| Attachment | Size |
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| Joint_Convention_2008_UK.pdf (2.38 MB) | 2.38 MB |
This report has been prepared by the United Kingdom (UK) to meet the requirement of Article 32 of the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management (the ‘Joint Convention’). It considers each of the Joint Convention's obligations and explains how the UK addresses them.<br/>The report covers spent fuel management and radioactive waste management facilities as defined in Article 2 of the Joint Convention. For the purposes of this report, the UK has included spent fuel reprocessing as part of the spent fuel management. The safety of other UK nuclear facilities that fall outside the scope of the Joint Convention are also regulated to the same standards, so as to ensure that they are operated in a manner that maintains a high level of safety.<br/>Within the UK, nuclear safety, radiation protection and environmental systems, there have been no significant corrective actions necessary to comply with the Joint Convention. The UK’s nuclear safety licensing, radiation protection and environmental authorisation regime, together with the high priority given to safety by the UK nuclear operators, has proved to be effective in a period of great change. Furthermore, the periodic safety review requirements of the UK nuclear site licences have meant that for many years the UK has been monitoring and improving the safety of its nuclear installations. Additionally, the environment agencies carry out periodic reviews of all disposal authorisations for nuclear sites to drive improvements in environmental performance. All of these activities will continue in the future to drive further improvements.<br/>This is not to say that the UK is complacent, far from it. Safety, radiation protection and environmental challenges remain, especially in dealing with the ageing of facilities and legacy issues, and the requirement under UK law to strive for further improvement guards against such complacency.
