Q&A: Dealing with Britain's nuclear waste?

Bruce Cairns - chief policy advisor at Radioactive Waste Management (RWM), a public organisation established by government and responsible for planning and delivering geological disposal in the UK

Dr Adam Sims - radioactive waste consultant, Mott MacDonald

Dr Tim Marshall - nuclear safety inspector and ONR geological disposal lead

Neil Hyatt FRSC - Professor of Nuclear Materials Chemistry, The University of Sheffield

John Grimsich, Director of Sciences, Deep Isolation

BC: Constructing a nationally significant infrastructure project naturally comes with significant engineering challenges.  We will have to design, construct and operate the facility to protect people and the environment for a very long time and until the waste naturally decays and is no longer harmful. Another challenge is that we will build and fill at the same time – meaning that there will be continued underground construction of the facility, during waste emplacement operations. This will require innovative engineering solutions to run these parallel activities safely. Consequently, plans for the construction and operation, which are dependent on location, site specific features, and the final waste inventory, will be developed over decades and integral to our approach.