Surrendering your non-nuclear radioactive substances permit
The conditions that must be met for a non-nuclear radioactive substances activity permit to be surrendered.
Applies to England
This guidance sets out the conditions that must be met for your non-nuclear radioactive substances activity permit to be surrendered.
Who this guidance applies to
This guidance applies to both the full and partial surrender of radioactive substances activity permits from facilities where:
- sealed and unsealed radioactive sources have been kept and used
- radioactive wastes have been accumulated or disposed of
For partial surrenders, the same principles and conditions apply as for a full surrender, but only to the areas or activities being surrendered. Partial surrender includes:
- reducing the permit site boundary
- removing a radioactive substances activity from your permit while continuing to operate others
The guidance does not apply to:
- radioactive substances activities carried out on a nuclear licenced site
- permits for the disposal of solid radioactive waste to land, for example in landfill
This guidance is relevant to other facilities permitted for the receipt and disposal of radioactive waste, such as incinerators.
How to prepare for permit surrender
You should take a lifetime planning approach for radioactive substances. This approach ensures that your site is left in a safe condition for people and the environment before the Environment Agency accepts your permit surrender.
Read the guidance on lifetime planning to help you support preparations for permit surrenders, such as waste management plans and decommissioning strategies and plans.
Before surrendering your permit
Before your permit can be fully or partially surrendered, you must have stopped all radioactive substance activities covered by the permit or part of permit being surrendered.
For sealed source permits
You must demonstrate that all sealed sources and waste sealed sources have been removed from site.
Examples of evidence include a summary of all sealed sources and waste sealed sources held during the lifetime of the permit along with records of their disposal or transfer. In the absence of complete records, appropriate surveys may be used as evidence.
For unsealed source and waste permits
You must demonstrate that all radioactive material has been removed and all radioactive waste has been disposed of from the site.
Examples of evidence include full accountancy records of all unsealed radioactive materials and records of final waste consignments, or in absence of these, the available records and appropriate surveys.
There are details of suitable evidence you can use for permit surrender in this guide.
How to surrender your permit
When applying to surrender all or part of your permit, you should:
- provide a narrative summary of the history of radioactive substance use on the site over the lifetime of the facility
- identify all areas on the site where radioactive substances activities have occurred including disposal routes such as drain runs, for example through use of a site map
- highlight any areas where radionuclides were used, stored or disposed of
- remove any signage indicating the presence of radioactive material and waste
- arrange to have a pre-surrender-application discussion with your local regulator
You should have the appropriate records to be able to do this. If you do not have these, you may be able to use Environment Agency records. You may be charged if you seek regulatory advice, guidance or use Environment Agency records.
If you are applying for surrender because you can operate under radioactive substances exemptions, you should include a summary explaining why this is the case.
You should identify any remediation required under other legislation and assess whether completing all necessary works together would be more cost effective.
Surrender tests
The Environment Agency will accept your application for surrender of a radioactive substances activity permit if you can demonstrate that the necessary measures have been taken. As set out in the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations (EPR) 2016, Schedule 5, Part 1, para 14(1), these are:
- To avoid a pollution risk resulting from the operation of the regulated facility.
- To return the site of the regulated facility to a satisfactory state, having regard to the state of the site before the facility was put into operation.
You can meet these 2 surrender tests in different ways depending on the scale, complexity and hazard of your activities.
The Environment Agency will take a graded approach (see the UK policy framework for managing radioactive substances, paragraph 5.9) in determining your application for surrender of a permit.
Surrender test 1: Avoiding pollution risk
You must provide evidence that necessary measures were taken to avoid pollution risk resulting from your radioactive substances activities. This can be demonstrated in a number of ways.
For sealed source permits, suitable evidence may include:
- details on how you have stored the sources
- leak test certificates
- confirmatory monitoring
For unsealed sources or waste permits, suitable evidence may include:
- storage arrangements that you had in place for your radioactive material and waste
- radiological monitoring surveys, including methods and results, for all areas where work has been carried out including disposal routes such as drain runs or gaseous emissions pipeworks or stacks
- decay calculations for contamination by short-lived radionuclides
- management arrangements for dealing with contamination or spillages
- appropriate records of spills, contamination or activation
- steps taken to clean up or remediate spills, contamination or activation including for land, surface waters and groundwater as appropriate
- details of remediation undertaken, any waste generated and details of its subsequent disposal
- details of final clearance surveys
This list of suitable evidence is not exhaustive. Speak to your local regulator if you have any questions and check the radioactive substances scope and exemptions guidance.
The Environment Agency will interpret the requirement to avoid any pollution risk in a proportionate way. You should address the risks of any pollution associated with the radioactive substances activities unless the risks are so small that no further action is needed.
You should provide context for any evidence you provide. For example, explain how survey results demonstrate that necessary measures were taken to avoid pollution from radioactive substances activities undertaken in each part of the site.
You should also remediate any contamination outside the site boundary that has resulted from your permitted activities and provide appropriate evidence of this.
Surrender test 2: Return to a ‘satisfactory state’
You must demonstrate that the necessary measures have been taken to return the site of the regulated facility to a satisfactory state. This means restoring your site to the condition it was in before the facility was put into operation.
If you have documentation showing the levels of radioactivity on your site for the radionuclides covered by your permit before your activities commenced, you can return the site to these recorded levels. This documentation could include:
- radiological surveys
- due diligence reports
- health and safety assessments
- similar appropriate documentation
If suitable documentation of the site’s condition before the facility was put into operation is not available, you can achieve a satisfactory state by remediating your site to one of the following:
- ‘out of scope levels’ or background levels for the radionuclides and their decay products used during the operation of your facility whichever is higher – check the ‘out of scope’ values in Table 1 of Schedule 23 of the EPR for NORM (naturally occurring radioactive material) industrial activities and Table 2 for all other activities
- a level where the whole-body dose to a member of the public that would arise from any remaining radioactive substance is less than 10 microsieverts (µSv) per year (or less than 300 µSv per year from NORM industrial activities)
- a level where the risk from remaining radiological hazard to a representative person is consistent with 10-6 per year – for information on the risk guidance level see the UK Radioactive substances policy framework and the Requirements for release for radioactive substances activities on nuclear sites (under ‘Joint guidance’, Annex B7)
If it is not reasonably practicable or sustainable to remediate your site to these levels, you must use the best available techniques (BAT) to remediate as close as possible to:
- the appropriate dose standard (10µSv or 300µSv per year)
- the risk guidance level (10-6 per year)
You must discuss options with your local regulator. You must also be able to demonstrate that you have used BAT to ensure that doses to the public are optimised. This means they are as low as reasonably achievable, taking into account environmental, economic and social factors.
Summary of surrender test 2
To meet surrender test 2, you must return the site to a satisfactory state by doing the following.
If pre-operation radioactivity levels are known, you must restore the site to those levels.
If pre-operation radioactivity levels are not known, you’ll need to do one of the following:
- remediate to out-of-scope levels
- remediate to background levels
- remediate so that any remaining radioactivity would not give a dose to the public of more than 10 µSv/year (or less than 300 µSv per year from NORM industrial activities)
- remediate so that the risk from remaining radiological hazard to a representative person is consistent with 10-6 per year
If none of these options are reasonably practicable or sustainable, you must use BAT to remediate as close to the appropriate dose standard or risk guidance level as possible. You must discuss this with your local regulator.
You must provide evidence of achieving a satisfactory state through any of these means using, for example, sampling and monitoring reports or performing radiological assessments or calculations.
This list of suitable evidence is not exhaustive. Speak to your local regulator or a radioactive waste adviser (RWA) if you have any questions.