Appendix CRF - Part 3 - Northamptonshire County Council

10.0 BPEO Assessment for Disposal of LLW from
Nuclear Sites
10.1 BPEO (Best Practicable Environmental Option)
10.1.1 The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution defined the Best Practicable
Environmental Option (BPEO) as:
“The outcome of a systematic and consultative decision-making procedure which
emphasises the protection and conservation of the environment across land, air
and water.
The BPEO procedure establishes, for a given set of objectives, the option that
provides the most benefits or the least damage to the environment as a whole, at
acceptable cost, in the long term as well as the short term.”
10.1.2 The Environment Agency requires the use of the BPEO methodology by nuclear
industry sites in order to underpin their waste management choices and
strategies.
10.1.3 A BPEO study involves a rational consideration of all the options against a series
of criteria. Importantly it involves extensive consultation.
10.1.4 Any nuclear industry site that wished to send waste to the East Northants
Resource Management Facility under an authorisation would be required to have
an underpinning BPEO study that justified this approach before they would be
granted a transfer authorisation under the RSA 1993 by the EA.
10.1.5 The consigning site would in any case have to apply the waste management
hierarchy of avoid – minimise – recycle – reuse to any waste stream prior to
consideration of disposal and would have to demonstrate the use of best
practicable means in respect of waste generating activities. So, for example, a
nuclear industry site is required to extensively sort wastes prior to dispatch in
order to avoid unnecessary disposals.
10.1.6 The proposed approach is that the BPEO methodology would not be applied to
this authorisation application, but would be applied to each individual transfer
authorisation application from nuclear industry sites.
10.1.7 Non-nuclear industry sites are not required to prepare BPEO assessments for
their waste streams, although these would normally be small volumes in
comparison to the potential higher volumes from the nuclear industry.
Application for disposal of LLW including HV-VLLW under RSA 1993,
for the East Northants Resource Management Facility:
Supporting Information
July 2009
96
WS010001/ENRMF/CONSAPPCRF 415