Description: Resilience as a guiding principle for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management Jochen Ahlswede Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management Opening of safeND, 13 September 2023 Mr State Secretary, Distinguished Colleagues, Allow me, on behalf of the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management, to welcome you to the Interdisciplinary Research Symposium on the Safety of Nuclear Disposal Practices – safeND. BASE is hosting this scientific conference for the second time now, and I am delighted about the great response. This symposium is a special place for scientific exchange for three reasons: 1. 2. 3. At safeND, we are looking at the entire nuclear waste management chain, rather than just individual steps. Our consideration begins with decommissioning and dismantling, encompasses the waste from nuclear activities such as uranium mining, and ends with the closure of a repository as well as the necessary preservation of information thereafter. We all know that nuclear waste management is not a purely technical task. We will therefore address the issues from a range of different disciplines, and adopt - where possible - interdisciplinary perspectives. For this reason, the social sciences and humanities play just as important a role at this conference as the natural and technical sciences. We are focusing on questions of safety and fair and socially acceptable approaches to radioactive waste. For us as the science-based regulatory authority organising this symposium, the decisive question is: What conditions must we create so that the legacies of nuclear power do not cause harm to people and the environment? So, where do we stand on nuclear waste management? 70 years after the first nuclear power plants went into operation, not a single country has a deep geological repository for high-level radioactive waste. Finland is getting close - but Finnish waste accounts for just 0.5 per cent of the world's inventory. I dare say that if we were to look at the national archives of pretty much every country using nuclear power, we would find the following: Decades ago, in the early stages of civil nuclear programmes, ambitious waste management programmes and timelines were set. Yet, as time went on, the problems turned out to be more complex than 1 Bundesamt für die Sicherheit der nuklearen Entsorgung Wegelystraße 8 10623 Berlin T: +49 30 184321-0 info@base.bund.de www.base.bund.de expected, priorities changed and, in the end, the timelines were delayed again and again. Globally speaking, it must be acknowledged that the progress in nuclear waste management that had been intended when nuclear power was industrialised has not even remotely been achieved. The challenge posed by nuclear waste was underestimated in both technical and social terms, and the claim that it is "only a political problem" represents an under-complex narrative - to put it mildly. If we look at German history, for example, we can trace this development very precisely: Following the initial euphoria, key official documents show that the disposal issue was addressed very seriously from the early 1970s onwards. By no means was this question ignored. But where are we today, 50 years later? We are decades away from a final repository site, and currently have to face the scenario that putting a repository into operation may take until the end of the century. The attitude adopted for discussing these facts is sometimes reminiscent of the psychological effect of the so-called "shifting baselines". Baselines are collectively shaped reference points we use to define what we assess as given and normal, i.e. what is no longer put into question. We know from socio-psychological environmental research that changes (or their significance) are no longer perceived if the frame of reference shifts gradually. To put it simply: At some point, one no longer perceives that a situation has slowly but fundamentally changed. This is especially true for changes that span generations. If you had told the leading decision-makers and scientists in the 1960s that, by 2023, we would not have managed to permanently dispose of a single spent fuel rod from civilian nuclear energy use, the reaction would probably have been bewilderment. Today, everyone seems to have gotten used to, perhaps even come to terms with the fact that, in 2023, the operational disposal of high-level radioactive waste has not even begun anywhere in the world. Of course, there is nothing new in all this. What is thought-provoking, however, are the more recent developments that have a massive impact on our societies. Let me give you some examples: - - - We face warlike conflicts affecting nuclear facilities. We witnessed a pandemic that has had an impact on social and economic life down to the smallest everyday situations and has, at times, even led to a standstill. We face climate change, which is already having a negative global impact, that will become even more pronounced in the future, also with regard to nuclear safety. These events raise two questions: First, we need to question our baselines - how much time do our societies really have to solve the problem of radioactive waste according to the highest scientific standards? Secondly, we must decide how to design the processes that will lead us to safe disposal in such a way that they can withstand unforeseen shocks. This second question inspired the decision to make "resilience" the focus of this year's safeND, following a suggestion from a project of the German Academy of Science and Engineering. The term resilience originates from developmental psychology, and has seen a career in many fields of application in recent years. Applied to psychology, it refers to an individual's ability to cope with adverse life circumstances and remain healthy in the process. As a material science term, it describes the ability of a material to bend elastically under the influence of a certain amount of energy, and thus to return to its original state. Ecologically speaking, it is the ability of an ecosystem to maintain its basic functionality in the face of 2 disturbances, for example in case of invasive species occur or regional precipitation changes due to climate change. The term resilience is also increasingly used as a bridge concept in interdisciplinary fields of application that deal with systems of any kind, such as security research for civil protection. When it comes to civil protection, resilience encompasses characteristics that contribute to preparedness as well as to the management of a crisis. It can be applied to both technical and social systems, which is why it is of interest for nuclear waste management. As regards the discussion in our subject area, I would like to propose the following definition, based on Hollnagel, a Danish professor for psychology and specialist for resilience engineering: A system is resilient if it can adapt its operation (before, during or after events) to changes, and especially to unforeseen disturbances, thus maintaining its functionality under both expected and unexpected conditions. Resilience is thus more than just robustness. Robustness describes the ability of a system to change as little as possible under disturbing influences, with the risk of collapse if the external influences become too great. To give an example: While it may have been a robust approach to pursue the Gorleben salt dome as central project in the nuclear waste management system in Germany for decades, it was not certainly not resilient. Applied to nuclear waste disposal safety, this concept leads to the following question: If we want to guarantee protection from radioactive waste for present and future generations, then how must we proceed to ensure that the central safety functions are maintained over the entire nuclear management chain even under adverse, unforeseen circumstances? This question can be discussed, for instance, with regard to the disposal process in a nation-state system: -How can the extension of interim storage be technically designed so that it is prepared for unpredictable external extreme events in the future? -What does resilience mean for the technical concept of final disposal? How can the safety function of geological and geotechnical barriers in a repository be maintained even if unexpected events occur? This brings us to the issue of technical long-term safety and the limits of the Features/Events/Processes methodology. Should novel reactor types with completely different modes of operation be developed and commercialised, what would this mean for nuclear waste management? What new types of waste and associated problems would this generate? - On a societal level, resilience is to be understood as an even more complex, multidimensional concept: - What does resilience mean for the structure of institutional responsibility and the organisational culture within institutions? - What requirements must be met for participation and communication processes to contribute to resilient safety? What does resilient communication mean, e.g. between stakeholders, the scientific community and the general public? - How must legal norms, precautions and objectives be designed to contribute to resilient safety and security? - Which economic resources are needed to ensure the desired safety functions, and how long do they need to be available? 3
Origins: /Bund/BASE/Endlagersuche
Tags: Blei ? Berlin ? Salzstock Gorleben ? Endlager ? Aufsichtsbehörde ? Radioaktiver Abfall ? Resilienz ? Invasive Arten ? Nukleare Entsorgung ? Kernkraftwerk ? Lagerstätte ? Szenario ? Zwischenlagerung ? Kernenergienutzung ? Pandemie ? Bevölkerungsschutz ? Uranbergbau ? Abfall ? Abfallart ? Energie ? Rückbau ? Interdisziplinarität ? Klimafolgen ? Nukleare Sicherheit ? Interessenvertreter ? Umweltforschung ? Sozialwissenschaft ? Klimawandel ? Gesellschaftssystem ? Niederschlag ? Ökosystem ? Ressource ? Risiko ? Sicherheitsmaßnahme ? Stilllegung ?
License: other-closed
Language: Englisch/English
Time ranges: 2023-09-27 - 2023-09-27
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