We want to know what you think about our plans to consolidate the current rules on bottled drinking water.

This update will also:

• ease burdens on businesses by removing a national requirement which no longer has a scientific evidence base
• change the way offences are enforced, allowing Local Authorities to take a more proportionate approach
• apply new requirements for businesses to test and monitor for radioactive substances in bottled drinking water

The new regulations will come into force in early January 2016 and will apply in England only. Separate regulations will be made in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. These regulations will replace the current regulations.

Use this form with applications that include the options:

• Permanent grassland with very low inputs (outside SDAs) (GS2)
• Assessment of eligibility for permanent grassland options (GS5)
• Management of species-rich grassland (GS6)

You do not have to use this form. You can use your own document if it gives enough information to meet the requirements.

Send this form or your own document with an application to show that land is eligible for a permanent grassland option.

We are looking for proposals that support the NDA mission to deliver safe, sustainable and publicly acceptable solutions to the challenge of decommissioning and clean-up of the UK’s civil nuclear legacy.

Up to £500,000 is available to support projects that will lead to the award of a PhD.

The NDA’s goals for the scheme are as follows:

• maintain and develop the key technical skills that will be required to help us carry out the mission over the coming decades
• provide fundamental understanding of technologies and processes across the NDA estate
• develop early stage technologies (Technology Readiness Level 1 to 3)
• encourage 2-way knowledge transfer between the academic and industrial communities working on nuclear decommissioning

Eligibility

Only project proposals with a total cost to NDA of less than £120,000 will be considered (excluding cost of any collaboration with US research organisations).

Applications for the annual bursary scheme are invited from:

• UK academic institutions for PhD projects
• sub-contractors, including Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) seeking ‘top-up’ funding for CASE awards and EngDocs

The relevant themes are:

1. characterisation
2. waste packaging and storage
3. land quality
4. decommissioning
5. spent fuel and nuclear material
6. effluents
7. open criteria (including robotics and aqueous effluents)

Eligibility will cover PhD projects involving universities or sub-contractors where the bursary is used as a grant top-up to access national facilities for research involving the handling of radioactive materials.

How to apply

Submissions will close at 15:00 on Monday 12 November 2018.

NDA PhD Bursary Call 2019

This list includes all the food products from the UK which are currently being considered under the EU protected food name scheme.

This scheme highlights regional and traditional foods whose authenticity and origin can be guaranteed.
Food or drink products which are designated under the scheme are given legal protection against imitation throughout the EU.

Food businesses can read more about how to register food or drink products and see a list of UK registered products under the scheme.

(Each of the following lists is in alphabetical order.)

Working with waste producers

We work with organisations across the UK that produce radioactive waste to help ensure that the waste being produced now is suitable for geological disposal. This includes working with them on:

• their plans for packaging higher-activity radioactive waste
• the interim storage of radioactive waste packages prior to geological disposal facility

This involves:

• reviewing the properties and performance of proposed packages, known as the Disposability Assessment process which can result in issuing Letters of Compliance (LoC) that signify compliance with our packaging standards and specifications providing guidance on a wide range of packaging issues
• periodic review to ensure that manufactured waste packages remain disposable
• providing training on RWM’s role as the public sector body for a geological disposal facility (GDF) and the support it provides to waste producers in the packaging of radioactive wastes through an e-learning course

We also work with waste producers to see if there are opportunities to improve the existing plans in the light of new technology or innovation.

We advise waste packaging organisations and nuclear site operators on:

• their plans for packaging higher-activity radioactive waste
• the interim storage of radioactive waste packages prior to dispatch to a geological disposal facility

This involves:

• reviewing the properties and performance of proposed packages through the Letter of Compliance (LoC) disposability assessment process
• providing guidance on a wide range of packaging issues
• periodic review to ensure that manufactured waste packages remain disposable

We summarise interactions with waste packaging organisations annually.

Management of Higher Activity Wastes (HAW)

In line with RWM’s remit as the HAW programme integrator, we undertake work to deliver technical innovation in the management of HAW in the UK.

This work allows Site Licence Companies (SLCs) to implement near-term solutions that

• progress site Lifetime Plans
• reduce risk across the waste lifecycle
• enable cost savings to both SLCs and the NDA

We work proactively with waste owners to realise opportunities for the optimisation of waste management solutions. The customer may be an individual SLC, a group of SLCs or the industry as a whole. The work undertaken under the HAW programme, together with the prioritised programme of disposability assessments, should aid SLCs with earlier packaging of wastes and has an overall objective of hazard reduction and lifecycle cost savings to the NDA estate and the UK taxpayer.

Who we’re working with:

The HAW programme team works with:

• the NDA
• the Site Licence Companies and
• other UK radioactive waste producers

Our Letter of Compliance process

Our Letter of Compliance (LoC) disposability assessment process aims to help nuclear sites to carry out their clean-up and hazard reduction mission.

We check that higher activity wastes will be packaged in a passive and disposable form so that any wastes packaged today should be compliant with future transport and disposability requirements.

We work with sites to review and update our disposability assessments on a periodic basis.

We provide packaging standards and guidance based on our concepts and safety cases for transport and geological disposal of these wastes.

Our disposability assessments may identify the need for further information, research and technology development. Where proposed packages are found to be compliant with packaging standards and associated safety and environmental assessments, a Letter of Compliance (LoC) is issued. This indicates, to the best of our knowledge, it would be possible to dispose of the packaged waste in a geological disposal facility.

How it works

The LoC disposability assessment process is in line with regulatory guidance for higher activity wastes and requires site licensees to justify waste packaging proposals with a radioactive waste management case.

Our disposability assessment reports are an important input for radioactive waste management cases, although receipt of a LoC does not provide a safety justification for waste packaging because the relevant regulators still need to satisfy themselves that a packaging proposal is adequate.

The LoC disposability assessment process is generally applied in stages corresponding to the key development stages of the waste retrieval and packaging project:

• pre-conceptual stage when the site is considering different options for retrievals and packaging
• conceptual stage when the packager is looking to define a preferred conditioning and packaging option
• Interim stage prior to placing “design and build” contracts
• final stage when the plant is constructed and prior to commencement of waste packaging operations
• periodic review to maintain the currency of the LoC and to ensure that it is up to date, typically performed on a 10 yearly cycle

A Waste Packaging Database provides detailed information to all SLCs (NDA and non-NDA) about:

• existing packaging submissions and assessments conducted within the RWM disposability assessment process, and additionally the types of package used
• previous disposability assessment (LoC) submissions for similar waste types or packaging processes or containers are a valuable source of information that could inform the development of future submissions
• successful and significant unsuccessful packaging operations, and additionally the types of package.

The information within the database will assist the SLCs to prepare for future ILW processing.

Waste Packaging Database Version 2

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Executive summaries

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Specifications

We produce a hierarchy of packaging specifications to satisfy the needs of a wide range of stakeholders.

The highest level document in the hierarchy is the generic waste package specification (GWPS) which defines the requirements for all waste packages destined for geological disposal. The GWPS forms the basis for the definition of the standards and specifications for waste packages containing specific categories of waste, which are published as generic specifications.

For specific designs of waste package, which are manufactured using standardised designs of waste container, we produce waste package specifications (WPS) which form part of the waste package specification and guidance documentation (WPSGD).