Abstract
There are 443 nuclear power plants (NPP) currently (2018) in operation in 30 countries for the purpose of generating electrical power. In the future old systems will be decommissioned and new ones will be planned and built. How the share of energy produced by NPPs will develop is not exactly predictable at the time of writing due to economic and political uncertainties. The production however may be slowly decreasing or constant; but it is quite possible that a gentle increase of the share of energy from NPP’s could occur in the future. At present, 55 NPPs are under construction against 166 that are now decommissioned and shut down.
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Notes
- 1.
ICRP—International Commission on Radiation Protection.
- 2.
European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom).
- 3.
VLLW—Very Low Level Waste.
- 4.
A Notice by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on 02/14/2018; https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/02/14/2018-03083/very-low-level-radioactive-waste-scoping-study.
- 5.
- 6.
Concentrating on the residue reservoirs from uranium ore processing is significant in that significant concentrations of radioactivity and toxicity been deposited in the basins. The concentration on the 6 large uranium tailing ponds of the SDAG, which were assigned to the processing plants in Crossen (Saxony) and Seelingstädt (Thuringia), sufficiently concentrate the long-term safe, long-term stable closure of the residues requiring monitoring.
- 7.
Site Selection Act.
- 8.
Federal company for radioactive waste disposal.
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Acknowledgements
We would also like to thank SKB AB (Sweden), Posiva Oy (Finland), US Department of Energy (DOE), Bundesgesellschaft für Endlagerung mbHFootnote 8 and the Thuringian State Institute for the Environment and Geology for the provision of graphics and data, with which complex connections can be presented more clearly.
Special thanks are due to Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Bruno Thomauske, former Director at Research Centre Jülich; Prof. Dr. rer. nat. habil. Gert Bernhard, former Director of the Institute for Resource Ecology (Radiochemistry) of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf and Prof. Dr. rer. nat. habil. Broder J. Merkel, former Director of the Institute of Geology of the TU Bergakademie Freiberg. Not only did they provide support in the preparation of the German text, but they also encouraged us to undertake the project.
The authors are particularly grateful to Springer nature for encouraging this work. The basis for this presentation here is a German version [11] on the same topic. However, the internationality of the topic was reflected in this English language edition.
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Lersow, M., Waggitt, P. (2020). Introduction. In: Disposal of All Forms of Radioactive Waste and Residues. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32910-5_1
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