C. McCombie, H. Issler
Nagra, 5430 Wettingen, Switzerland
Phone 0041 56 4371 210; Fax 0041 56 4371 317
e-mail 100622.734@compuserve.com
ABSTRACT
Discussions on the pros and cons of international repositories have taken place in different technical and non-technical groups and organizations over a long period of time. Almost always, however, the debate is immediately dominated either by political considerations or by economic arguments. The former can lead to those countries developing their national systems to explicitly reject possibilities for accepting foreign wastes since such plans can make local acceptance of repository projects more difficult. Financial arguments can lead small, waste-producing countries to seek collaboration aimed at reducing specific disposal costs or can encourage large countries with low population densities to look for business opportunities.
Currently national opinion (public and political) often seems to favor dedicated national facilities although the potential advantages of collaboration are apparent to technical or economic specialists.
Before the relative merits of national vs international disposal can be seriously discussed by any country, the basic feasibility of implementing a national repository must be considered. The requirements are a good sound concept and the technology to implement this, a suitable geologic setting and adequate financial resources to drive the program. In Switzerland, a long-term R&D program has developed adequate technology, the siting issue for HLW is still being studied but looks promising and costing studies indicate that the unit costs, although very high, can, if necessary, be financed by the generators of nuclear electricity.
Current official Swiss strategy for HLW disposal includes evaluation of both alternatives, national facility or an international repository. This strategy is determined, on the one hand, by the uncertainties in the future availability of international options and, by the other hand, by the long time horizons before a final decision becomes necessary. The immediate goal is to convince all relevant bodies (implementers, regulators and public) that safe deep disposal is indeed feasible in Switzerland. In the long intervening period before a HLW repository becomes necessary towards the middle of next century, ample time is available for participating in joint preparatory projects and for evaluating potential international repository prospects.
INTRODUCTION
Discussions on the merits and demerits of disposing of radioactive wastes in an international framework have taken place on and off for a long time. However, the approach has not often been open and objective. Commonly the debate has been from the beginning dominated by purely financial considerations or has been strangled at birth by purely political attitudes. Some recent studies are aimed at more dispassionate evaluation of options. In international organizations like the European Union, common strategies are discussed and technical work on criteria for exchanging wastes between countries are developed. The IAEA is using a consultant group to address the issue of regional repositories (1). In the open literature, the institutional and organizational aspects were reviewed by Bredell and Fuchs (2). A recent book by Hensing from Germany concentrates on the economic aspects (3).
In the present paper, we give an overview of the key issues affecting the potential for international projects, making extensive use of the recent work referred to. We also set out the position taken by Switzerland for many years now on the question of international repositories. To some extent, this position may be representative of a small country with a limited nuclear program - although Switzerland obviously has a higher economic standard and a more advanced technological capability than many other small countries. Finally, we take a tentative look ahead and consider potential further developments on different timescales.
TECHNICAL ISSUES
The most important point to be made here is that at a purely technical level, there are almost no new considerations which affect international but not national repository projects. In both cases, we need a disposal system providing the same high level of safety over very long times. In both cases, the repository (for long-lived HLW or spent fuel) must provide this safety based on a multi-barrier system using engineered containment and also geological retention of radionuclides. The same high standards of science, technology and engineering will be required to locate, operate and seal the facility. In fulfilling a task with such long time horizons, there should be neither a relaxing nor an unjustified tightening of safety or environmental standards in order to reflect the current economic or social level of development in a potential host country for an international repository.
There are, nevertheless, certain technical issues which affect disposal options available. Most obvious is the question of the availability of suitable geologic formations. Repository designs are flexible and requirements on the geology can be relatively modest even for the case of HLW disposal (4). Thus most, or even all, countries should be able to find suitable sites. It has been argued that a wider scope could allow optimized site selection in the sense of a "best" or "safest" site. However, the limited resolution of the tools for quantifying repository safety and the inherent difficulty in comparing fundamentally different geological and hydrogeological situations would render any search for a safest site unproductive or useless. Nevertheless, technical problems in site selection and characterization could be eased if potential areas included extensive, geologically stable and relatively homogeneous host rock formations. Definite advantages with respect to planning problems in siting facilities could certainly result from having a wider range of siting options. This is only partly a technical point, however, since planning conflicts in repository siting have more to do with public acceptance issues than with objective siting procedures.
In a technical sense, then, a question more directly affecting the choice of national or international repository options concerns the availability of appropriate technical expertise. Which countries are capable of implementing a safe repository? Can such know-how be transferred to others? Would pooling of expertise lead to better technical solutions?
