The preceding RD&D-Programme from 2001 was concentrated on research and technology development. Research with a focus on the assessment of long-term safety was emphasized and viewpoints from previous reviews of SR 97 and RD&D-Programme 98 were dealt with in depth. SR 97 was an assessment of the long-term safety of a deep repository for spent nuclear fuel. This RD&D-Programme 2004 focuses its attention on the development of technologies for fabrication and sealing of canisters for final disposal of spent fuel.

The primary objective of government policy, and of NUMO in implementing this policy is to ensure that a repository for Japan’s high-level radioactive waste is designed and located so as to provide secure isolation of the waste and adequate safety for present and future generations. This requires that the site of a repository has to be chosen carefully and an associated repository concept is selected which is appropriate for its specific geological and environmental conditions. At NUMO, we have chosen to implement a volunteering approach to siting.

The foundation for work related to nuclear waste management is laid by laws and outlines e.g. the responsibilities of the reactor owners and the state, as represented by the authorities. The Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB), as well as Posiva Oy in Finland, were set up by the reactor owners in the respective countries in response to the responsibilities of planning, conducting research and to implement the physical structures leading to a safe management of nuclear wastes.

Isolation in a geologic setting has been the generally favored solution to the high-level radioactive waste (HLW) problem since a scientific basis for nuclear waste management began to be formulated over half a century ago. Although general features of suitable settings have been enumerated, quantitative measures of the safety of geologic isolation of HLW are challenging to devise and to implement.

Programs to manage and ultimately dispose of high-level radioactive wastes are unique from scientific and technological as well as socio-political aspects. From a scientific and technological perspective, high-level radioactive wastes remain potentially hazardous for geological time periods—many millennia—and scientific and technological programs must be put in place that result in a system that provides high confidence that the wastes will be isolated from the accessible environment for these many thousands of years.

Denmark signed the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management 29 September 1997, the day it opened for signature, and the Convention was accepted 3 September 1999 by letter from the Foreign Ministry to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Until further notice the Convention does not apply for the autonomous territories Greenland and the Faroe Islands, which both do not possess spent nuclear fuel or radioactive waste.