**5. Risk assessment and development of future strategies**

Nuclear site operations and successful site restoration depend on the availability of suitable waste management routes and facilities. Effective management of both radioactive and nonradioactive waste is essential to the delivery is a significant part of the process.

Strategic decisions about waste management are informed by the following key principles: risk reduction is a priority, centralised and multi-site approaches should be considered where it may be advantageous, waste should be minimised and the waste hierarchy should be used as a framework for waste management decision making and enables an effective balance of priorities including value for money, affordability, technical maturity and the protection of health, safety, security and the environment.

For Low Level Waste, disposal will be in fit for purpose facilities that reflect the nature of the wastes to be managed. Within this overall framework our priority is to achieve risk reduction by dealing with waste in ageing storage facilities and placing it into safer modern storage conditions. Diverse radioactive waste management and disposal solutions will be pursued where these offer benefits over previous arrangements. New waste management approaches will often require different transport arrangements and will be a matter of great interest to planning authorities and people living close to the sites involved.

Some general ideas about the underpinning strategies are showed in Figure 2, the basic steps for effective management of radioactive waste are part of a global system, ranging from waste generation to final disposal are: minimization of radioactive waste, pretreatment, characteri‐ zation, treatment, conditioning, transport, storage and disposal (IAEA, 1970). All of these ideas with the intention to reduce the volume of radioactive wastes.