Technical tasks which clearly would be eased by having fewer, international repositories are those which depend directly upon the number of facilities. The prime example is providing the control and monitoring functions which will be required at a repository during the operational period and potentially also the post-operational phase. In addition to radiological monitoring aimed at confirming that no unacceptable releases from the facility are taking place, monitoring will, for the case of a repository for spent fuel, also be required for safeguards reasons. Fewer facilities under international oversight would obviously be easier to monitor.
A technical issue often raised by nuclear opponents concerns the incremental risks arising from the increased transport requirements when all wastes in a region are moved to a centralized repository. Experience to date indicates that radiological risks arising from radioactive waste shipments are not determining factors in any strategy. Conventional risks will also be low, if we restrict our considerations to the limited volumes of HLW to be disposed of. For bulky LLW, the normal economic and risk arguments against long-distance shipments can be evaluated.
ECONOMIC ISSUES
Shared repositories may not be necessary from a technical angle, but they certainly can be attractive from an economic point of view. Deep geologic repositories have life-cycle costs in the billions of US dollars. This is true even for small countries with low projected waste volumes; for example, the Swiss estimate of life-cycle costs for disposing of HLW or spent fuel from a 120GW(e) nuclear program is around 3 billion US dollars (5). Moreover, a large part of the costs are fixed independently of the inventory since they are needed for exploration and for gaining access to the underground by shaft sinking. Accordingly, large savings are possible if small countries combine their efforts or if a large disposal programme were to accept wastes from foreign sources. In Ref.3, calculations for different scenarios for the German disposal programme indicate that the reference disposal costs of 22 billion DM could be reduced to around 8 billion DM by simply sharing costs with other disposers. Indeed, it could even be possible to achieve a net profit of 16 to 26 billion DM by charging foreigners for disposal in Germany higher prices which would, however, still be economically attractive for the individual customers.
For a country accepting foreign wastes for disposal, there would clearly be direct economic benefits to set off against potentially negative social or environmental effects. It is also conceivable that particular countries might include disposal of foreign wastes as part of a wider business arrangement involving, for example, sales of reactor fuels, of reprocessing capacity or of spent fuel conditioning services. For countries paying for wastes to be disposed abroad there could also be financial advantages because economies of scale allow lower unit costs. There are, however, also negative economic impacts such as write-off of sunk costs, loss of investment funds in a national disposal project, and reduction of opportunities for spin-off from a high technology undertaking which could provide impetus for employment and business opportunities at home or abroad.
An economic issue with international and national dimensions concerns the third party liabilities of all parties involved in transfer of ownership of radioactive wastes. Liabilities at all phases of transport, emplacement and long-term disposal (including possible remedial actions) must be clearly allocated to appropriate organizations or states.
ORGANIZATIONAL / INSTITUTIONAL ISSUES
Considerable thought has been devoted by individual countries and also by groups under the auspices of the IAEA to the institutional and organizational issues involved in establishing a national waste management system (see for example (6)). Points of importance are the clear allocation of responsibilities for implementing, regulating and financing a repository, the optimization of the total waste management system, the long-term institutional stability of the organizations involved etc. All of these issues can, in principle, be properly treated also for an international repository by creating appropriate structures; these points are dealt with in Refs. (1) and (2).
Various potential constellations of partners for a joint repository project are possible. A host country with a large nuclear programme could accept wastes from smaller countries; an advanced technology country might provide the expertise for developing a repository where siting problems are fewer; several smaller programs might combine their efforts and seek suitable and acceptable sites in their joint territories. Various organizational or contractual options are also possible ranging from a facility controlled or even run by a supranational body through to individual contractual arrangements between partners. Some degree of international oversight would, however, certainly be of value -- and is in any case assured even by existing requirements for transportation of radioactive materials or for safeguards on fissile materials.
Although theoretical approaches to the institutional issues at international level have been sketched out, practical experience to date has demonstrated that the problems to be solved are far from trivial. Positive and negative examples of international collaboration in the nuclear area exist. International research centers like CERN function today; joint industrial ventures like EUROCHEMIC floundered (9).
POLITICAL ISSUES
In the above, we have judged that there are few or no stumbling blocks hindering international repositories on technical, economic or institutional grounds. Politically, however, it has proven, as yet, difficult for most countries to support international disposal plans -- especially if they are a potential host for the repository. Indeed, in some countries legislation has been enacted to ensure that foreign wastes cannot be imported for disposal (e.g. France, Sweden). In other countries (e.g. Switzerland), the law or the regulatory framework discourages (but does not prohibit) even the export of radioactive wastes.
