the pres­ence of industrial activities may impair the rapid and free movement of people and vehicles in case of evacuation to safer places. Such places should be defined and be prepared beforehand, with alternatives in case they also become contaminated. In case evacuation routes have to pass close to the affected plant new routes have to be open. The Chernobyl-4 and Fukushima-1 accidents have demonstrated the need for permanent or prolonged dis­placement, a situation that needs government attention. The cited IAEA safety guide includes the following list of items to be considered for an efficient emergency plan:

• Population density and distribution in the region

• Distance of the site from population centres

• Special groups of the population who are difficult to evacuate or shelter, such as people in hospitals or prisons, or nomadic groups

• Particular geographical features such as islands, mountains and rivers

• Characteristics of local transport and communications networks

• Industrial facilities which may entail potentially hazardous activities

• Agricultural activities that are sensitive to possible discharges of radionuclides

• Possible concurrent external events.

The last item has particular interest. Evacuation may have to be conducted under heavy fog or snowfall or concurrent with other major natural phe­nomena such as an earthquake and tsunami as in the case of the 2011 Fukushima event.

The IAEA has developed a series of requirements and safety guides on emergency planning. A requirements document (IAEA, 2002c) addresses the logistic support and facilities needed as well as the training drills and exercises which should be conducted on a periodic basis. These require­ments are further developed in a safety guide (IAEA, 2007b) in which Appendix VIII describes the conditions that emergency facilities and loca­tions should comply with.

The commercial conditions (CC) is the BIS document in which the owner establishes the information required from the bidder as regards prices, price breakdown, price escalation formulae, payment terms and schedule, and other commercial conditions for the scope of supply and services offered.

The owner must request all information regarding prices and commercial conditions to be provided in sufficient detail to facilitate the economic and financial evaluation of the bids and to serve as the basis for establishing the commercial conditions of the contract.

All safety-related anomalies should be reported to the RB within the stipu­lated time frame. These should cover safety-related anomalies in operation, violation of any licensing condition or technical specifications for operation and exceeding of any prescribed limits, like those for radiation exposure of personnel or discharge of radioactive effluents to the environment. The reports should describe the incident in reasonable detail together with an analysis that identifies the apparent causes, and the root cause of the inci­dent. They should also include the proposed corrective actions and schedule for their implementation.

If a safety limit, as prescribed in the technical specifications for operation, gets violated, the reactor must be shut down immediately and a report on the incident submitted to the RB giving details of the incident and the circumstances that caused the violation. Reactor operation can be resumed only after a detailed review of the incident and clearance from the RB. The RB should review these reports in detail according to a laid-down proce­dure with the primary aim of determining whether the incident occurred due to equipment failure or human error, or on account of any shortcoming in procedures or their implementation.