Radioactive Waste Management, Treatment and Disposal

Your Next Step in Nuclear Problem Solving

Eden provides strategies and solutions for radioactive waste, including treatment, conditioning, transport, and disposal. Our capabilities in this area include:

Our Capabilities Include:

- Strategy development for VLLW, LLW and higher-activity waste (including vitrified waste).

- Assessment of waste treatment technologies.

- Strategy development for waste packaging, conditioning and transport.

- Review of near-surface disposal and geological disposal concepts.

Why pick us?

We have experience managing and coordinating complex, multidisciplinary programmes to deliver integrated waste management solutions with full consideration of technical, environmental and economic aspects.

We have staff with practical, hands-on experience in nuclear waste management. This ensures that strategies are implementable and achievable.

Through our network we can bring in learning and insight from overseas and from adjacent sectors, such as conventional waste disposal. This allows us to apply innovative thinking to UK radioactive waste management challenges.

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Core Service Details:

Radioactive Waste Management, Treatment, and Disposal at Eden

We support the development and stakeholder acceptance of radioactive waste management solutions, plans and strategies.

We have expertise with Lower Activity Waste (LAW) and Higher Activity Waste (HAW), covering VLLW, LLW, ILW and HLW. We provide a ‘waste-informed’ and ‘risk-informed’ perspective to develop optimised management solutions for radioactive waste.

We bring a complete perspective of waste management, formed by our staff who have direct experience of forming national strategy, managing waste on sites, working for disposal companies and working for regulators.

We understand different stakeholder perspectives, so develop solutions that meet the different needs.

We ensure solutions can be implemented on the ground and are aligned with policy, strategy and regulations. We are easy to work with, responsive, collaborative and bring stakeholders along the journey when developing a solution.

Our Case Study Examples:

Optimisation of Future Waste Stores

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) will need new stores to provide interim storage for future arisings of Higher Activity Waste (HAW). There are costs associated with planning, design, build, commissioning, operations and decommissioning of stores.

The NDA recently contracted Eden NE to support with identifying opportunities for further improving the delivery of stores and ensuring maximum value is being provided for the NDA and the taxpayer.

Our team’s extensive experience with storage strategy and store operation, plus our contacts nationally and internationally, made us best placed to lead the project. We spoke to store designers, operators and maintenance teams across the UK to gain first-hand experience from over 15 operational stores.

We gained perspectives from regulators and Nuclear Waste Services. We gained international experience via a partner organisation in France. Another partner brought extensive sustainability experience from outside the nuclear industry, and we determined how that could be utilised to make stores more sustainable - from an environmental and from a socio-economic perspective. As well as gaining learning from experience, we reviewed new technologies that may enhance future stores. Our strong links to universities and research establishments gave us an insight into developing technologies.

Based on our research, 31 opportunities for improving the value of future stores were initially identified. These opportunities were discussed with a group of industry experts at a workshop we facilitated. Following the workshop, we identified the next steps for each of the 15 most attractive opportunities, along with the risks and uncertainties, the significance of the benefit and the ease of implementation. We concisely and visually presented this information to the NDA, to help them make decisions on prioritising their future work, to enable maximum value for money to the taxpayer.

Remote Sensing Advances Aim to Protect Workers and Improve Detection of Radioactive Materials

High radiation levels pose significant hazards to workers in the nuclear industry — dangers that can cause serious harm or even prove fatal. This reality drives a powerful incentive to create remote techniques for detecting and characterising radioactive and nuclear materials safely and efficiently.

To advance this goal, we carried out a horizon scan and technology maturity assessment of methods capable of remotely identifying actinide materials.

Traditional hands-on techniques come with major drawbacks:

· High risk to workers from manual handling, including potential for contaminated wounds or internal radiation doses.

· Environmental concerns due to wet chemistry–based measurement methods that generate waste or discharges.

· Slow turnaround times that delay critical insights and hinder timely operational or technical decisions.

To overcome these issues, we explored solutions that eliminate the need for manual sample collection and transport. Our focus was on systems that:

· Operate effectively at a distance (stand-off measurements), keeping personnel safely away from radiation sources.

· Deliver results in near real time, allowing quicker and better-informed decision-making.

Our review examined a range of promising remote-sensing techniques — including Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray fluorescence (XRF), alpha imaging, hyperspectral imaging (HSI), and electromagnetic breakdown detection.

Each approach was evaluated for its technological maturity, information depth, instrument and measurement complexity, required operator expertise, and suitability across different sample types and environmental conditions.

Next-Generation Frameworks: How MOFs and COFs Could Transform Radioactive Waste Management

Eden NE reviewed the potential of Metal–Organic Frameworks (MOFs) and Covalent Organic Frameworks (COFs) for nuclear sector use. These porous, modular materials can be precisely tuned by altering linkers, metal centres, or functional groups, enabling targeted adsorption and separation of radionuclides such as caesium, uranium, iodine, and tritium. Paul Abraitis represented Eden NE as Project Director and Technical Lead.

Although MOFs and COFs can be produced in various forms using methods like solvothermal or microwave-assisted synthesis, large-scale manufacture might be limited by high energy demands, hazardous solvents, and material costs. Their stability—chemical, thermal, mechanical, and radiation-related—remains a key factor for nuclear deployment, with radiation stability being the least explored.

To address the vast design space of these materials, computational modelling and machine learning are being used to predict performance and accelerate discovery. We identified several potential nuclear use cases and recommended targeted R&D and stakeholder engagement to advance application readiness.