The Environment Agency and Office for Nuclear Regulation have published the results of their joint review of Radioactive Waste Management’s 2016 generic Disposal System Safety Case. (DSSC)

The regulators state:

We recognise that the 2016 gDSSC represents an early (but important) stage for RWM in developing its approach for assessing the safety of any future geological disposal facility. Currently, from our assessment of the 2016 gDSSC, we have not identified any fundamental regulatory issues that would prevent RWM developing a safety case in the future to address our regulatory requirements. However, we note that there is a significant amount of work for RWM to do to develop a comprehensive, site-specific safety case, and that many aspects can only be fully evaluated when a site is selected and specific designs are produced. RWM should continue to engage in dialogue with the regulators and take steps to address our feedback as it undertakes this further development work.

The review presents Radioactive Waste Management with 38 recommendations to be considered in the development of future iterations of the safety case. The review also raises 3 new Regulatory Issues (RI) and 2 new Regulatory Observations (RO) concerning topics warranting particular consideration. Progress against these recommendations, RIs and ROs will be monitored and reported by regulators in future regulator progress reports.