Records assessment to support the disposability of nuclear waste

TÜV SÜD has completed a project to assess the robustness of the preservation of records generated by legacy waste facilities within the NDA Group.

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Summary

Client name:  Nuclear Waste Services

Company profile:  Part of the NDA Group, an organisation focused on the management of the UK‘s nuclear waste, safety and securely for generations to come.

Business challenge:  To review documents supporting the disposal of waste packages for quality and retrievability.

Our solution:  Identification and presentation of key references in a standardised format, locating and viewing a cross section for quality elements.

Business benefits:  A transferable methodology that can be used to locate and review documents to test the robustness of the system. To demonstate the retrievability of documents to support future disposal.

Business Challenge

Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) is part of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and works with waste producers to provide permanent solutions for the country's nuclear waste.

The UK has been producing and managing radioactive waste on an industrial scale for many years and the UK's strategy for the disposal of higher activity waste (HAW) packages is emplacement in a purpose built geological facility. As waste is generated, comprehensive records are produced to capture all of the data required for the management of the packages until permanent disposal, existing as a mix of both paper and digital formats to underpin the treatment and packaging processes. NWS has established a package assurance function to manage the process of providing confidence that all of the waste packages produced are and will remain disposable through the management of the data, information and knowledge associated with them.

Through the Nucleus consortium, TÜV SÜD was engaged to undertake an assessment of the records for packages that have been manufactured at one of the encapsulation facilities within the NDA Group to demonstrate robustness of the records system, a challenging task since the plant has operated over many years through the pre-digital age and the evolution of the civil nuclear industry

Solution

NWS has developed a package record specification system which details the hierarchy of documents that represent the key information underpinning a particular waste producing facility. These documents must be preserved to support the future disposal of the waste packages and are categorised as:

Class A - underpinning documents and justification
Class B - specifications
Class C - compliance records

The objectives of the project were to:
• produce lists of unique references from the site and plant level plant records specifications in a standardised format;
• undertake a comparison of these references with the electronic storage system and identify differences;
• review the metadata for a sample of the references stored on the system; and sample a quantity of the records for key quality elements.

The project team successfully produced key reference lists for the primary documents underpinning the encapsulation plant and identified the differences in how they are presented. The team also successfully navigated the storage system to locate and view the bulk of the key references and analysis was undertaken in Excel to interrogate the data efficiently to support the conclusions drawn in the project.

A large proportion of the key documents were successfully located and viewed on the storage system whilst recognising that many of the original documents were generated in paper form over many years, from a range of organisations. A number of recommendations were made including:

• the production of a navigation guide for future users of the system;
• an improved use of the search functionality to enable efficient searchers; and 
• the removal of duplicates.

Business Benefits

The project team developed a methodology that can be applied to any of the document systems adopted by the waste producing plants to host waste package records. They were able to meet the requirements of the client by working flexibly with the waste producer to access and navigate the storage system. TÜV SÜD staff were able to demonstrate the functionality of the system to the NWS client whilst outlining the benefits and suggesting potential areas that could be further developed.

‘NWS is committed to deliver value to UK taxpayers and encouraged to achieve this by working with the expertise of the supply chain. TÜV SÜD experts delivered this significant project to time and budget. The benefits delivered were a detailed understanding of the status of the vital records for a significant waste stream destined for a future high activity disposal site, the understanding will enable NWS to work with the NDA group to improve records approaches and systems to allow significant saving to the taxpayer at the time of waste acceptance into that disposal site and forward disposal operations.’

Waste Management and Inventory -Assurance, NWS


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