Blockchain-powered Nuclear Waste Data Management

Abstract

Data management systems related to radioactive waste are evolving as countries are prioritizing decommissioning of nuclear facilities and the permanent disposal of radioactive waste. Currently, many information management systems for the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle involve silo-ed data located across multiple stakeholders in multiple jurisdictions with many processes relying on manual or paper-based steps. In 2020-2021, RKVST, Sellafield Ltd, and Digital Catapult collaborated on a proof of concept to explore how innovations in distributed ledger technology (DLT) could be used to solve current and future nuclear industry challenges. The project successfully demonstrated how digitizing the process would save time, eliminate transcription errors, and significantly reduce the long-term cost. This paper explains how the multi-stakeholder physical processes associated with nuclear waste handling were mapped into digital data flows and brought to bear on problems of data security, long term integrity, and changing regulatory landscapes.