Close-up view showing over-pack, shielding container and shielding plug at the Solid Storage Surveillance Facility, Tarapur

The radioactive waste generated at various stages of nuclear fuel cycle are categorised as low, intermediate and high level grades. The low and intermediate level radioactive wastes are treated in an eco-friendly way, and the small quantity of high level waste produced, is immobilised in glass-matrix by a process called vitrification.

The vitrification process which uses sodium borosilicate glass matrix with some modifiers, has been developed at BARC and adopted for immobilisation of high level waste at the Waste Immobilisation Plant, Tarapur.

The storage vault of the Facility has been designed and constructed indigenously for interim storage and surveillance of the vitrified waste product overpacks prior to their disposal in deep geological formation, after about 30 years. The Facility, with a capacity for storage of 1694 numbers of overpacks containing inert solid matrix, has become operational recently. This can store solid waste generated during the operation of two nuclear reactors of 220 MWe capacity each, for 40 years which is equivalent to the generation of 123 giga units of electricity.