There are, however, also indications of a more open approach. Working groups in the European Union discuss equivalence principles which at least allow exchange of wastes; some limited transfer of wastes for disposal has taken place (e.g. between Sweden and Germany or between France and the UK and their reprocessing customers); some small countries (e.g. The Netherlands, Switzerland, Taiwan) have openly expressed an interest in international solutions for the relatively low volumes of HLW or spent fuel; a few countries have even expressed an interest in disposing of foreign wastes on their territories (e.g. China, Russia, Marshall Islands). The wariness of various countries towards consideration of acceptance of foreign wastes and the negative reactions to the few concrete suggestions which have ever been made for waste transfer together signal that the issue remains politically very sensitive. In fact, this sensitivity has grown in recent years. Early reprocessing contracts had no return-of-waste clauses and some early fuel supply contracts (e.g. for research reactors or in the old East Block) included return of spent fuel.
It seems that potential economic advantages are clearly outweighed in the political arena by expectations of opposition based on the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) syndrome. The reasons for this public attitude are addressed below; for the politician who must react to public opinion, they are of secondary importance. A change of political attitudes is not likely unless or until public appreciation of the economic advantages outweighs, at both a national and local level, public apprehension over the disposal of radioactive wastes.
PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE / ETHICAL ISSUES
The public view is conditioned mostly by fear of radioactivity. It is of little importance whether this fear is rational or not, the results are the same. Only persistent, open dialogue based on high-quality work throughout the waste management community can help build the necessary level of public trust. There is, of course, a general aversion against waste - but the routine trans-boundary shipments of chemotoxic wastes for disposal highlight the special situation of radioactive wastes.
There are further important factors mitigating against public acceptance of international or even centralized national repositories in their neighborhood. The localized environmental impact of any large project which serves the good of a wider public will almost always create localised opposition. There are various ways to counteract this, the most powerful being close consultation and contact with the host community and allocation of appropriate economic benefits. Both issues are obviously of relevance also for international repositories.
The ethical issues associated with waste disposal have been discussed at length in recent times (7, 8). The principles espoused by the waste management community concerning intragenerational and intergenerational equity have been formulated. These involve adequate protection of all persons and of the environment now and in the future, irrespective of national boundaries. Clearly an international repository must and could be implemented in accord with such principles. In particular, the level of safety required for populations around any repository cannot be a function of the facility location.
The issues of perceiving repository safety, economic benefits and ethical behavior are closely interrelated. If a sufficiently broad consensus existed that hosting a repository was comparable to hosting any other major, long-term industrial project -- with the usual trade-off economic, social and environmental considerations -- then there would be no ethical dilemma in exporting or importing wastes for disposal. Compensation would be based upon judgements of the value of a localized community performing a service for the common good. There might even be competition, as has been the case for various joint international research facilities, to be host to a repository.
THE SWISS POSITION
In Switzerland, we have attempted to approach the question from a more detached, systematic angle. Three questions need to be answered positively before the relative merits of national vs international projects can be usefully discussed. These are:
Only if all responses are affirmative, is national disposal a possibility and only then can one consider the issue of whether the arguments for or against an international facility are stronger. A long-term Swiss program developing necessary know-how and investigating potential host rocks and siting areas has yielded positive answers to the first 2 questions. Comprehensive costing studies and well defined financing schemes indicate that costs, although high, are not abortive for a national HLW repository; i.e. the third question can be answered positively. More subtle arguments are needed, however, for consideration of cost/benefit ratio in a situation where many of the costs and benefits are intangible, being rooted in questions of public acceptability and political preference.
Current official Swiss strategy for HLW disposal includes evaluation of both alternatives, national facility or an international repository. This strategy is determined, on the one hand, by the uncertainties in the future availability of international options and, by the other hand, by the long time horizons before a final decision becomes necessary. The immediate goal is to convince all relevant bodies (implementers, regulators and public) that safe deep disposal is indeed feasible in Switzerland. A series of major integrated assessments, based on broad programs of data collection and analysis, has been devoted to the goal. The planned next step is a feasibility project (Entsorgungsnachweis in German) considering both clay and crystalline host rock options around the turn of this century. Through completion of the Entsorgungsnachweis, and in the long intervening period before a HLW repository becomes necessary towards the middle of next century, ample time is available for participating in joint preparatory projects and for evaluating potential international repository prospects. A provocative implicit question, of course, concerns which countries could be potential candidates for a shared repository. In any scheme where small producers jointly seek disposal solutions, all conceivable siting options must be considered initially and then be weighed against each other, taking all safety, environmental and sociological factors into consideration.
CONCLUSIONS AND OUTLOOK
The following concise conclusions can be drawn from the above argumentation and from the underlying documentation:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Valuable comments on the draft text for this paper were obtained from R. Lieb and I.McKinley.
REFERENCES