Sites selection for a potential radioactive waste repository in Peninsular Malaysia: GIS-based weight linear combination and multi-criteria decision-making analysis

Abstract

This paper aims to determine the suitable places for a radioactive waste repository in Peninsular Malaysia to implement a permanent disposal facility for disposal sealed radioactive sources (DSRS). The sole Malaysia interim waste storage that stores a large proportion of DSRS was expected to be occupied by 2025 fully. Currently, the nation’s licensing board promoted the borehole disposal facility to resolve the full capacity dilemma. The potential sites were determined by the geographical information system (GIS) based Weight Linear Combination (WLC) analysis, integrating the improved Analysis Hierarchical Process (improved AHP) and the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) approaches. The sensitivity analysis was applied to identify the main contributing factors for corresponding Peninsular Malaysia selection. Ten parametric criteria and three exclusion criteria are applied to assess the potential areas and screen out the unfavorable regions, respectively. Results indicated the final composite map presents 435 areas of very high suitability class with 17.5% coverage from the total suitability class. The top 5 largest candidates with high potentiality are Jerantut & Ulu Lepar, Bandar Tun Razak, Pertang & Simpang, Pertang, Tanjung Ipoh, and Labis, where come from three provinces: Pahang, Negeri Sembilan and Johor. By TOPSIS model, the ranks for these five candidates are Jerantut & Ulu Lepar, Bandar Tun Razak, Tanjung Ipoh, Labis and Simpang Pertang. The model revealed that the suitability ranks is proportional to its area sizes in the approximate values of criteria. The three main contributing factors in Peninsular Malaysia are hydrogeology, seismicity and lithology, which are strongly recommended to involve in other corresponding site selection project.