This week I am in Vienna at the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency supporting a workshop for European radioactive waste management organisations on the Roadmap for implementing geological disposal for ILW, HLW and Spent Fuel.

Participants at the workshop are from countries that are just setting out on the road to improve management of these wastes and who ultimately wish to develop and deliver a geological disposal programme. I am immediately struck that participants (from Hungary, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey and Ukraine) all wish to ‘do the right thing’ both technically and for their stakeholders, but often lack the policy, regulatory, organisational and social infrastructure that we take for granted in the UK. Lack of funding and shortage of experienced people is a common theme.

We have discussed the experience and lessons learned from the UK attempts at implementing geological disposal and how this has shaped (and hopefully improved) policy. We have looked at issues that the organisations are facing and with my IAEA counterpart, have been able to provide guidance and advice to improve the robustness of the programmes and to point to existing materials and publications where issues have previously been addressed.

For these countries (in fact for all countries) the road to geological disposal is a long one and the IAEA is taking a proactive stance in supporting national programmes and helping them to achieve this goal in the most efficacious way. This is particularly helpful for countries with small radioactive inventories and limited resources. I have been very pleased to be part of this and look forward to working with this dedicated group again.