1. OBJECTIVES.
This project has been directed at supporting the Government of Iraq as Beneficiary in the management of its nuclear legacy waste, by studying the design requirements and providing a design of a Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility. The end user is the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) as the operator of the nuclear facilities in Iraq. The consortium of contractors consisted of NUKEM TES GmbH and BGE Technology GmbH, both from Germany, and Ja Vys a.s. from the Slovak Republic. The project duration was from April 2015 to April 2019. The nuclear legacy of the Iraq is characterised by a nuclear research programme starting in 1956, and by destruction and looting of nuclear sites in war. Since 2004 international support has been provided on the planning for, and decommissioning of, the existing nuclear facilities; radioactive waste management; remediation of contaminated sites; and, drafting of the relevant legal and regulatory framework. The MoST and the Ministry of Environment (MoE) are the relevant national authorities involved in the decommissioning and radioactive waste management activities. A national policy for radioactive waste management had been drafted by MoST and a draft strategy for implementation of radioactive waste management was in preparation at the time of the project. In this framework, Iraq is considering locating a radioactive waste disposal facility at the AI-Tuwaitha site, about 30 km from Bagdad. The near-surface disposal facility is intended for disposal of low and intermediate level waste from past activities in Iraq, as well as future radioactive waste to be produced in the country, e.g., from decommissioning and remediation of nuclear installations. The overall objective of the INSC Project IQ4.01/11 is to support the safe disposal of low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste as described above. To this aim, the contractor was charged with achieving the following project goals:  To develop a critical assessment of the envisaged siting of an engineered radioactive waste disposal facility within the premises of the Al-Tuwaitha site  To compile an appropriate inventory of the radioactive waste to be disposed of at this site  To prepare a basic (conceptual) design of the disposal facility, including its siting  To prepare a Preliminary Safety Assessment Report  To develop a detailed engineering design of the disposal facility  To prepare a Final Safety Assessment Report for facility licensing.
2. RESULTS Achievements of the project have been the successful delivery of a preliminary waste inventory, a preliminary site characterization, a facility design and a pre-construction safety assessment. Due to (primarily) a lack of information and input data, the project has not resulted in a situation where the beneficiary can begin construction. The implementing consortium made a number of recommendations on outstanding items to be addressed before construction of a disposal facility can start. The summary reports delivered detail the significant progress made and set out precise actions and recommendations, the enactment of which are likely to allow the Beneficiary to develop each of the key deliverables and, ultimately, result in the construction of a suitable Low-/Intermediate-Level Waste disposal facility for Iraq. The project was carried out with a lack of substantiated information which was previously expected as an input to several of the tasks involved. General uncertainties with regard to task inputs resulted in the adoption of conservative assumptions to fill certain gaps or certain outputs being deemed 'preliminary'. Where gaps in Iraqi nuclear legislation were observed, appropriate standards were adopted, reflecting international best practices in accordance with the IAEA standards. These limitations have been accepted on the basis that the project has the nature of an intervention action whose first priority is to develop an implementable solution that will lead to the stabilization of the current situation and improvement of the overall immediate safety and security of the waste materials.
3. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS The project has partly achieved the objectives set out. The summary reports delivered set out actions and recommendations to allow the Beneficiary to develop each of the key deliverables required for construction of a suitable Low- /Intermediate-Level Waste disposal facility for Iraq. It is recommended to review the gaps identified and to establish how the beneficiary can be enabled to elaborate missing information and create the conditions necessary for creating complete licensing documentation.