Remarkable progress in the last two decades has been made in the field of geological disposal. Some countries have reached important milestones and geological disposal (of spent fuel) is expected to start in 2020 in Finland and in 2022 in Sweden and in fact the licensing of the geological repositories in both countries is now entering into its final phases. In France disposal of ILW and vitrified HLW is expected to start around 2025, according to the roadmap defined by a Parliament Act in 2006.

The impact of P&T technology on the management of nuclear waste has been discussed since the 1970s. Up to about the year 2000, the emphasis was on reductions in the ‘potential radiological toxicity’ or ‘radiotoxic inventory’, which is defined by the sum of the activities of individual radionuclides in the waste when normalized by their dose coefficients for ingestion.1 One of the important studies in this period was the first Status and Assessment Report on P&T issued by the OECD/NEA in 1999.29 The reduction of radiotoxicity was considered to be important for the long-term safety of deep repositories, especially for disturbed evolution scenarios, such as human intrusion. In the decade following the year 2000, more emphasis was put on the realistic consideration of issues pertaining to the fuel cycle and to the implications of P&T for repository design.20-41 Results have been summarized and discussed by an OECD-NEA Task Force.42