Abstract
The International Atomic Energy Agency has coordinated an international project addressing climate change and landscape development in post-closure safety assessments of solid radioactive waste disposal. The work has been supported by results of parallel on-going research that has been published in a variety of reports and peer reviewed journal articles. The project is due to be described in detail in a forthcoming IAEA report. Noting the multi-disciplinary nature of post-closure safety assessments, here, an overview of the work is given to provide researchers in the broader fields of radioecology and radiological safety assessment with a review of the work that has been undertaken. It is hoped that such dissemination will support and promote integrated understanding and coherent treatment of climate change and landscape development within an overall assessment process.The key activities undertaken in the project were: identification of the key processes that drive environmental change (mainly those associated with climate and climate change), and description of how a relevant future may develop on a global scale; development of a methodology for characterising environmental change that is valid on a global scale, showing how modelled global changes in climate can be downscaled to provide information that may be needed for characterising environmental change in site-specific assessments, and illustrating different aspects of the methodology in a number of case studies that show the evolution of site characteristics and the implications for the dose assessment models.Overall, the study has shown that quantitative climate and landscape modelling has now developed to the stage that it can be used to define an envelope of climate and landscape change scenarios at specific sites and under specific greenhouse-gas emissions assumptions that is suitable for use in quantitative post-closure performance assessments. These scenarios are not predictions of the future, but are projections based on a well-established understanding of the important processes involved and their impacts on different types of landscape. Such projections support the understanding of, and selection of, plausible ranges of scenarios for use in post-closure safety assessments.
Highlights
Environmental change has long been recognised as an issue requiring consideration within post-closure safety assessments (PCSAs) for solid radioactive waste disposal (Lawson and Smith, 1985; BIOCLIM, 2004; SKB, 2006; Posiva, 2006; LLWR, 2011)
This information can be useful within the dynamic and analogue approaches, depending on the level of temporal resolution adopted. It provides a useful starting point for assessing transient effects linked to environmental change. It was recommended in the report of the EMRAS II study (IAEA, 2016) that future work should be directed to providing a consensus approach to addressing climate change as part of a PCSA
The methodological approach that has been developed within the MODARIA project, together with the technical developments in longterm climate modelling made in support of that project, complemented by developments of representations of landscape development in ongoing national programmes, as described above, jointly facilitate the consideration of climate change and landscape development within PCSA that can be applied to a wide range of site and repository types, and at different stages of the development of a disposal option, ranging from generic, initial studies to detailed site-specific assessments
Summary
Environmental change has long been recognised as an issue requiring consideration within post-closure safety assessments (PCSAs) for solid radioactive waste disposal (Lawson and Smith, 1985; BIOCLIM, 2004; SKB, 2006; Posiva, 2006; LLWR, 2011). It was recommended in the report of the EMRAS II study (IAEA, 2016) that future work should be directed to providing a consensus approach to addressing climate change as part of a PCSA Based on these recommendations, a working group (WG6) was set up within the IAEA's follow-up assessment programme, MODARIA (Modelling and Data for Radiological Impact Assessments), to develop a common framework for addressing climate change in post-closure radiological assessments of solid radioactive waste disposal in both near-surface and deep geological disposal facilities. The overall objective of the working group was to further develop the understanding of how the biosphere may change from the present into the far future in a wide range of regional and local contexts relevant to the near-surface, intermediate depth or deep geological disposal as may be relevant to different types of solid radioactive wastes (IAEA, 2009). The referenced research reports and journal papers should be consulted for a comprehensive account of the science that underpins the presented methodology
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