It’s important to know how much radioactive waste exists in Australia. By collecting and publishing information on Australia’s radioactive waste, we can make informed decisions about how we manage it now and in the future.
Most radioactive waste in Australia comes from common processes and procedures that use nuclear technologies. Australia does not produce a lot of radioactive waste, but we still need to treat the waste we do create responsibly. This means managing it safely and securely.
Right now, Australia stores radioactive waste in over 100 temporary facilities across the country. While this approach to managing radioactive waste is safe in the interim, it is not a permanent solution. We are working towards creating waste disposal facilities to meet national and international standards.
This report and its future iterations will help us design and build disposal facilities that meet our current and future needs.
This report also gives us a way to regularly collect data from waste holders and helps build understanding about Australia’s radioactive waste.
The information in this report feeds into everything ARWA does, including our:
- planning
- work programs
- government policy advice.
The nature of radioactive waste means that we must take a long-term approach to managing it. As the government body responsible for managing radioactive waste in Australia, we are planning how we’ll manage radioactive waste hundreds of years into the future. The inventory helps us to make these plans effectively.
Read more about radioactive waste in Australia.
What’s in this report
This report is an update of Australia’s national inventory of radioactive waste, which we last published in 2022. The inventory estimates the amount of radioactive waste that exists in Australia and is likely to be produced in the foreseeable future.
The inventory summarises information that government waste holders across Australia have voluntarily submitted about their inventories of radioactive waste. Because waste holders volunteer their data, the inventory is not a comprehensive list of all radioactive waste in Australia.
The data includes waste produced by:
- Australian government entities
- Australia’s state and territory regulators.
We have compiled the inventory data into a series of tables and charts. These show the volumes (in cubic metres), activity levels and key radionuclides of the reported inventories.
What’s not in this report
While we try to be as comprehensive as possible, we cannot include all information on Australia’s radioactive waste.
The inventory does not include information about:
- exempt waste (waste excluded from regulatory control for radiation protection purposes)
- bulk volumes of waste consisting of naturally occurring radioactive materials (like mine tailings or contaminated byproducts from oil and gas production)
- spent nuclear fuel that the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine program will produce
- any waste already disposed of.
The report does not include:
- a comprehensive list of all radioactive waste in Australia
- a historical overview of all radioactive waste Australia has generated since the application of nuclear science and technologies
- waste locations
- detailed information on waste-generating activities.
International obligations and other waste reports
Australia is a member state of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA sets global standards in nuclear safety and the safe management of radioactive waste.
Australia has reporting obligations to the IAEA Joint Convention for the Safety of Spent Fuel and Radioactive Waste Management.
Under the Joint Convention, Australia must:
- create and maintain a legislative and regulatory framework to govern the safety of radioactive waste
- protect people and the environment against hazards from these materials.
As part of these reporting obligations, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) also collects and reports information about Australia’s radioactive waste inventory.
Some of the information included in ARPANSA’s report is similar to ARWA’s national waste inventory, like total waste volume or activity. However, ARPANSA does not collect detailed information about waste types and waste properties. ARWA does collect this information because it is important for planning for Australia’s radioactive waste management and disposal.
Assumptions and limitations
Because it can be difficult to characterise or quantify some radioactive waste, we need to make some cautious assumptions to develop the inventory.
These assumptions are mostly to do with characterising radioactive waste, including estimating volumes, radioactivity and other characteristics. Making these assumptions helps us understand and classify the data we collect from waste holders.
These assumptions can change as waste holders do more work to understand how to report their waste and waste operations.
We also have some uncertainties about and limitations to the data. These include:
- general uncertainties about waste holders’ measurements and how they take them
- receiving data modelling or calculations rather than direct measurements
- missing data if waste holders don’t include it or cannot practically collect it
- needing to rely on waste holders’ estimates about how much waste their future activities will produce.
For these reasons, the numbers in the inventory are approximate.
ARWA gave waste holders guidance to support them with the classification of their waste. However, many did not have information on radioactivity concentration. We needed this to categorise their waste in line with our classifications.
In most cases, waste holders applied their own judgment to classify their waste in storage.
Future work
This inventory informs the development of radioactive waste disposal solutions in a comprehensive, planned way to meet Australia’s current and future needs.
ARWA will continue to:
- update the national inventory on a regular basis
- adopt improvements to the information gathering process
- work with waste holders, including state and territory governments, to further:
- understand waste properties ahead of the next inventory update
- characterise waste streams and decide on suitable waste classifications in the context of waste disposal.