Canadian Nuclear Laboratories Integrated Waste Strategy: Evolution and Optimization

Abstract

The Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) Integrated Waste Strategy (IWS) [1] provides the guiding framework for the lifecycle strategies for the management of all types of waste at CNL-operated sites across Canada. The scope of the IWS includes the strategies for clean, hazardous, and radioactive wastes (solid and liquid) that have been generated and are in storage, and wastes that will be generated in the future. The IWS seeks to answer three key question in regard to waste management approaches:

• Where are we today?
• Where do we want to get to?
• What actions are needed to get there?

The IWS is a summary-level document that consolidates the comprehensive plans from various teams across CNL. It serves as a communication tool, a planning tool, and a decision-making tool. The IWS both reflects waste management decisions, activities, and projects, and informs future decisions about lifecycle plans.

The IWS is a “live” document that has been formally updated twice since its original release in 2017. In 2023, the substantially revised IWS was publicly released to reflect progress on waste management projects and actions, as well as strategic evolutions of key waste management practices. Leveraging the decades of the experience in radioactive waste management from CNL (and formerly Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL)), combined with domestic and international benchmarking, CNL has continued to drive improvement and optimization of plans, while providing solutions to identified waste management gaps and challenges. The IWS will continue to summarize the CNL-wide progress in developing and implementing waste management strategies and solutions for some of the most challenging nuclear and environmental cleanup projects in Canada.