Characterization of Radioactive Wastes With Respect to Harmful Materials

In addendum 4 to the license of the German KONRAD repository, which considers mainly radiological aspects, a water law permit was issued in order to prevent the pollution of the near-surface groundwater. The water law permit stipulates limitations for 10 radionuclides and 2 groups of radionuclides as well as mass limitations for 94 substances and materials relevant for water protection issues. Two collateral clauses, i.e. additional requirements imposed by the licensing authority, include demands on the monitoring, registering and balancing of non-radioactive harmful substances and materials /1/.In order to fulfill the requirements of the water law permit the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) being the operator of the KONRAD repository has developed a concept, which ensures the compliance with all requirements of the water law permit and which provides standardized easy manageable guidance for the waste producers to describe their wastes.On 15 March 2011 the competent water authority, the “Niedersaechsischer Landesbetrieb fuer Wasserwirtschaft, Kuesten- und Naturschutz” (NLWKN) issued the approval for this concept. Being the most essential part of this concept the procedural method and the developed description of non-radioactive waste package constituents by use of standardized lists of materials and containers is addressed and presented in this paper.The waste producer has to describe his waste package in a standardized way on the base of the lists of materials and containers. For each material in the list a comprehensive description is given comprising the composition, scope of application, quality control measures, thresholds and other data. Each entry in the list has to be approved by NLWKN. The scope of the lists is defined by the waste producers’ needs. Using some particular materials as examples, the approval procedure for including materials in the list is described.The procedure of describing the material composition has to be considered in the KONRAD waste acceptance requirements. The respective part of these requirements will be introduced.In order to clarify the procedure of describing waste packages by use of the standardized lists of materials and containers some examples of typical waste package descriptions will be presented.Copyright © 2013 by ASME