This, the second report from the Uranium Institute Waste Management and Decommissioning Working Group, publishes the main achievements and developments in the field over the last year. It does not consider all the advances in that time, but instead identifies what the members of the working group consider to be the main points of progress towards the long-term safe disposal of all levels of radioactive waste.

Certainly, the long-term disposal of high-level waste (HLW) remains the most politically charged issue to be resolved. But many milestones have been accomplished with the establishment of research facilities for HLW repositories in Belgium, France, Germany, Canada, Sweden and Switzerland. Scientific research continues with the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, US, though the project has been delayed yet again at the political level with Clinton's recent veto of the waste bill. The prospects for a HLW repository in Finland look promising: the government is expected to confirm that Eurojoki will be appointed the site for the spent-fuel repository and construction should begin by 2010. Meanwhile, Japan has successfully passed its nuclear waste bill, to provide a framework for the final disposal of HLW, to the Upper House.

Two major international organisations, the IAEA and the OECD/NEA, have brought the question of public consensus-building to the fore recognising that HLW management issues have a marked impact on public opinion of the nuclear industry. Increasingly countries with nuclear generating programmes are involving all stakeholders at the decision making level for the development of national repositories or even for waste management strategies. Switzerland invited all stakeholder groups to comment on its revised atomic law, which included questions on the necessity of providing a full public consultation prior to the initiation of a radioactive waste disposal programme.

Whilst HLW disposal facilities are lacking, governments and the industry work to increase interim storage facilities for spent fuel. Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a consortium of eight US utilities' received acceptance from the US NRC for their proposal to build a spent fuel storage facility in Utah. This is considered an interim measure until such a time that the fuel can be transferred to the Yucca Mountain repository. Elsewhere, utilities have been expanding on-site storage facilities. Activity is particularly apparent in Germany since the government's decision to phase out nuclear power over the course of the next 25 years and to delay exploration work on the Gorleben salt dome for some three to ten years.

Intermediate and low-level wastes account for about 90% of wastes from the nuclear industry and some facilities accept radioactive wastes from other sectors such as the medical industry. Oil production, rarely associated with radioactive waste, is the source of a new industry partnership with the UK's nuclear industry assisting in the disposal of three drums of low specific activity waste from the Brent Spar decommissioned oil platform. The waste will be conditioned and sent for disposal at BNFL's Drigg site.

It is reassuring to witness the oil industry, also a mature industry, take advantage of nuclear waste management experts' wealth of technical knowledge. The nuclear industry takes pride in its commitment to safely containing, storing and ultimately disposing of its wastes without adverse impact on the environment or society. In many parts of the world it is true that political and public support for HLW repositories is lacking. In Finland however, which looks to be the first country to start construction of an underground repository for high-level waste, 78% of the population from the Eurajoki municipality support the proposal - proof that the disposal of HLW is surmountable.

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