| Chair(s): |
Luca Abele PICIACCIA, Norway |
Secretary: |
Shogo NISHIKAWA (shogo.nishikawa@oecd-nea.org) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vice-Chair(s): |
Olivier DE CLERCQ, Belgium Jonathan KINDLEIN, Germany Alexander CARTER, United Kingdom | ||
| Member(s): | All NEA member countries* | ||
| Russia (Suspended*) | |||
| *Russian Federation suspended pursuant to a decision of the OECD Council. | |||
| Full participant(s): |
European Commission Under the NEA Statute | ||
| Observer(s)(International Organisation): |
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) By agreement | ||
| Date of creation: | 10 September 2020 | ||
| End of mandate: | 30 September 2024 |
Mandate (Document reference):
Mandate (Document extract):
Extract of Document NEA/RWM/IDKM(2022)8/FINAL
Background
Large volumes of data, information and knowledge are required to carry out the safety analysis for a radioactive waste storage or disposal facility. This analysis is detailed in a safety case, which is a set of evolving documentation, updated throughout the lifecycle of the facility, to demonstrate the safety of that facility. It is important that the safety case remains available and accessible during planning, construction, operations and closure, and potentially long into the future, for stakeholders to have confidence in the safety of the facility and support informed decision making.
As the geological disposal programme progresses, the available information will increase in type, detail and volume. This includes information on the disposal system itself, including inventory, engineered barriers and geology, how these work together to ensure safety, and also on the decisions taken throughout the development process, whose rationale must be captured and set into context. Failure to preserve this information introduces the risk of the loss of confidence of regulators, the public or other stakeholders, together with the associated financial and resource cost of re-work.
Information, data and knowledge management (IDKM) considerations concerning the safety case need to be made during its creation. This includes the selection of information and data, metadata tagging, modelling of the relationships between information resources, and approaches to developing and structuring safety case arguments to ensure continued accessibility.
Scope
The EGSSC will address activities that help radioactive waste management organisations (RWMOs) and implementers (as well as external stakeholders that could benefit from a traceable and transparent data development and use, e.g. regulators) to describe and better understand the data and information they hold, and the process relating to radioactive waste and geological disposal in support of a safety case (or more generally of a waste management case).
In all activities, the EGSSC aims to enable users to more insightfully capture data and information so that any links between different pieces of information are clear, unambiguous, and can be understood in the future. Throughout all activities, consideration will be given to consistency with the Set of Essential Records (SER) [1], with metadata introduced to identify records within the SER.
Objectives
In 2020, the Working Party on Information, Data and Knowledge Management (WP-IDKM) established a third-level Expert Group on a Data and Information Management Strategy for the Safety Case (EGSSC). The EGSSC will:
To support these primary activities, the EGSSC will also identify any relevant secondary activities to be pursued.
Working methods
The mode of operation of the EGSSC is based upon plenary meetings and an ongoing, project-oriented working programme.
A Bureau consisting of a Chair and one or more Vice-Chairs will co-ordinate and facilitate the work of the EGSSC. The Bureau will normally meet once or twice a year (or more frequently in special meetings), with one meeting normally held in conjunction with the annual EGSSC plenary meeting.
Communication within the EGSSC will primarily take place through annual plenary meetings. The plenary meeting is devoted to:
The EGSSC will report to the WP-IDKM at the annual meetings of the working party.
Additionally, the EGSSC will: (i) identify required resources (including funding) and schedules for its activities; and (ii) review the programme of work and its effectiveness.
In fulfilling its mandate, the EGSSC will be supported by the staff of the NEA Division of Radioactive Waste Management and Decommissioning (RWMD).
Membership
The EGSSC is a task-oriented expert group that is composed of a diverse range of experts in the field of IDKM in RWM, decommissioning and non-related fields from NEA member countries, e.g. engineers and scientists in RWMOs, decommissioning and other technical domains involved with data and information management, knowledge managers and social scientists involved in knowledge management on extended timescales (hundreds of years).
Interactions
The work of the EGSSC will be complementary to that of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the European Commission (EC). As such, the group will continue to co-operate with its relevant counterparts and provide relevant input to the activities of these institutions, as appropriate.
Through the RWMC and Secretariat, the EGSSC will co-operate with the NEA standing technical committees and their subsidiary bodies when relevant, in particular those of the Committee on Decommissioning of Nuclear Installations and Legacy Management (CDLM) and the Integration Group for the Safety Case (IGSC), to identify (i) interfaces between the groups and (ii) overlaps and common issues. It may also collaborate with the NEA Data Bank.
In particular, the EGSSC will take into account the following NEA publications:
Deliverables
The EGSSC will produce appropriate reports, presentations or workshops with the support of the Secretariat.
[1] As described in the NEA publication “Preservation of Records, Knowledge and Memory (RK&M) Across Generations. Compiling a Set of Essential Records for a Radioactive Waste Repository” [NEA publication 7423].
