Boundary Conditions for Pathways, Safety Analyses and Basic Criteria for Low-Level Radioactive Waste Site Selection

There are three successive periods in the life of a disposal facility: the operating period, the institutional control period and the unrestricted site access period. The operating period spans the construction of the engineered structures designed to receive the waste, placement of the waste inside the structures, backfilling of the disposal structures, closure of the filled structures and installation of the final cover. The institutional control period covers the time necessary (300 to 500 years) for radioactive decay of the radionuclides disposed at the site: in France, the actual duration of this period is decided on the basis of a safety assessment of the potential impacts of the final radiological inventory of the site at the end of the operating period. The unrestricted site access period follows the end of the institutional control period, at which time the radioactivity of the site has decayed to a low enough level so that the site can be released for unrestricted use without undue risk to public health and the environment.