In order to carry out the review of the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company’s (SKB) applications, the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority has set up a cross-departmental project for effective utilisation of the Authority’s in-house expertise. Eva Simic is the project’s manager.
The review work is organised in the form of a coordinating main project and four reviewing sub-projects. The main project coordinates the review work and ensures that the foundations are in place to enable the sub-projects’ planning, performance and follow-ups of their tasks.
Four sub-projects
The sub-projects’ focus is on reviewing the licence applications for the purpose of assessing whether the activity is expected to fulfil the Authority’s nuclear safety and radiation protection standards. These are the four sub-projects:
- Construction and operation of CLINK (sub-project manager, Giselle García Roldán)
- Construction and operation of the repository (sub-project manager, Ernesto Fumero)
- The repository’s long-term radiation safety (sub-project manager, Björn Dverstorp)
- The repository system (sub-project manager, Anders Wiebert)
Safety Integration Review Team
The SIR Team (Safety Integration Review Team) is the core of this project as the review work is managed within the parameters of this team. The SIR Team is also a forum for exchanging information between sub-projects and for discussing cross-disciplinary matters that relate to several sub-projects. SIR manages strategic choices, prioritisation and the orientation of work. The SIR Team is led by the project manager (Eva Simic) and includes the project director (Josefin Päiviö Jonsson), sub-project managers (Giselle Garcia Roldán, Ernesto Fumero, Björn Dverstorp and Anders Wiebert), specialists in critical areas, a communication officer (David Persson) and, when required, a legal adviser (Tomas Löfgren).
25 years of preparations
For many years now, the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority and its predecessors, SKI and SSI, have conducted preparatory work for the review process that has been launched now that SKB has submitted its licence applications. The respective authorities have done this both by conducting their own independent research and by monitoring and reviewing SKB’s work. Periodic reviews of SKB’s research and development programmes ('RD&D' programmes) have comprised key opportunities for the authorities’ evaluations and feedback on SKB’s work. These reviews have provided us with continual information about the research and development work being conducted by SKB and have helped us to define our standpoint in terms of what a licence application should contain.
The Authority has also monitored SKB’s activities in the area of safety analyses in the form of extensive reviews of all of SKB’s preliminary safety analyses. Since 2001, when SKB began its site investigations in the two candidate areas of Forsmark, Östhammar Municipality, and Laxemar, Oskarshamn Municipality, the Authority’s staff have monitored and reviewed SKB’s site investigation programme via a series of consultation meetings and by means of the in-depth review work conducted by SKI’s and SSI’s teams of experts, INSITE and OVERSITE. An important aim of the consultation meetings between the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority and SKB was also to provide information and guidance about the Authority’s expectations on the content of SKB’s licence applications.
Network of external experts
For 25 years now, the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority and its predecessors, SKI and SSI, have monitored SKB’s planning work and have had their own research budgets over the years for independent organisation of the support needed by the respective authorities for reviewing SKB’s licence applications. This has culminated in a network of national and, above all, international experts now available to the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority during this review work.
When we engage external experts, it is crucial to us that they are independent of the nuclear power industry and that they have not worked for SKB nor Posiva (SKB’s counterpart in Finland) over the past two years.
Today, the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority’s coalescence of in-house and external expertise makes us well-equipped for this review, giving us access to leading international experts in several critical areas who are independent of the industry.
International review
In order to ensure international anchoring, Sweden has requested that OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) review parts of SKB’s applications covering long-term radiation safety as well as the selection of site and method. The review by the NEA will supplement the Authority’s review and serve as key input for the municipalities involved as well as other interested parties.
Reviews are funded by Member States and the NEA will set up a review team comprising international experts with no ties to the applications.
The framework of this review will include a final hearing during which experts from the NEA will pose critical questions to SKB emanating from NEA’s review. The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority will announce and publish the results of the review on its website when the review has been completed.