Technical Report NTB 16-01

Many important steps in the management of radioactive waste have already been implemented in Switzerland and there is now wide experience in carrying out the associated activities. These include the handling and packaging of the waste and its characterisation and inventorying, as well as interim storage and the associated waste transport. There is a sound scientific and tech­ni­cal basis for realising the deep geological repositories and the feasibility of implementing repo­sitories that provide the required long-term safety has been demonstrated success­fully for all wastes arising in Switzerland and approved by the Federal Council.

The legal framework and organisational measures that will allow the selection of sites to be made in the coming years are also in place. These include the Sectoral Plan for Deep Geological Repositories that was approved by the Federal Council in 2008; this regulates the ongoing site selection process in detail. Stage 1 of the process was completed successfully with the approval by the Federal Council in November 2011 of the siting regions proposed by Nagra. In Stage 2, potential siting areas for the repository surface facilities were identified with the cooperation of the siting regions and additional geological and safety-based investigations were carried out. Nagra's proposals for the siting regions to be investigated further in Stage 3 were published by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy in January 2015. The Federal Council is expected to make a decision on these proposals at the end of 2018. Activities in Stage 3 will include in-depth geo­logical investigations in the siting regions remaining in the process. The results will provide the basis for selecting the sites for the repositories for low- and intermediate-level waste and high-level waste, for which general licence applications will be prepared and sub­mitted according to the Sectoral Plan (BFE 2008). This report documents the waste management pro­gramme pre­pared by the waste producers, as required by the legislation (Nuclear Energy Act (KEG 2003), Art. 32 and Nuclear Energy Ordinance (KEV 2004), Art. 52). As was the case for the first waste manage­ment programme of 2008 (Nagra 2008a), the 2016 waste management pro­gramme has been pre­pared by Nagra on behalf of the waste producers. The updated report is struc­tured in such a way that it provides the information required on all the points set out in Article 52 of the Nuclear Energy Ordinance. The structure also basically follows that of the 2008 programme, but, in addi­tion, the conditions attached by the Federal Council in 2013 to its review of the 2008 pro­gramme are also addressed. The progress that has been made in the mean­time is identified, as are the main differences between the 2016 waste management pro­gramme and its predecessor (Nagra 2008a).