1. Nuclear Energy

Abstract

The year 2012 was one of development for nuclear waste management policy. New plans and applications have been submitted in a number of countries (detailed later in this report), and the expectation therefore will be that within the next three years new legislation will emerge. It should be noted that in Europe the Euratom Directive 2011/70 Establishing a Community Framework for the Responsible and Safe Management of Spent Fuel and Radioactive Waste requires member states to notify the Commission of their national nuclear waste management programs by August 2015. A joint report entitled International Structure for Decommissioning Costing (ISDC) of Nuclear Installations was produced in 2012 by the Directorate-General for Energy (DG-ENER) of the European Commission, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA). The project was co-ordinated by the Decommissioning Cost Estimation Group of the NEA. In essence, this report replaces the yellow book that was published in 1999 (formally titled Nuclear Decommissioning: A Proposed Standardised List of Items for Costing Purposes). While several countries were using the 1999 yellow book, it was not in universal use. To gain more universal adoption, the new report provides more guidance on applying standardized cost structures to different types of cost estimates in order to promote more uniformity in estimations across users.