This status report on Selecting Strategies for the Decommissioning of Nuclear Facilities is based on the viewpoints and materials presented at a seminar held in Tarragona, Spain on 1-4 September 2003 as well as the experience of the NEA Working Party on Decommissioning and Dismantling (WPDD). It identifies, reviews and analyses factors influencing decommissioning strategies and addresses the challenges associated with balancing these factors in the process of strategy selection. It gives recognition to the fact that, in addition to technical characteristics, there are many other factors that influence the selection of a decommissioning strategy and that cannot be quantified, such as policy, regulatory and socio-economic factors and aspects that reach far into the future. Uncertainties associated with such factors are a challenge to those who have to take decisions on a decommissioning strategy.
Potentially interested groups of readers are regulators, implementers, R&D experts and policy makers dealing with decommissioning and dismantling issues as well as politicians, decision makers and the general public.